'CSI': Love Kills

Love? Family? If CSI has taught us anything, it's that both lead to horrible, painful death.

Love spoilers? You're doomed.

We open on a crowded city bus to the strains of Coldplay's "42" -- the melancholy first half, not the up-tempo middle bit. That's still enough song to show us an attractive young woman making stew, then changing into a bikini and stepping off her balcony. That's one way to catch the bus. (Horatio Crane: Don't use that line without permission.)

As if to make up for lost time, this week our favorite investigators tackle three cases. Suprisingly, they never connected, unless you count that all three show love leads to murder. Did someone at the CSI writers' office just get dumped? Dude, give me a call; we'll have some drinks and get you a nice rebound.

So, our first case: On top of the bus, Catherine declares our jumper a "soup sandwich." Yowch. Sure enough, her bones are so pulverized from the landing that her legs wobble in a wholly disgusting fashion.

Someone tries letting Gil know; he's too busy being sad about Warrick's death to pick up. Sara, lying next to Gil, tries to convince him to skip town.

Sara: Let's go to the islands.
Gil: I can't go, you should stay.
Sara: I can't stay, let's go.
Laurence Fishburne: I'll just be waiting over here.

Let's tackle these cases in order...

Our jumper, the unfortunately named Sprig, had the perfect life, unless you count that she was freaking out about fitting into her wedding dress. Trust me, she looked fine. Well, until the soup sandwich thing. She was also worried about money, her fiancee says, because she was fired for stealing $10,000 from her bank job. Oops. Oh, and Sprig got a phone call from the pay phone outside just before she jumped. Hmmmm.

Turns out another woman had been fired from another bank not long before for also stealing $10,000. That woman, who didn't fling herself from any tall places, had been trying to quit smoking. Can Encyclopedia Brown solve the case? Catherine and Nick can: Both women went to the same hypnotist, who moonlighted as Madame Marvelous. Maddy claimed not to have any other talents, but was an amazing hypnotist, so she made people steal for her and convinced Sprig to commit suicide... well, just because she could. Okay then.

In the B-plot, Gil finally picked up the phone and was called to a blunt-force trauma: A pretty youngish gambling addict had been bashed to death and her eyes pushed in. Grissom and a detective who looks sort of like Fiddy Cent go to the woman's home, where her teen son asks after his child sister. Sister? One Amber Alert later, the deceased's car is tracked, and its new owner (a nice young prostitute) says she was given the car to drop a kid at the Palermo casino child-care center.

An old-school loan shark is the one who made that deal, but he claims not to have killed Mom. Gil goes snooping and finds pictures of Mom and Teen Son in compromising positions: Turns out they're lovers, and that she was his high-school guidance counselor. They fled to Vegas, she gambled away his college fund, he beat her to death. Ain't love grand?

Finally we get to the C-plot, Sara Sidle's big moment. Really. The comatose victim of a rape case she'd worked eight years earlier was taken off life support by her husband without consent. The husband claims it's because the rapist, who was out on a technicality, threatened to come back and finish the job. Long story short, the rapist was in a wheelchair and so unable to finish any of that sort of job ever again; husband just got tired of keeping his life on hold for a wife who'd never wake up.

Perhaps prompted by Gil's insistence that relationships in that sort of stasis eventually wither, our last scene is of Sara packing her clothes and heading out.

To be fair, I thought Jorja Fox might stick around until William Petersen left the show, but it looks like they're setting Gil up to chase after Sara. I'm still hoping he goes for Lady Heather. What do you think?

E-mail

• Digg
• Facebook
• Fark
• Yahoo Buzz
• Stumbleupon