CSI: Miami – “Miami, We Have a Problem” – review

As a writer myself, I’m constantly impressed by CSI: Miami’s writers’ ability to come up with interesting crimes perpetrated in interesting ways. What makes the three CSI programs so fun to watch is the regional variation offered by Las Vegas, New York, and Miami. Surprisingly, it’s taken eight years for the Miami group to bring in a story involving space. NASA is only a few hundred miles north of Dade County. Tonight, that drought ends with “Miami, We Have a Problem.”

The opening scene made me smile. A young couple, bickering about traffic. She wanted them to leave their house early so they’d get to their destination on time. He knew that traffic would be clear. She’s pregnant, and they’re waiting for their OB/GYN to open. Suddenly, a car jacker shows up. Yells ensue. Before you know it, what looks like a ring falls from the sky. Then a body. Yeah, a body. Horatio, Tripp (!), and Walter show up. Frank gets a great quip to start the show (“I’m going back to the station to get this Barnum and Bailey show on the road”). Walter looks up at the trees and states the obvious: there’s no way for the Guy Who Fell to stand on those branches without breaking them. Horatio says his conclusion: that’s because he didn’t fall from the tree. Paging Chicken Little!

Back in the lab, Dr. Tom and Calleigh chat. She asks the obvious: the fall killed him, right? Actually, Dr. Tom says that the Guy Who Fell, dubbed Icarus, didn’t die from the fall. He sees something and is just about to say something when he zips his lips. His idea needs more data before he can allow even a trusted colleague to hear his crazy theory.

While Dr. Tom investigates the body, Ryan and Horatio show up at a local airstrip. They got a tip about a helicopter. Beau, the Pilot, can’t account for the imprint of bloody knuckles found on the ’copter’s backseat. That would be the first encounter with a new disease in this episode: people who are allergic to the truth. When Ryan can’t match Icarus’s knuckles to the smudges, Calleigh remarks that the body had to fall from somewhere. That’s when Dr. Tom rushes in, beside himself with excitement. Paraphrasing Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Tom states that the blood cells of Icarus indicate he was in space within twenty-four hours of his death. However, Icarus did not fall from orbit or else he would have burned up. This little tidbit let our two jokesters (Walter and Ryan) have some subtle X-Files riffs.

Jesse, however, was the one who proffered the space tourism angle. That led to an appearance at Prime Mover Aerospace and owner, Keith Palmer. His company flies folks into space for a 10-day orbital cruise. He admits that the dead man, Sam Gardner, was on the flight but pulls the “it’s confidential” card on Horatio when asked about other passengers and crew. These challenges that suspects lay down on Horatio are some of my favorites. I just love ’em, because they don’t know how much of a bulldog Horatio is. And the latest bit of evidence from Dr. Tom doesn’t help Palmer’s case: Mr. Gardner died from explosive decompression.

Soon after this interesting discovery, the third member of the Three Liars Club, Dominic Cross, action movie icon, shows up. He can’t handle the truth, either, as he comes up with a story that, on the surface, seems plausible–Gardner wanted to do a space walk, but it’s an extra charge, so he blackmailed me into helping him. Yeah, whatever. Beau cops to trying to dump the body over water, but a flock of seagulls got caught up in his chopper’s blades. Yeah, a flock of seagulls. I guess he didn’t run very far away. Palmer’s getting irate because the investigation could ruin his company and get the feds to regulate them out of business. He neglects to take into account a man has died. Other than children in peril, nothing pisses off Horatio more.

The problem with the case is the blood spatter pattern Horatio discovers in the airlock of the space plane. There are no controls to open the outer airlock from inside the airlock. HAL isn’t there, either. In order to explain the blood spatter, Horatio sends Jesse and “Iron Stomach” Walter up in the Vomit Comet, the aircraft that flies and creates a zero-G environment for thirty seconds at a time. Like kids in 1977 seeing Star Wars for the first time, Jesse and Walter enjoy their zero-G experience. Quickly, however, it’s down to work. Jesse assaults a dummy with various tools of death, but none can recreate the spatter. Walter helps out by spewing out lunch (no chunks, thankfully) onto the dummy and surrounding plastic. Jesse remembers his high school geometry and realizes velocity is constant in any environment. He pulls out his weapon and fires a single shot. The dummy earns a new hole (with spatter to match) while Jesse tumbles backward (for every action there is an equal, opposite reaction), slamming into the bulkhead. Voila! All they have to do now is take a look at the Three Liars and see who has a bruise.

That prize goes to Beau the Pilot. And you’d never guess the reason. In a separate line of investigation, Ryan and the Brit Tech Guy (forgot his name) determine that a piece of space junk smashed into the space plane and damaged the oxygen tanks. The four men in space figure out that they only have air for three. Someone’s got to go. Sam drew the short straw. As the three stand before a seething Horatio, they start bickering over this or that technicality. Horatio, pure venom in voice, states flatly, “This is a disgrace. You’re all guilty of murder.” I’ll admit that I’d like to see more Caruso in every episode of CSI: Miami. However, when he does make his appearances, they are on the money, like this last scene.

As he’s led away, Palmer finds a shred of humanity and asks Horatio to give to Sam’s widow something Gardner left for her. It’s up to Calleigh to show the widow–who didn’t approve of her husband’s extravagant space trip–a video of Sam from the space plane. He professes his love for her and can’t wait to see her. In a series that tends to focus on different types of relationships (big on children and that kind of affection), it was fantastic to see true, marital love expressed on camera. We didn’t get any previews, so I wonder if the Miami Crime Lab Machine is taking a week off for the Olympics (or the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show). This might have been their Valentine-themed episode. If so, it was very good.

I enjoyed this one quite a bit. I liked the spacey, early-80s-inspired techno music played when Horatio donned a lab coat and found clues. That continued with the car commercial featuring a remake of Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom.” I liked the shots cued up for us (am I the only one who thought the airlock lights and doorway looked like an alien head?). How about y’all?