CSI: Miami is planning a string of episodes to feature old school sexy, the kind our fathers used to leer at when they were younger. Back in their prime, during the 60s and 70s, these two women were the women who hung on posters in teenagers’ bedrooms. They may not be as young as they used to be, but they’re still gorgeous to look at and will add a little extra sizzle to Miami’s 10^th season.

TV Guide broke the news of our first girl, Bo Derek. She’ll be playing a well-preserved mother (another word that could be used is MILF) who runs a horse stable. Things get thrown into chaos when a murder is committed at her stable. Derek has recently become a more prominent name, with a couple of TV guest appearances. She’ll also be a guest star on Chuck, but she will be playing herself. TVLine reported Raquel Welch would be our second blast from the past actress, playing a family matriarch in Miami. To make things a little more interesting, Carlos Bernard’s Diego and his son Esteban (Kuno Becker) will be members of this family. Both Derek and Welch are set to make their appearances in early 2012.

How does everyone feel about these sex symbols from the past? I’ve always enjoyed seeing actresses, known primarily for the looks when they were younger, come back out to have some fun. Most of them are willing to poke fun at themselves, which for me shows you they’re a particularly good person.

Royal Pain‘s Meredith Hagner is using her time off to film an episode of CSI: Miami where she’s the suspect in a murder investigation.And it won’t be some unimportant shmuck who loses their life, but a very important person to Hagner’s character: her mother.

Hagner guest stars in a December episode, according to TVLine, where she plays the big sister to a child beauty pageant contestant. Because she is jealous of all the attention her spoiled younger sister receives, the CSIs see her as having motive to kill her mother. I can certainly see their reasoning behind the suspicion. What better way to thrust yourself into the spotlight than a tragedy like murder in the family. Although I’m sure she wasn’t counting on being a suspect in the investigation, but there you have it. Keep in mind she also might be innocent, but I have my doubts. If she didn’t kill her mom out of jealousy than she did it out of disgust. I can’t stand those mothers that put their daughters through beauty pageants. It’s disgusting and if you do that, I’m sorry, but you don’t deserve to have children. I don’t feel comfortable breathing the same air as you.

Thankfully, I’ve found that a number of crime procedural feel the same way about the creepiness behind children being shown off in pageants and what not. More than a few have taken jabs at how messed up those little worlds can be. My one wish is that CSI: Miami gets in a few good shots at the beauty pageant lifestyle.

The fine folks responsible for CSI: Miami felt the series could use a little more of a folk music presence so they’ve gone and cast actress Susie Abromeit for an upcoming episode. Now, you must be wondering how Susie Abromeit ties in with folk music. Let me clear the air here: by herself she has nothing whatsoever to do with folk music. But don’t forget, she is an actress. She can be whatever we want her to be and right now CSI: Miami wants her to be a folk-singer. Who has also become an activist of sorts.

Abromeit is playing Kayla. Her big appearance is in the ninth episode of the current season. As per usual, we are left we virtually no information regarding her role in the episode, aside from probably shoving her opinions down our throats. That’s what activists do right? All joking aside, I have no theories regarding her part. She’ll either be dead, a killer or a random suspect. That’s basically the three options procedurals like CSI have. The best I can do is suggest she’ll be a suspect in a case, with her activism serving as a motive. That’s the best I can do at this time.

If you’ve been keeping track of the many pilots this year, you may have spotted Abromeit in the premiere episode of A Gifted Man she where she played a tennis prodigy. Before that she was on As the World Turns as Anna Kasnoff.

CSI: Miami is crafting itself a Halloween special complete with a vampire-related crime scene while also featuring former Numb3rs star Diane Farr. The episode will air the day before Halloween, October 30, so you won’t have to worry about it interfering with taking your kids out trick-or-treating. Unfortunately, don’t get your hopes up for any real vampires. This is a show based in reality (even if it is a bit skewed at times), so any vampire-like oddities that turn up will be explained in a way that totally makes sense (for TV).

According to TVLine, Miss Farr will be guest starring as a popular young adult fiction writer who gets involved in a murder investigation that appears to have been inspired by her books. Calling it right now, she probably writes a series about a vampire that is eerily similar to Twilight. Also, hasn’t this scenario been done to death already? Every police procedural has to have an episode where a writer has their work turned in to murder. Heck, that was Castle’s basic premise when it first started.

There’s not much to say about this upcoming episode. One of the CSIs will probably be bitten, but since this isn’t a supernatural show, a dog or something equally normal will likely bite them. The least the writers could do is make the entire episode some fever dream of Horatio’s, so that way there can be actual vampires and still function within the reality of the series. It’s a win-win!

Former Weeds actress Kate del Castillo has landed a role on CSI: Miami for the upcoming Season 10. This is the series that has already garnered two past Emmy award wins for Outstanding Stunt Coordination and Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-camera Series.

New Loaded Bad Revealed in CSI: Miami

With Kate also comes the reappearance of a scary gang. Remember the one? It all unfolds in episode five, tentatively called “Killer Regrets.” That has a certain ring, does it not? The gang in question is the Mala Noche gang. Dun dun dun. For you non-Spanish speakers, that roughly translates to “Bad Night”. When they do a Mexican sheriff will travel to Miami to ask Horatio Caine (David Caruso) for much needed assistance. Kate shared her casting news through Twitter.

Buenos días! Que tengan una semana llena de risas y emociones fuertes! Llegando al set de CSI Miami! Los quiero mucho! Gracias por tanto cariño!

Kate basically says: Good morning! It is going to be a week full of laughter and strong emotion. I’m arriving on the set of CSI: Miami! Love you lots. Thanks for all the love.

Kate will play Sheriff Anita Torres. Will you be watching?

There’s going to be a new big bad for Horatio Caine to tangle with in the upcoming tenth season of CSI: Miami. TV Guide reports that Carlos Bernard, who played Tony Almeida in 24, will take on the job as the season’s villain. “We’re going to slowly position Horatio in opposition to a very subtle, but powerful, political patriarch,” said co-executive producer Barry O’Brien. So who exactly is this man who will inevitably shape the season? Well he doesn’t have a name yet, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have some information on the character Horatio will go up against. “He’s kind of a Donald Trump meets the Kennedy family. …There will be a very high-octane relationship between the two. A hero is as heroic as his opposition is deadly, so we’re really going to go there with this character.”

Battlestar Galactica Invades CSI Miami

What makes this guy so bad? As it turns out, his son is a crazy serial killer. Bernard’s character will use his considerable political pull to cover up his son’s shenanigans. “We’re going to discover that over the course of the season that they may be pulling a lot more strings politically than meets the eye,” O’Brien says.”That will be a driving theme through season 10 — that Horatio may not completely understand the face of evil that is facing him. … Horatio’s fight for justice might just get compromised.”

I make no effort to hide my dislike for the CSI franchise, but even I have to admit this seems like a fantastic baddy for the season.

There is always something going down on the set of CSI Miami, and this time around the happenings have got a Battlestar Galactica sort of flavor. That’s right, we’ve got casting news!

When last we chimed in on the subject, the show was going Bold and Beautiful. Before that, there was a visit from the star of scary sci fi flick, Species. Now, it is actor Jamie Bamber’s turn to shine.

The new guest-star for CSI: Miami was revealed in a TVGuide.com exclusive. He’ll play the character of Robbie, a freelance storm-chaser a la Twister who will be interviewed by Sgt. Tripp (Rex Linn) when part of his team’s equipment is directly involved in a murder. As if the storms aren’t deadly enough!

Bamber appeared in the pilot episode of 17th Precinct, which incidentally came from Battlestar Galactica mastermind Ronald D. Moore. Bamber is also attached to Law & Order: UK. I didn’t even know there was a Law & Order: UK. Maybe Netflix will pick it up for us Westerners!

CSI: Miami just finished up its ninth season on CBS in May. The last episode was called “May Day”. It will return September 25th and air Sundays at 10pm. Actress Alana De La Garza will return for the new season ten.

When you need a little change in your life, the best thing to do is hire The Bold and the Beautiful’s Brandon Beemer, which is exactly what CSI: Miami has done. The funny thing is, CSI: Miami never really changes in a big way, and that’s what everyone loves about it. The soap opera actor will guest star in the second episode of CSI: Miami Season 10 as a gigolo named Derek Vaughn. Sounds fun right? Well, not always. In Mr. Vaughn’s case, he’s so good at his job that it’s proven to be hazardous to his health. So hazardous that you might say it kills him. As in dead. Now I’m in no way supporting murder, but if you have to die why not go out having copious amounts of sex? I’m wondering how he ends up dying. Maybe it’s from autoerotic asphyxiation? No, that’s too peaceful and not CSI’s style. I expect it to be bloody or gtfo.

Brandon Beemer is currently dating Nadia Bjorlin, a singer and actress currently in the soap opera Days of Our Lives. Beemer also appeared on Days of Our Lives for a year and a half playing Shawn. Clearly, these two were made for each other.

Last week it was announced Alana De La Garza would be returning for the tenth season premiere, reprising her role as Horatio’s wife. The comeback isn’t permanent and it sounds like she’s be appearing as a dream or hallucination after Horatio was shot in last season’s cliffhanger.

Here’s some shocking casting news for you. Alana De La Garza is returning to the CBS crime drama, CSI: Miami, and she’ll be back as Horatio’s wife.

Yeah, I can hear it now. You’re double-checking your memory to see if Mrs. H. really did die way back in Season 4. The answer is yes, but the magic of TV never lets a trivial thing like death get in the way of a shocking season premiere.

According to TVLine, Marisol’s return is linked to Horatio being shot in last season’s cliffhanger finale. Co-executive producer Barry O’Brien says, “It is a very, very personal encounter that gives him inspiration and insight into his predicament and ultimately how that predicament is resolved.”

It’s also an experience that will possibly change Horatio in some subtle (or not so subtle way) since O’Brien reveals that the encounter with his murdered wife will allow Horatio to “deal with and perhaps process that intimate and devastating loss in his life.”

Look for De La Garza to make a return that most fans probably never expected when CSI: Miami starts Season 10 on Sunday, September 25th.

Somebody’s agent is hard at work. Earlier this week we announced the great news that actress Natasha Henstridge (Species) had landed a role in the CW’s Vampire Diaries spin-off about teen witches, called The Secret Circle. Now TV Guide has the skinny on another casting role in her favor.

Henstridge will guest star on CSI: Miami. This happens for season nine, which began last October and runs until May. Her character is “Renee Locklear, an undercover agent who is about to cause a stir in more ways than one.”

“We meet her in the course of searching for this missing fugitive and she [initially] appears as another possible witness, maybe a possible suspect,” says co-executive producer Barry O’ Brien. “We bring her in for an interrogation and she reveals that she’s actually an undercover agent for the Secret Service.”

Horatio is expected to enjoy the character’s presence. “We had the idea that there might be [some sparks between them], and as we watched the scenes, there, in fact, was a lot of chemistry,” says O’Brien. “It’s a relationship we’d like to pursue. She’s beautiful and she looks great with David. It’s a pretty exciting relationship for us.”

“Henstridge will definitely be back in the Season 10 premiere, and hopefully, say the producers, throughout the next season as a recurring character.” In fact, the work will not conflict with her pilot The Secret Circle. “She booked a CW pilot, which is CBS family, so it’s a doable scenario,” says O’Brien. Score!

Cassi Thomson is the young Australian-born, American actress you see on Big Love as Cara Lynn Walker, JJ’s daughter, on Sunday nights. Now, TV Line is reporting the exclusive on “her first post-HBO gig.”

Thomson is coming to CSI: Miami. Her character, Kaylee, is forced to ride around inside a car with a killer after he steals a vehicle with her inside. Thomson’s episode is the second-to-last scheduled for “CBS hit’s ninth season.” Big Love‘s “penultimate” episode will air this Sunday night.

Miami has been in the news quite a lot. Actress Elizabeth Berkley will reprise her role as Horatio’s unstable ex. Leven Ramblin is coming to the set.

Also buzzing around the interwebs are on set Twitter pics fans are sure to enjoy. Season nine’s episode fourteen was titled “Stoned Cold”. You can get the recap or watch entire episodes over at the official series website.

Fans of Big Love can get the latest news for season five of that show over at their official website. Episode fifty-two was titled “Exorcism”. You can read Margene’s Blog by following this link. The Golden Globe nominated HBO series is, of course, about a Mormon man juggling three wives and elected government service.

Brace yourself Horatio fans, because we’ve got the latest CSI: Miami news, just for you.

Elizabeth Berkley first hit my radar on Saved by the Bell, of course. She’s gone on to appear on NYPD Blue, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and, yes, Showgirls. On CSI: Miami she’s known as Julia Winston, a bipolar ex-girlfriend of Horatio Caine’s. We met her ’round about season’s six and seven.

Now, thanks to Berkley’s personal Twitter account, we know she’s making a return.

“In my dressing room at CSI MIAMI xo ” she wrote. There was even a photo kindly attached for her fans! Click to see it. What a smile!

We heard Leven Ramblin was also headed to the set.

Miami is in season nine currently, with a season finale scheduled for the month of May. You can visit the official series website to catch any recent episodes you may have missed. There you can encounter extras, shop for CSI Miami t-shirts, read the insider blog, and check out classic photos of the cast in their earlier days.

Also in the CSI family, the original, Las Vegas series, is making news. Spicy recurring actors Bill Irwin and Melinda Clarke are coming to new future episodes and series regular Marg Helgenberger is returning next season, but possibly only part-time.

Now, Movieline is saying that a new occupation is being added to Rambin’s resume – the role of trace evidence technician at the crime lab on CSI: Miami. The new spunky and sexy character, Molly Sloan, will make her first appearance on this season’s 14th episode, transferring in from Tampa, and she’ll make quite a first impression on Ryan Wolfe (Jonathan Togo). Currently, the part is described as a “potentially recurring role.”

Rambin was last seen on ABC’s Scoundrels… if you were quick enough to catch any of the eight episodes that aired before the series was canceled. Official word of the cancellation came via Twitter on October 24th.

There have been some rumors that Rambin might return to her All My Children roots but that might now depend on how ‘potentially recurring’ the CSI: Miami role is.

CSI: Miami is currently in its ninth season and airs on Sundays at 10/9c on CBS.

Why is it when shows and movies want to really get under your skin, they choose a child singing a nursery rhyme? What is it about the odd juxtaposition of young innocence with adult cruelty that makes it so spooky? That’s how last night’s season finale of CSI: Miami opened:  a little girl singing to her two dolls, her mother washing dishes at the sink. As with all crime shows, a scene as tranquil as this is bound to come undone. It did, of course, with a sniper’s rifle putting a hole in mom’s forehead.

The scenes of the CSIs at the station intermingled with the domestic scenes. They all received letters without a postmark or return address. That could only mean one thing–someone put those letters in the police station by hand. When all the envelopes were open, the team finds plastic transparencies. The CSIs fit the puzzle together, complete with an address. Too late. The mother is already dead.

At the crime scene, Calleigh processes the evidence inside the house, all the while struggling with the fact that, had they opened the envelopes earlier, they might have prevented this murder. Walter and Jesse, meanwhile, are outside, the camera showing us the scenes through the rifle’s crosshairs. Except the rife is operated by a computer equipped with Wifi. The shooter, as Jesse says, “can be literally anywhere right now.” The only anomaly are a stack of checks in the dead woman’s purse. They are all from Dade University and, according to the grieving widower, made out in his wife’s maiden name.

Amid this sad case, good news. Eric talks with Horatio. “I realize this is where I want to be,” Eric says. “I’m back full time.” Horatio is happy to welcome back his old friend and promptly assigns him the task of determining why the dead woman was earning checks from the university. Turns out, Mrs. Potter was part of a graduate research project. A young grad student, Melissa Walls, talks with Eric and Horatio. Yes, she knew Mrs. Potter, and yes, she was a part of my psychological research project into an updated Milgram’s investigation. Melissa, all perky and smug, is happy since she’s gotten a new position at a new, better university.

The CSI team has no luck finding clues on the rifle or the website used to activate the trigger. The widower, Mr. Potter, arrives and delivers a letter addressed to the CSI team that had been left in his mailbox. In a neat, technological twist, the outside of the envelope has an augmented reality tag. When put in front of a computer’s camera, it transforms into a 3D image. Naturally, it’s the scene of the next crime. Ryan bolts from the station and, arriving at the scene, is met by Eric. In a very cool bit of camera work, the two race to the faculty pool at Dade University. They vault a fence (in unison!), and Eric dives in, yanking out the drowned victim, Neal Brusatti. Not coincidentally, he worked in the university’s psych department, too. And he was on the graduate committee for Melissa Wells. After some spectacular verbal jawing between Horatio and his suspect, she taunts him to find her. Lady! Don’t tempt Horatio Caine like that. He always wins. Always.

Using fibers from under Brusatti’s nails, Horatio determines that the mechanized pool cover prevented Brusatti from getting out. That very same pool cover provides the team with their next clue: a fleur de lis in flames. Horatio confronts two other men from the department, Bob Starling and Stephen Madsen. He offers them police protection. Starling points out that he’s just an adjunct professor. Surely the killer won’t come after me. Madsen, on the other hand, takes the police up on their offer, and Natalia finds herself in Madsen’s apartment. Walter is back at the station, paging through scores of different types of fleur de lie shapes. He finds one that matches a particular type cologne, the very cologne that Madsen doused himself with in the bathroom. He bursts into flame.

Horatio, Eric, and Natalia look for their next clue. She finds a quote on a sticker of the cologne bottle. It matches a line from a paper Starling wrote. As Tripp and Eric bring him to the station, Starling frets that he’s next. Upon being asked if he recognizes the quote, Starling says he wrote it. What follows was the funniest line of the night, delivered, with typical no nonsense panache, by Tripp. (Note to the writers: more Tripp next season, please.)

Starling: Yes, I wrote it. Perhaps you’ve read it?
Tripp: I couldn’t put it down.

Interestingly, Melissa saunters up to the station. When asked where she was at the time of Brusatti’s drowning, she produces not only a list of the folks at her pilates class, she also delivers an affidavit by her pilates instructor. She then delivers, with smirk on mouth, a lecture to Horatio (didn’t she learn?) about police procedures. She ends with a flourish:  even if you do hold me, it won’t stop any murders that have already been set in motion. “I’m just an impartial observer.” Horatio delivers a smirk of his own. “Not,” he says, “if somebody dies.” And Melissa’s cool facade fades just a bit. So good to see it, too.

The team is focused on Melissa being the killer. Since she had unrestricted access to Starling’s office the previous day, the CSIs take all his stuff back to the station to pour over it looking for clues. Calleigh makes a discovery–Starling was denied tenure. She then throws out a theory; what if our killer is the very man we’re protecting? Ryan confirms, via watermark, that the stamps on their original envelopes match the stamps in Starling’s office.

As they look around, fellows in the station start coughing. Horatio and Tripp visit Starling at the site of a lecture. Cut to the station and more people are coughing, including all our CSI heroes. Starling quotes Shakespeare and is hauled off to jail. Tripp hands Horatio an envelope and he opens it (really?!). Inside is a card on which is typed ”They All Fall Down.”

The last scene is Eric, getting off the elevator. Everyone around him is on the floor. Are they dead? Are they merely passed out? And why isn’t he affected? He rushes to Walter’s side, then finds Calleigh in the firing range. His words echoes in the empty station and will throughout the entire summer, “Somebody help!”

I don’t know about you, but I really dig stories like this when the killer/bad guy has planned to the Nth degree all the little stages of the great game. This episode was quite well done with an ending that’ll easily have me back next year, despite the day change.

Speaking of CSI: Miami’s move to Sunday night next fall–I’m irritated. I’ve been with CSI: Miami since their mini-pilot within an episode of CSI. For eight years, it’s been a Monday night staple. It was a great way to kick off the week. The show felt right on Mondays. At least from this vantage point, it won’t feel right (or fit?) on Sundays. While I’m not hoping Hawaii Five-O does poorly (thus opening the door for the return of Horatio Caine’s team to Mondays), I’ll certainly not mind having CSI: Miami and Castle not competing for my attention. Heck, with 24 and Lost bowing out, I’ll be down to only three hours of television I’ll be watching next fall, even those days when football pushes back the start time thirty minutes. But Mondays just won’t be the same.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed writing these recaps for season eight of CSI: Miami. It was an unexpected offer Damon made to me last September. I’m glad he made the offer, and I’m glad I took him up on it. Thank you. And thanks to Elena, BSCReview’s editor, for fixing up my words to make them sound better. I’ve enjoyed the discussions and meeting new people. It’s been a blast.

What did you think of last night’s episode? And what are your thoughts on the timeslot move?

Last night in Houston, it did something it almost never does during CSI: Miami. It rained. Big time. As such, the weather man cut in a couple of times, including the pre-credit sequence. So when I saw Calleigh, behind the wheel of the MDPD Hummer, following another car, I didn’t know who it was. Turned out to be Eric. It didn’t take long for me to realize that what I was seeing was the extended version from last’s week final, explosive scene. This would be the one where state’s attorney Rebecca Nevins is murdered by an exploding car.

We learn, for instance, how Calleigh was so johnny-on-the-spot last week, mere seconds after the blast. She and Eric had some words. She had words with him, accusing him of lying to her and the rest of the team. He countered, asserting that she didn’t know what she was talking about. But he insisted that he’d tell her everything. She stormed off and he turned to Nevins, waiting by her car. He paused, turned back to Calleigh, and thought about his next move. It saved his life.

The murder in last night’s episode is that of Nevins. Eric confesses to Horatio that he was to meet Nevins there. “I found something, Horatio, something big. It involves the stolen diamonds, the missing heroin worth $500,000, and more.” Eric also mentions he talked with Horatio’s old partner, Sully. Horatio has a chat with Sully at the retired cop’s boat dock. The older man is circumspect but zeroes in when Horatio mentions that he thinks it’s an inside job. With a blank face, Sully accepts Horatio’s suggestion to keep an ear out and let him know if something turns up.

Natalia and Walter collect the evidence while Jesse and Calleigh hunt for the detonator. Eric’s still there, and Natalia. The former mole herself outs Eric to his pals:  yes, he’s been wearing a wire. Walter goes all loud and angry while Calleigh merely gives him a steely-eyed glare. Eric’s going to need more than flowers to fix this situation. However, he gets an immediate pass since he helps Jesse find the serial number to the hydraulic suspension from the car that exploded. Oddly enough, the ’86 Cutlass was involved in a bank robbery a few years back. Even more strange is that it’s supposed to be in the MDPD’s impound lot.

Naturally, Horatio and Eric look into Detective Carmichael’s last case. It involved a lifer named Tino Garvez. The two CSIs interview Garvez on a prisoner bus. The convict cops to drowning Carmichael off Key West. Eric gets testy but Garvez just laughs. “Why you going on about a car when I just told you I eighty-sixed a cop? You guys are getting played.” Horatio takes this information to Rick Stetler, everyone’s favorite Internal Affairs cop. Stetler, as usual, wants to handle all the public dealings. Other than that, he instructs Horatio to pull all files with Carmichael’s name on them.

Walter and Ryan find a curious thing amid the debris of the bomb: sprockets. Not just any sprockets. Special sprockets used in golf carts. They yank in Drew Pollack, one-time bomber who did a ten-year stint for a restaurant bombing. Turns out state’s attorney Nevins was the prosecutor. When Ryan points out the obvious–that the bombing looks like revenge–Pollack lawyers up.

In the most somber scene of the night, Dr. Tom Loman, ME, examines Nevins’s corpse. He finds, intact (!), the GPS chip from the cell phone used to detonate the bomb. Eric does some magic and gets the chip to work. He and Calleigh trace the signal back to–wait for it–Ryan’s place. To be thorough, the entire team combs the place for evidence. Since it’s an internal matter, Stetler’s on site as well. Ryan shows up just in time for Eric to find some incriminating evidence. That’s all Stetler needs. He orders Ryan to be taken away. And, in case you missed it, Ryan’s weapon was not confiscated. Weird breach in protocol there, huh?

Ryan, Stetler, and Horatio chat back at the station. If we’re doing this by the book, Stetler says, then Ryan’s dirty, since his name’s the last in the chain of custody. Ryan’s taken away. Natalia, hating the sight, remembers something she read in a detective journal somewhere. There’s bacteria on our hands that’s 86% unique to each person. Like a living fingerprint. She takes a sample from the remaining diamonds. Now, she has to gather human samples from everyone in the station, starting with Ryan.

Following up on a hunch, Eric examines Pollack the Bomber’s older file. Turns out none other than Sully was the lead detective on the case. Horatio returns to the boat dock. This time, however, he brings uniformed help. Seeing it’s the end, Sully starts blabbing. “I screwed up, Horatio, I screwed up really bad. I dug myself such a hole even you can’t get me out. I didn’t kill Nevins.” He pulls a gun and, expecting the usual suicide route, I was a little shocked to see him actually pulling the trigger to kill Horatio. A uniform shot first. Sully’s down, but alive, having given up nothing.

Suspicion falls on Duty Officer Olansky, the man who worked the evidence lock-up. Horatio and Eric discover that in all the cases where the deceased Detective Carmichael signed out vehicles from the impound lot (which were never returned, by the way), Olansky’s name was the co-signer. That was his job back then as the impound lot officer. Horatio and Eric strong arm Olansky to name his source. In fact, Horatio specifically pointed out that Olansky is protecting “that man.” That proved to be a red herring.

But not as red as the file folder Eric exchanged with Stetler. We first see it in the open. The next time we see it, the folder is inside an evidence bag. Ryan’s seated at a table with Horatio, Eric, and Stetler. In a surprising turn of events, Stetler is the one who has been stealing these cars from the impound lot, blackmailing Olansky along the way. In the usual (and somewhat annoying) habit of bad guys who have been caught, Stetler starts to talk. The way he sees it, he’s stealing from thieves. I’ve given twenty years of my life to this job and for what? Two divorces and ulcers? This place chews you up. Big deal. The diamonds, according to Stetler, was to have been the final act.

So, we have a internal affairs cop who decided to go for some self-financed bonus money. Really? To be honest, Stetler seemed so holier than thou these past seasons that I honestly didn’t see it coming. In fact, it seems a tad out of character. Guess actor David Lee Smith had other things to do. I’ll miss him, as I always enjoyed his spars with Horatio. He had the right amount of smarm and hubris to go up against Horatio’s calm demeanor.

The penultimate episode of season eight loses two long-term characters who dropped in from time to time and Sully, who we’ve seen, off and on, throughout this year. Wonder who we might lose next week. Or next year.

What did you think of last night’s episode?

Last week’s CSI: Miami episode was a good heist caper. The week before that, it was CSI: Ghost Whisperer. Coming in to last’s night twenty-second episode, the title put me off my guard a bit. “Mommie Deadest” it was, and immediately images of Faye Dunaway entered my mind. I figured the episode would be harsh. I wasn’t expecting the kick in the gut I eventually received. In fact, both stories had elements of sadness to them.

The A-story was, of course, a murder. The episode opens with handheld camera footage of an anniversary party for Chuck and Laura Williams. Twenty years married, with two beaming children–Andrea and younger brother Cody–each with handheld cameras. Like Faye Dunaway’s Joan Crawford, as soon as the guests left and the camera stopped rolling, an entirely different Laura Williams emerged. No more the huggy-kissy wife, she’s cold to her husband and goes to clean up. Upon hearing a crash outside, she fumes that “those kids” have broken her exterior lamp again. She grabs a video camera with the sole purpose of capturing the vandals with hard, visual evidence. What the camera records, however, is her murder. Bludgeoned to death.

Dr. Tom Loman’s diagnosis is sober:  whoever killed Laura Williams was swinging wildly, fueled by rage, and very, very angry. Naturally, suspicions fall on the husband, Chuck, especially after Natalia, while reviewing some of the footage from the party, finds a scene with Chuck and an attractive woman being a bit too close. His response is that he found his wife’s dead body while taking out the trash. The two children both assert that they were upstairs in the house, they heard nothing, and knew nothing until their dad told them about their mom. Cody, the son, is an artist. He’s sitting by himself, drawing his heroic pictures. Forlorn, he comments that in his pictures, he can control everything and the bad guys always get theirs. Horatio extols his record and, always, promises to find the killer.

The B-story sub-plot is a continuation of Eric Delko’s investigation into who stole the stolen diamonds from last week’s episode. Upon encouragement from State Attorney Rebecca Nevins, he has subpoenaed the bank records of his former colleagues. One entry stands out: a deposit of $25,000 into Walter’s bank account. He’s sifting through more evidence when Calleigh breezes into the room, ready to go to work. Proof that they’ve remained a couple despite Eric’s sometimes absences this season.

At the station, Calleigh interviews Bridgette Clark, the woman who was seen in the video with Chuck Williams. “I like to flirt,” she says, because it’s fun, I’m pretty, and I work out. Most of the soccer moms she deals with in her job as a history teacher couldn’t find a treadmill with a map and a GPS device. She is the first one to suggest the cops look into what was happening at home. She suspected domestic abuse. Tech Dude Wes Ramsey uses his computer magic and finds an earlier recorded video under the current one. It was Thanksgiving, and Laura went all Joan Crawford on her daughter. Laura got so mad that Andrea swiped some food that she forced her daughter’s face into the dog’s bowl. Question #1: who’s filming this stuff and doing nothing about it?

Eric’s having second thoughts about spying on his friends. Rebecca assures him he’s just doing his job. Besides, she can’t have a dirty lab and the possibility that evidence could get tossed from court simply because a CSI is on the take. Eric gives up Walter’s name.

Walter and Ryan are at the crime scene. They determine that the Williams’ family sports car was parked close enough to the murder to acquire blood spatter. Horatio doesn’t like that Chuck tampered with the crime scene. When questioned about the previous year’s Thanksgiving “celebration,” Chuck resignedly says that Laura had one bad day. I travel a lot, he says. Well, Horatio retorts, someone was home with the kids.

Natalia and Horatio follow up with Andrea who is at her boyfriend’s (Logan) house. Andrea has a lighter. Whenever she gets agitated, she lights it and stares into the flame. Horatio finds a piece of glass in the carpet, the same glass found near the broken lamp and Logan’s shoes. He cops to being there but only because he had to sneak into the house to see Andrea on account of Laura hating his guts. He looks good for the murder, too, since the instrument used to kill Mommie Dearest was something metal. Perhaps the aluminum bat Logan the Baseball Player uses in his games. Sure enough, Ryan finds evidence of blood on the bat.

Eric’s investigation leads him to John “Sully” Sullivan, Horatio’s old partner from this season’s premiere. Eric confronts him–in a nice way–with evidence that not only were the diamonds stolen, but also the numbers regarding some confiscated heroin do not add up. As in there wasn’t as much entered into evidence as was confiscated. Sully denies any wrongdoing, mainly because there were five fellow officers with him. Eric calls Rebecca with this news and wants to meet. She rebuffs him, saying she’s interviewing someone. Interestingly, she’s outside somewhere when she says this. In another scene, Eric and Internal Affairs Officer Rick Stetler have some fun words. And it’s witnessed by Calleigh.

When Logan’s about to go down for the crime, Andrea suddenly bursts out, in the middle of the station, that she killed her mom. Horatio doesn’t buy it, especially when Andrea’s chain of events doesn’t match the evidence. Natalia (clearly a star in this episode) tries a different approach. She talks with Cody and looks at some of his drawings. That’s when the bombshell–or, rather, the kick to the guy–lands. The third person Cody draws is Bradley, his younger brother. But you don’t have a younger brother, Natalia says. And viewers across America put two and two together. Cody merely confirms it: “Not anymore.”

Bradley, five years old at the time of his accidental death, died from ingestion of lighter fluid. I don’t think I was the only one watching who immediately jumped to the conclusion that Laura became such a hateful mother only after her youngest was killed by her daughter. Well, while that was wrong, the truth is worse. Laura blamed Bradley for burning the carpet. His punishment was to drink (yes, drink!) lighter fluid. Angry mother then wondered why her son didn’t respond. (I have to admit that this was when the empty hole in my stomach opened wider and deeper.) What’s got Andrea so screwed up is that it was she who burned the carpet. She did it, but Bradley was punished for it.

Horatio, disgusted as we all are, brings in the dad again. Chuck confesses that Laura got very angry with the kids. Laura blackmailed him into saying nothing about Bradley’s true death or else the state would take away the children. That’s motive, according to Horatio. Chuck falters and says that he wishes he were that kind of man, but he isn’t. That, states Horatio, leaves the kids.

From there, unfortunately, the trail becomes very straight. Natalia processes the aluminum bats and find red ink under the grip, the same ink Cody uses in his drawings. With Natalia, Horatio, and Chuck present, Cody reveals the truth: he killed his mother. And, he says, as he looked down on his lifeless body, he felt relief for the first time in a long time.

That huge downer of an ending would have been bad enough. Actually, for greater dramatic power, it should have been. But there was an epilogue ending. Eric, file in hand, walks to meet Rebecca outside near the water. He looks to her and she looks defeated, lifting her hands in a gesture of surrender. He stops, perhaps wondering if he should walk over and show her what he’s found. At that point, a gust of wind blows one of the pieces of paper from the file onto the ground. He bends to pick it up…and Rebecca’s car explodes. Dazed and confused, Eric looks up to see the burning car. And he also sees Calleigh. Fade to black.

I understand the need to set in motion events that will lead to our season finale. I have to say, however, that melding these two stories together seems contradictory. The emotional content of the main story easily could have shaped an entire episode, the end result being a more profound and powerful episode. Throwing an admittedly interesting sub-plot took away from some of the power.

The ending bothered me. That’s not to say I didn’t like both. I did. I just didn’t like them both together. I felt the raw emotion of the child confessing and the living family in a group hug. That’s a good ending. But then to tag on the explosion–another good, but different feeling ending–pulled me right out of the other emotional context.

Now, I’m certainly looking forward to next week’s episode where we see, in the promos, Ryan being led away in handcuffs. But Calleigh’s our wild card here. She was at Eric’s apartment. Even though she didn’t see the files on his desk during her one scene, who’s to say she didn’t already see them earlier. And she witnessed Eric’s conversation with IA Rick Stetler. And she’s the first on the scene at the end. Calleigh’s got a story to tell. I’m hoping it’s a good one.

What did you think of last night’s episode?

I don’t know about you, but I enjoy a good heist story. In every good heist movie, the characters case the joint, outline all the obstacles they have to overcome, how touch it’ll be, and then deliver the execution. The actual heist is usually a thing of beauty, full of moments that just make you shake your head. Frankly, it’s what makes heist films so popular.

The flip side to this kind of set up is what we got in last night’s CSI: Miami episode. In “Meltdown,” the opening segment was the heist itself, at the time of the crime. The rest of the twenty-second episode of the eighth season was discovering how the perps got away.

Now, the robbery itself was pretty cool, and this was one of my favorite opening segments this season. A young man–Ben Rooney–is in the jewelry store looking to buy a ring for his sweetheart. Outside, a man in a white shirt drops something into a flower pot. A man in a straw hat and sunglasses walks into the store. Soon, a second man, dressed similarly, also walks into the store. The white-shirted man pulls his pick-up truck into the intersection and then acts like he has stalled. Back inside, the two men open up, using vocoders to alter their voices. Ben, not really trying to be a hero, ends up hitting one of the robbers. Seconds later, he is shot through the middle. His last words: “I loved her.”

Meanwhile, the robbers jump on motorcycles and speed off. The arriving police cannot chase them because of the “stalled” truck. The alert goes out and, naturally, the cyclists fly past Horatio and his Hummer. The chase is on, and he follows them across a long bridge. A large green trucks passes the other way…and the cyclists vanish. According to Horatio, “These guys…are good.”

Jesse and Calleigh process the crime scene. Calleigh catches a glimpse of someone, and the camera lingers long enough for long-time watchers to know it’s Jake Berkeley, federal agent and Calleigh’s former lover. He ducks into the crowd, and Jesse looks down and finds something that wasn’t there before–the VIN number for the “stalled” truck.

Inside, Natalia’s back on stage and, thankfully, the writers addressed her hearing issue from a few weeks back. Something is interfering with her hearing aid. She follows the sound and discovers the thing the man in the white shirt dropped in the flower pot. Not knowing what it is, she takes it back to the lab. With Tripp on hand, the “doohickey” (Tripp’s word) is revealed to be a signal jammer. The device is the reason there isn’t any surveillance footage from the crime scene.

However, the VIN number gave up an address, and Calleigh and Tripp make their way there. They find abandoned the green truck Horatio saw. On the ground, diamonds glitter in the sunlight. As Tripp ponders aloud why the robbers would discard the diamonds after they took the time to steal them, shots are fired from a nearby structure. The duo race inside, only to see the man in the white shirt being shot by none other than Jake.

Back at the station, Jake is interrogated by Calleigh and Horatio. Jake gives up that his new cover assignment is to infiltrate this gang of thieves. He was just the driver, but Mr. White Shirt (Joe Tepper) sniffed out that Jake was a cop. Jake thinks the trail’s gone cold. Horatio thinks not: “We still have the diamonds.”

Or, rather, he thought they did. When Ryan and Wolfe return to the evidence cage, the box with the evidence has been opened. Envelope #5, the one with the stolen diamonds, is missing. Ryan was the last guy in the chain of evidence, so Walter starts to think Ryan took the diamonds. When the station’s security cameras are checked, it turns out that the signal jammer in evidence was reactivated, blanking out the CCTV feeds. According to the records, Walter was the last guy to touch the jammer. Internal Affairs officer Rick Stetler takes an interest in the problem, and Horatio defends his team. If there was a plot thread that was left unresolved, it would be this one. Stetler makes a scene and then disappears for the rest of the show. Would have thought the writers could make more of this line.

In sifting through the evidence collected at the scene, Ryan and Natalia find a SD card full of photos the robbers used to case the jewelry store. The robbers were so good that they took pictures of the display case keys and duplicated them. The vantage point from which the photos were taken was across the street…in Ben Rooney’s real estate office. The team bring in Kayla Pennington, Rooney’s fiancee, for questioning. She only knew him for three weeks, but “it was love.”

The scene where Ryan worked in the lab, extracting traces of boric acid, had some of the best music of the season. It was a funky tune with a driving beat and the Hammond B3 taking the melody. It was just out-of-the-ordinary enough that it was instantly noticeable. Need more of that. Turns out that boric acid is used to melt gold. Horatio enlists the “technical expertise” of one Rick Spano, a convict held in county lock-up but who knows the ins and outs of jewelry fencing. He offers up that gold is the real prize. Upon Spano’s recommendation, Horatio widens his search, looking for similar crimes. Twenty-three hits come back. Using composite images from witnesses, Horatio and Jesse realize that not only are the robbers using facial prosthetics to hide their identities, the robbers are, in fact, women.

Back in the lab, Natalia encounters another instance of her hearing aid being disrupted. Strangely, it happened just as Eric walked in the door. Being the former FBI mole in the Miami-Dade crime lab, Natalia knows something about being wired. She calls Eric on it, and he reveals that he’s working with the state attorney general’s office to get these criminals. Moreover, the attorney general thinks there’s another mole in the crime lab. According to Eric, he’s just trying to help his friends. Natalia isn’t so sure.

Horatio calls Kayla back in, and, despite there being a local blank-out here in Houston (affiliate ran a news promo right during the confession), Kayla admits to the cardinal sin among robbers–never fall for a mark. She did with Ben. And she gives up her partner, Whitney Dern. In flashback, we see that when Ben hit one of the robbers, he recognized Kayla. Whitney pulled the trigger. But she doesn’t get away. Horatio waylays a large tractor trailer full of motorcycles. Upon visual inspection, all seems on the up-and-up. Horatio has an idea and scraps some of the black paint off one of the mufflers. Using a gold pen, he realizes that the motorcycles–or, at least, large chunks of them–are made of gold. And that’s that.

The closing scene is one we don’t get very often in CSI: Miami: the entire team, in the station locker room, talking about going out for a drink at a local watering hole. Everyone save Horatio is there, and Natalia initiates the gathering. When the “new guy” Eric walks up and offers to buy the first round, Natalia begs off. And these detectives don’t think that’s weird. Anyway, Eric and Natalia exchange looks, and we fade to black.

This was a good, middle-of-the-road episode bolstered by the pretty nifty opening sequence. The sheer astonishment by Horatio at having lost the bikers was priceless, since Horatio is usually in control. I liked how the missing diamonds are still missing, setting up future story lines that, likely, will play into the season finale and its cliffhanger. And working Natalia’s hearing aid into the story was very good for a show not known for ongoing continuity. Enjoyed the episode.

Did you?

I’ll admit that when I saw the previews for last night’s CSI: Miami episode, I considered it a gimmick. In those scenes, we saw Calleigh apparently talking to a ghost. I started worrying that we’d get CSI: Ghost Whisperer. What emerged, however, was something different.

“Backfire” opened with a house fire. Calleigh and Ryan are on the scene (why?), and they see a young man trapped inside. Calleigh charged in with Ryan and an MDPD “Red Shirt” officer (Montoya) in tow. They found the boy, and Ryan carried him out. Unfortunately, Calleigh and Montoya got trapped. Horatio helped Calleigh and Montoya out to safety. Their efforts were in vain. The young man died on the gurney. And his ghost appeared right next to his dead body. The young man (Patrick Dawson) immediately protested Ryan’s surmise that he, Patrick, started the fire since his hands had third-degree burns on them. But, like most ghosts, no one can hear him.

Patrick’s grandfather, Henry, was told about the tragedy. Patrick had lived with Henry since age ten. They were almost finished renovating the house. Sure, Patrick had issues, but he would not have started this fire.

Naturally, the autopsy revealed the obvious: Patrick died of asphyxiation. It also revealed the presence of a chemical on his hands. Ryan, convinced of the boy’s guilt, processed the chemical in the lab. Calleigh, fresh off her stint in the ambulance, returned to work. Ryan gave her the cold shoulder didn’t speak to her. But he discovered the chemical was turpentine. Horatio interviewed the contractor and questioned him about the lack of insulation, the barely-above-the-minimum safety codes in place at the house, and why the sprinkler system didn’t deploy. Sure, it was technically legal, but Horatio arrested the contractor for negligence.

Calleigh continued her own individual investigation and noticed a waxy substance on the walls, away from the main source of the fire. Curious, she kept recording her thoughts in her digital recorder until Patrick’s ghost started talking to her. Interestingly, she didn’t seem fazed by talking to a ghost until she gets in her police Hummer. Minor nit here: Patrick’s supposed to be a ghost. Thus, his hand shouldn’t have made a sound when it touched the passenger side door. But, hey, this is a cop show, not a ghost show.

Frank and Horatio learn about a dispute Grandfather Henry and his neighbor was having. She works nights, and the contractor wakes her up every morning. She followed the proper channels but to no avail. So, she set fire to his lawn, you know, to send Henry a message. (And why wasn’t she arrested for that?) Frank returned to the crime scene with Walter and Jesse, and they found the empty roll of wax paper. When confronted with this piece of evidence, Henry played the childhood card: he and Patrick made boats with the paper. Frank continued the questioning and determined that Patrick would have inherited $200,000 upon Henry’s death. Further proof, think the team, of Patrick’s culpability.

On the way to the hospital, Jesse walked with Natalia and Calleigh. He asserted that Henry “might” agree that Patrick was the culprit. Calleigh stated that “might wasn’t good enough.” At the hospital, Eric Delko showed up. For as good a friends (and more) as she and Eric are, Calleigh was puzzled as to why Eric doesn’t respond to her. That’s when we saw…Calleigh in the hospital bed. Yes, she’s also a ghost, or a spirit of some sort. Young Patrick is there with her. Like any viewer of The Sixth Sense, we now get to see the major scenes from the episode as they really happened: without Calleigh present. Good as I can be about predicting things, I didn’t see this one coming. Probably should have. I liked it.

Horatio, meanwhile, sent Jesse and Walter back to the crime scene. He wasn’t convinced Patrick’s the bad guy. He wanted more evidence. Jesse and Walter got him some: a dead body. The plumber, Ralph Zimmerman, died of electrocution. Ryan and Jesse sought out how a man could die of electrocution on a linoleum floor. The smoking gun, as it were, was a souvenir stretched penny (the kind you make at amusement parks) stuck into the fuse box. Who could have done this? Of course, the neighbor, Mrs. Hollister. She confesses to the crime. But they don’t believe her. Or do they? I couldn’t tell, frankly.

Ryan still was fixated on why the sprinkler system didn’t activate. He went to check on something, and Calleigh’s spirit was also there. He activated the sprinkler and got himself doused. Dejected, he left, but Calleigh saw something he didn’t see. She was starting to tell Patrick when, in real life, she had a medical emergency. The resulting treatment brought her back to this world. And, lo and behold, she held the key to the entire mystery.

With handwritten data only Horatio could understand, he had Jesse dig a hole in the yard of the crime scene. There, they found the water pipes with a towel wrapped around the pipes. Inside the towel was the remnants of frozen carbon dioxide. Whoever did this made it impossible for the sprinklers to activate during the fire, but the evidence would melt later on. The only problem was the tobacco juice on the towel. It implicated Henry. He torched the house for the insurance money. Off he went.

In a very touching scene, Calleigh and Eric stood in the morgue, Patrick’s body laying on the slab. She stroked his face and murmured “rest in peace.” The episode ended with Horatio, watching Henry leave the station, the trauma of losing a young man clearly evident on his face.

I liked that this episode tried to do something different. I am all about exploring the gray areas in our lives where the spirit world and the human world collide or coexist. There were some issues with how the ghost stuff was handled, but, as I said, it’s a cop show. “Backfire” was clearly a better episode than last week’s “Spring Breakdown,” and the emotions of the characters–especially Emily Proctor’s Calleigh–were on their sleeves. It’s a nice reminder that even televised police procedurals rest on their characters and not always on the plot.

What did you think?

I have to admit I was a little worried going into last night’s CSI: Miami episode, “Spring Breakdown,” the nineteenth of the season. The last new episode, “Dishonor,” was one of the best of the season to date, showcasing a great mystery in addition to some truly emotional scenes at the end with Horatio and his son, Kyle. What could follow that kind of episode?

Well, your typical CSI: Miami story line. It’s spring break; it’s Florida; it’s young people in swimwear, drinking too much, and partying. The only difference in these opening shots was the gender of the folks being ogled at on stage. Buff guys in wet tank tops. Yes, this one was for the ladies. There was even one dork (buff, but still a dork) who called himself “the program” and then asked the gathered group “Who wants to get with the program?” To think girls fall for this stuff. Buy, hey, we are talking drunk people. And we see what drunk young people do on spring break: hook up and excuse themselves from the main party.

Which makes the clean-up all the more quiet. In a nice set-up shot, we got to see a woman working in a laundry room (the industrial kind hired out by many Miami hotels), a guy cleaning up trash outside the hotel, and another guy cleaning up debris along the beach. Almost at the same time, they discover a body–three different bodies. The “beach boy,” as Wolf dubbed him, was buried up to his head. The rising tide drowned him. The laundry lady found the body of a girl floating in with the towels and sheets. And the dude picking up trash around the pool area found a body impaled on a sculpture.

Like old Justice League comics, our intrepid team splits up and takes their respective cases. Jesse and Wolf get the “beach boy,” while Horatio and Walter investigate the impaled dude. Calleigh gets Frank get the drowned girl in the laundry. Frank finally makes an appearance before the credits. To be honest, he was in most of the episode, a welcome change to recent episodes where he has been conspicuously absent. These two both seemed subdued at the senseless death of the female victim, Calleigh especially so. Frank reins in the sarcasm for her benefit. It was a nice touch.

Wolf just thinks the beach boy was the victim of a drunk prank–his friends buried him and then left. The ME, Tom Loman, has to get Wolf to wait his turn since he’s now got three dead bodies on the tables. Loman finds an interesting feature on the impaled victim: burn marks around the hole in the man’s torso. Oddly, the chemical components seem to indicate he was hit by a flare gun. The tempered glass found in the corpse indicate he fell out of a hotel window. Horatio and Walter interview the guy whose sliding glass door is broken. His story–really drunk guy was getting out of hand, and I shot off the flare gun to get him to leave. Yeah, I broke the window, but I didn’t kill anybody.

Horatio and Walter put the guy’s story to the test. Horatio fires at a dummy and allows it to fall, but it doesn’t land anywhere near the site of impalement. So, Horatio goes to the roof and does it again. No dice. The dummy is still a few feet short of the sculpture. Then, Horatio scans the scene and makes a huge leap of logic–the victim was thrown from the roof at the exact moment the flare gun was fired. The flare hit the falling body and pushed it the extra few feet needed to impale the man on the sculpture. Yeah, whatever. Sure, it can happen, and it was a mildly interesting touch, but really…that’s a bit of a stretch.

One of the things that did work well last night was the camera work. More than once, the screen was split into threes, and we got to see each team investigating their own case. The focus shifted from Jesse/Wolf at the beach (finding no clues at all) to Calleigh and Tom in the morgue. Tom tells Calleigh about the impression on the female victim’s head. In a move we all saw coming, our heroes eventually arrive at the same spot, their different investigations leading them all to a similar conclusion: the three victims knew each other. The laptop in the female victim’s room (she’s finally identified as Alexis) merely gives them the hard proof.

What the CSIs discover on the laptop all but sickens them. In the lab, they watch a video from a year ago. In the video, Brad Doer (impaled victim) is in bed with a heavyset, blonde girl. Alexis and the other guy, Paul (beach boy), burst in on Brad and the blonde girl. They proceed to humiliate her, then later post the video on the web. These cops see stone-cold killers on a regular basis, but the sheer lack of humanity the trio show to the blonde girl takes their breath away.

They still have a clue; Hillary was one of two girls Brad took to the roof. You know what he was hoping for. What he got was a smack on the face by Hillary. He hit her back. That’s why she sports a shiner when interrogated. She tells Horatio that she left but another blonde girl stayed. That seemed to coincide with testimony from a bouncer who told Calleigh that a blonde girl helped Alexis up to her room, the very room with a huge blood stain on the floor. Wolf, meanwhile, finds a blonde hair on the clothes of Paul. It’s beginning to look like, perhaps, one blonde person committed all three crimes. But not just any blonde. They are looking for one who has recently dyed her hair and has lost weight, since there’s trace of a diet pill in her blood.

It’s Michael, the British tech guy who works in the lab, who offers the coup de grace. He has a program that can take an image and modify it to show the image of the person with less body weight. When he does so, Frank recognizes Courtney, one of the girls at the bar he and Calleigh already interviewed. She denied knowing the victims both to Frank and Horatio. With this new evidence and a new scrutiny of the video, the team learns that Courtney used to be named Jill. And she used to be heavier.

Horatio confronts her with the facts and the photos. Like all good killers in CSI: Miami, she immediately starts monologuing and explains her actions. “They ruined my life, even though I pressed charges, and they got away scot free.” She smiles. “But you should have seen the look on their faces when they realized it was me.” Again, the camera work was well done, with all three reveal shots culminating into Jill/Courtney’s words: “I was the fat girl in the video.” Horatio just stands there and asks her one question:

Horatio: Is spending the rest of your life in prison going to be worth it?
Jill/Courtney: It is.

And out she walks of the station, head held high, slight smirk on her face. That is, until she gets behind bars. Then, her smile falters and she puts her head in her hands. When she looks up again, she looks like the heavy, blonde girl Jill. Nice touch there at the end.

I think you can see that my favorite aspect of last night’s episode was the camera work. There wasn’t anything terribly wrong with “Spring Breakdown,” but there wasn’t much memorable, either. It was great to see Frank for an entire episode, but Eva La Rue was completely absent. Heck, even Jesse was low-key on this one, which was, on the whole, a medium, average CSI: Miami episode.

What did you think of the show?

Kyle Harmon, Horatio’s son, and Horatio open the episode at lunch. Kyle’s in his green fatigues and gets looks from the cute waitress. It’s a nice, happy moment, a father and son, two adult men, sharing time together. That’s when Kyle let’s Horatio know he’s re-upped for a stint in eastern Afghanistan as part of the mountain division. Horatio is troubled, as any parent would be, when confronted with the news. His feelings are put on hold, however, when Kyle gets a call from an Army friend–no one has seen fellow soldier Brian. Horatio agrees to drive Kyle to Brian’s auto garage. Once there, Kyle calls out for Brian. What he finds is a fire. There is a person in the middle of the fire, burning under some tires.

Believing it to be Brian, he calls for Horatio and tries to put out the fire himself, first with his jacket then with a hose. Horatio steps into the fray but soon realizes it’s too late. He pulls Kyle back, cradling his son’s head in his arms, the anguish on the young man’s face palpable, as are his cries of disbelief. It was an incredible scene, a tone that was disturbed by the opening song. For once, I didn’t want The Who blaring out. I wanted only silence for the fallen. As good as this person moment was, it wasn’t the best of the episode.

Natalia finally returns to the show. She and the ME, Dr. Tom Loman, work over the crime scene. Natalia finds a Vietnam-era army flashlight while Loman discovers evidence of an accelerant. Outside, Frank gets Kyle to name his friend, Brian Nassir. Nassir is an American Muslim and, as such, is looked at suspiciously by an old guy living next door. This would be the same old guy Kyle yells at and berates. He has to be forcibly restrained. Horatio apologizes for Kyle but then confronts the ex-G.I. Glen Harper with his old flashlight. Harper says he was doing recon on Brian’s auto garage, thinking the young men are up to no good. By the end of the episode, I realized that this tangent were merely that: a tangent that went nowhere. In a template where a character, once introduced, often returns, Harper stayed off stage the rest of the episode. The only thing he was there for was to identify Brian’s ethnicity. Effective, to a degree, but Kyle’s utterance of Brian’s last name would also have sufficed.

Dr. Loman lets Horatio and Kyle in on some good news: the dead man isn’t Brian; it’s Rahim Farooq. In an episode filled with grief, here we get our only funny moment. When Kyle questions Dr. Loman, “Are you sure it isn’t Brian?” Dr. Loman merely cocks his head, a gesture that is at once funny and condescending.

Jesse and Calleigh interview Salumeh Farooq, Rahim’s widow. Salumeh is played by Necar Zadegan, most recently seen on the current season of 24. No, she doesn’t recognize the photo of Brian. As a routine matter, Jesse scans Salumeh’s fingerprints. They match the prints on the gas can. Yes, she says, the can is mine. My husband keeps putting it in the car, and I keep taking it out. And, she says through tears, I’ve never been on that man’s [Brian’s] property.

Kyle gets a call from Brian and agrees to meet him. Brian’s got his girlfriend, Maya, with him. Turns out Maya last name is Farooq. Her dad is the corpse. Unlucky for her. Unlucky for the young couple is the arrival of the MDPD, let by Horatio, Jesse, and Frank. As Brian and Maya are led away, betrayal in each of their eyes, Horatio tells Kyle he did the right thing. “Then how come it doesn’t feel like it?” Kyle snarls back. I first met Evan Ellingson when he played the nephew to Keifer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer in the sixth season of 24. He was as whiny then as he was when he showed up as Horatio’s son a few seasons ago on CSI: Miami.  He was your basic son who’s never had a good dad, blah blah blah. Tonight, in this episode, he was spectacular. He played Kyle on the edge, emotionally overwhelmed and conflicted with duty (to his fellow soldier) and duty to his dad and his dad’s profession. This is what I’ve been waiting for with Kyle.

Maya and Brian both have traces of gasoline on them. Maya’s got two bus tickets to St. Petersburg. Maya, under Calleigh’s questioning, comes out with the story. She was pledged to marry another man, Ahmed Salib. It was an arranged marriage. Since the contract was signed, she fell in love with Brian. She wanted to back out of the marriage, but her dad wouldn’t have it. It would bring dishonor on the family, and he went to Brian’s garage with the gas can, intending to burn his daughter. Or so Maya says.

A piece of paper pulled from the crime scene has Farsi writing. In a nice nod to Kyle’s tour of duty in Iraq, Horatio gets his son to translate. It’s the marriage contract. The cops bring in Ahmed. Yeah, it pissed me off Maya fell in love with Brian. But he saw the handwriting on the wall. He went to Rahim to back out of the arranged marriage, but Rahim wouldn’t let him. Eventually, Rahim, after Maya left him a voicemail, met Brian and Maya at the garage. There was yelling, and Rahim was knocked down, unconscious. The flashback scenes implied that the erstwhile Romeo and Juliet set the fire.

Jesse and Natalia comb the crime scene again, looking for the definitive clue. When they do, the director does the typical CSI: Miami thing of cool music with different shapes showing various scenes floating around the TV screen. It’s part of the template, and we get it every week. That doesn’t mean it isn’t cool. For some reason, it struck me more last night.

Natalia finds her evidence: heel impressions, namely, a high heel. It doesn’t match Maya’s shoes, so that leaves only one other person: her mother. In flashback, we see Salumeh and Rahim arguing. He thinks she’s let their daughter off too easily. She thinks he’s too strict. She drove to the garage to head off any bad things, but saw Maya and Brian speeding away. She entered the garage and found her husband lying unconscious on the ground. She piled the tires on top of him, emptied the gas can, and lit the match. They continue their furious screaming at each other as the blaze takes Rahim. The sounds of him screaming in agony were pretty brutal. Cutting back to the police station, Salumeh admitted she did it because Maya would never be safe with her father around. In the few moments before she’s taken away by Natalia, Salumeh hugs her daughter and implores her and Brian to take care of and respect each other. Amid open sobs Maya’s mother is led away.

Which brings us to the best scene of the episode. It’s a bus stop, but not one for Maya and Brian. It’s the bus that’ll take Kyle and his fellow soldiers back for their deployment. Horatio is there, his own fatherly anguish evident on his face. “I’m proud of you, son,” he says. Kyle thanks him. They embrace, and the camera lingers on David Caruso’s face. In a husky voice, he implores his son to come back alive. “I love you,” he says. Caruso’s eyes say more. We’ve seen Caruso give Horatio empathy for lost children for the entire eight seasons of CSI: Miami. In his scenes with Kyle this season, he takes it to another level. And, unlike the pre-credit sequence that opened this episode, this gentle scene ended with a fade to black and silence.

“Dishonor” was a fantastic episode of CSI: Miami, and it worked on more than one level. The raw power of naked emotion played very well tonight. I know in a twenty-something episode season, you’ll have clunkers. The last two weren’t great. But that just makes the stand-outs that much better. The way the camera lingered on Kyle at the end hopefully doesn’t portend bad things for him in the future. I very much liked him in this episode, and he contributed to the case in a special way. I’d like to see him return, maybe even go through the academy and become a cop, just like his dad. That might be wishful thinking, but now, with the afterglow of that final scene still shimmering, I want nothing more than what Horatio wants: for Kyle to come home. Alive.

What did you think of this episode?

The opening montage showed a giant costumed party, with patrons in masks, dancing to rock music. In another room, the 1922 film Nosferatu was being screened on a wall. In a neat sequence, the images from the film–showing the vampire–echo the dastardly actions taking place in the room. There are a couple of women, a bit too much to drink, the camerawork reinforcing this point with its tipsy-turvy work. Things happen and cut to black. One of the women, Anna, wakes up and discovers her friend, Leslie, dead with a fountain pen stuck in her neck. Needless to say, she loses it.

Horatio and his team arrive. He stands brooding, the black-and-white film etching his face. Tony Enright is trying to “console” Anna…and he’s not succeeding. Well, let’s be honest: he’s not really trying, either. Horatio, as if he was a Western hero, states “I know what you did in LA.” Tony, in a typical arrogant bad guy style, scoffs. Horatio calls him on his “adult entertainment” business. Tony scoffs again. Then Horatio gets his line: “Roll credits. It’s a wrap.”

Walter and Calleigh work the crime scene, and Walter discovers a listening device. Somewhere, they know there is a receiver. Natalia, meanwhile, interviews Anna. Anna has been drugged, and Natalia suggests, delicately, that Anna ought to head to the hospital and get herself checked for signs of possible rape. Natalia also mentions Jesse, and Anne starts to fly off the hook. She accuses him of following her from LA to Miami and of stalking her in Florida. When he walks up to them, Anna gets very angry, so angry, in fact, that Natalia gives Jesse the evil eye and all but dismisses him.

Back at the lab, Dr. Lohman tells Ryan that the victim, Leslie, was not drugged. The murder weapon, the pen, has a fingerprint. The print belongs to Coop Daily, played by Michael Madsen. Coop’s a former football player and he’s very–very–full of himself. Sure, his fingerprints are on the pen. “It’s because I sign a lot of autographs.” In rather humorous banter, he keeps referring to Ryan as “pint size” or “little man.” When Ryan lets out that he’s five foot nine, Coop responds with “My pants are five nine.” Nonetheless, our detectives don’t have much to hold Coop. Calleigh, keeping her disgust in check, tells Coop not to go far. “You’ll be back. I guarantee it.”

Wes Ramsey, the CSI tech guy (see, I learned his name!), isolates the bug found at the crime scene. Oddly, the receiver appears to be in the parking lot of the station. Ryan questions it. Calleigh knows what’s up. She goes straight to…Jesse’s car. He arrives and Calleigh gets meticulously professional. “Open the trunk, Jesse. Back away from the car. Do it!” And Jesse does. Yup, there’s recording equipment in there. I was just coming to get the tape, he says. Yeah, right. Calleigh asks Jesse what he’s doing. In a personal moment, we get to see Jesse’s driving force. The guy (Tony Enright) is a murderer, he says. I think about my wife, Tracy, every day. This guy’s a murderer, and I want to put him away. And the recording of the murder is evidence. The only problem is Jesse’s history as an LAPD officer is tarnished when it comes to Enright and his murder trial. Enright knows this is his literal “get out of jail” free card. The DA tells Horatio she can’t use the recording. The only thing to do: clear Jesse’s name. Off to LA go Horatio and Delko (in his capacity as an officer of the DA).

Cue music: “California Dreamin’” by the Mamas and the Papas. Cue iconic shots of LA with Horatio standing. Cue helicopter landing. Out pops Captain Chris Sutter, played by William Forsythe. He growls about the case being old and settled, but he allows Horatio and Delko to investigate. For anyone not versed in the way of CSI: Miami, you should know right then and there Sutter was hiding something. Only time would tell what it was.

One of the pieces of evidence Horatio and Delko find is the footage of the trial when Malcolm McDowell’s Darren Vogel, the defense attorney for Enright back in the day, shredded Jesse on the stand. It came down to this: a cufflink Jesse found and photographed has disappeared. Without that evidence, Enright walked, and Jesse’s reputation suffered. Soon thereafter, Jesse’s wife was murdered. As the video footage stops, Horatio states the mission: we find the cuff link, we clear Jesse. Delko’s a bit more circumspect–”Or sink him.”

Back in Miami, Natalia lets Anna know that she was raped by a man who wore a condom. Calleigh runs a test and isolates a compound present only in a particular type of condom. She and Ryan confront Coop with the evidence. He’s coy and annoying and lascivious. Then he does the Dumb Criminal Thing: he drops a piece of evidence (lambskin condom) and Ryan does the cop thing: no one said anything about lambskin. Busted! He fesses up that Enright provided Leslie as a prize. Calleigh’s repugnance at Coop is now palpable. He’s hauled off.

In LA, Horatio and Delko have their moment with McDowell at his scene-chewing best. They discover, in the crime scene photos, a freelance photographer, Olivia. She’s doing a photo shoot with Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. When our heroes ask if she remembers the case, not only does she say yes, she gives them the negatives. Of course! This new evidence has a damning shot: Captain Sutter removing the incriminating cufflink. On the empty stage of the Greek Theater, Horatio and Sutter talk. Horatio shows the photo, Sutter confesses. Yeah, he took the cufflink, “but I never knew Jesse had already photographed it.” Horatio needs the cufflink and asks if Sutter still has it. In perhaps the biggest What The Hell Were The Writers Thinking moments this season, Sutter says, “Well, yeah, I have it. Right here in my jacket pocket. I carry it around with me to help me remember how I gave a good cop a bad name.” He pulls it out…and there’s still blood on it. Come on! Are you serious? Like he wouldn’t have gotten rid of the evidence back during the trial. Cop remorse is one thing. This was way over the top on a show known for living over the top. Too much.

Horatio wins (natch) and Sutter gives a press conference extolling the virtue of Jesse Cardoza. It was a press conference Tony Enright didn’t see. As he harangues Trip (yes, he makes a cameo) for the bad coffee, our bald, straight-talking cop lets Enright in on the little news flash: Jesse’s clean and you, Enright, are going down. The closing shot sets up a rivalry between Horatio and McDowell. I enjoyed McDowell doing his thing, so I suspect he’ll be back one day. Jesse walks up to Horatio and says the only thing needed–thanks. Horatio merely replies that “you’d do the same for me.” And we get another personal moment with Jesse when the man who killed his wife is now behind bars. You can tell he’s happy, but he still is without his wife.

I enjoyed this episode, but it wasn’t the best of the season. The personal moments shone for me. Natalia and Anna, speaking about abuse, and Natalia letting Anna know she’s there to talk. Jesse’s quiet moments, in the middle and at the end. And I really enjoyed seeing Delko’s exuberance when Horatio takes him away to LA. Whatever you think of Eric Delko, he will be returning next season. I think it bodes well for some friction between him and Jesse. I’m looking forward to it.

What about you? Did you like tonight’s episode? For those of y’all who know Rob Zombie’s work, did you see some of his style in the shots?

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?

What came just before this scene, however, was quite interesting. In a rare step into current world events, we see Horatio watching the news from Afghanistan. Jesse is at the lab, pouring (obsessing?) over the lady he’s been accused of stalking; you know, the one who’s now with the man who killed Jesse’s wife. And Calleigh. Whew! Calleigh’s at her home, presumably, wearing a man’s shirt. She climbs into bed and masculine hands caress her body. I must say that for all the sex that’s paraded around Miami, our fearless law enforcement officers rarely get to partake. It was great to see one of our own have a bit of passion, but it wasn’t at all a surprise when the camera let us know that Eric was the guy with her. Ironically, both their cellphones interrupted the tender moment.

With Eric now part of the DA’s office, he’s right there with his old team in sifting through the evidence, looking for anything that can clear Bradstone. The inmate has loudly proclaimed his innocence since the beginning. Jesse, on the other hand, is convinced the guy did it, something with which Eric disagrees. In a potential harbinger of things to come now that “Ugly Betty” (actor Alex Rodriguez’s new job) got the ax, paving the way for Eric’s full-fledged return, tensions build throughout the episode.

Now, I’m usually one to overlook plots holes if they all point to a grander story. Couldn’t overlook some of the WTF moments tonight. Bradstone gets to tell Horatio his side of the story: he, a doctor, worked late, came home, slept on the couch so as not to wake the wife, heard the screaming, discovered family (wife and daughter) murdered and son, Todd, barely hanging on to life. One of Bradstone’s side jobs was selling prescription drugs to friends, one of whom turns out to be Krycek from The X-Files. Actually, it’s Nicholas Lea, sporting a goatee, and playing a guy named Newhouse. His story is that, yeah, he got the drugs from Bradstone, but that’s all. Meanwhile, Eric does a little computer examination of the original police statement and discovers tampering. Initially, the officer taking the statement wrote the word “kitchen” as the location where the witness saw the killing. DA Talbot at the time, realizing he can’t build a case that way, coerced the witness and the young officer to change her statement. That officer was none other than Jesse himself. Yikes. Eric’s not cool with that at all.

That’s where Horatio returns and pulls a Yoda. He reminds the group that there is another witness, Todd, who, as a seven-year-old boy survived the attack fifteen years ago. The young man still stands by his story of the evening: “I heard a train” (problem: no tracks nearby), I saw a man on top of my mother, hurting her (problem: didn’t get a good look at the perp). He’s surprised Horatio’s listening to him. Guess he doesn’t know Horatio like we do. With a new outlook, the team, led by Natalia, examine the evidence (i.e., the nightgown) worn by Bradstone’s wife the night of her murder. This was my first “Come on!” moment of the night. Natalia states that since the evidence was in refrigerated storage (really?), the evidence is still intact. Since there was not any high-tech CSI technology back in 1995, there was no way for them to find the tiny speck of semen Natalia discovers. Now, I know the writers make a point of sticking as close to real science as possible. It just seemed out there. But not as bad as the next whopper.

The semen sample belonged to Newhouse. Now, his story is this: me and Bradstone’s wife were having a fling. I was there but I didn’t see anything. Calleigh believes him. Right. Back to the crime scene for more examination. The best part about this set piece was Natalia showing Ryan and Walter her hearing aid. Way to go, writers, for continuing her saga. Boo hiss on what came next. Remember the murder occurred fifteen years ago. Todd, the son, lives at the house now. The window that was broken back then is still not repaired! WTF? I mean, come on! Are you serious? This is a whopper of a plot hole. Nonetheless, Walter and his magic blood-revealing spray bottle indicates the murderer stood over the dying woman’s body. Confronted with this new evidence, Newhouse issues Story #3: We loved each other, Bradstone came home early, Newhouse booked it out the window but forgot his wallet, he went back in, saw the wife dying on the floor, grabbed his wallet, and left.

Horatio thinks he’s got his man and sends Eric and Jesse back to see the old lady. She flatly denies Newhouse is the culprit. I know what I saw, she says…and gets killed by a hit and run. Here’s where CSI: Miami again veered off the usual trajectory. By the Law of CSI, all suspects are shown early on, and the evidence will invariably point to the least likely suspect. This time, the driver was a “Who?” character. Sure, he ended up having ties to Bradstone himself, but the typical episode usually dishes things in a more orderly fashion. Bradstone, for his part, is relishing Horatio’s team in their effort to get to the truth. He thinks he’s about to walk. Horatio counters with a simple phrase: “James, I’m not finished yet.”

Horatio, Jesse, Eric, and Calleigh put their heads together and figure out that Hurricane Erin was bearing down on Miami the night of the murder. That would account for Todd’s testimony that he heard a train. It also led to a simple test and discovery: on the night in question, old lady Russo really did see the murder happen because the winds would have moved the bamboo shoots out of the way, giving her a clear visual of the Bradstone bedroom. She was telling the truth. And Bradstone made the dead man’s walk.

The episode closes on some nice personal moments. Calleigh and Eric, all smiles and grins (even from me), talk about the next step. With his hugely infectious grin on his face, Eric asks a simple question: “Your place or mine.” Horatio tells Todd that he can rally just like my son (Kyle) did. And, as the episode closes, we realize why Horatio was paying attention to the news: Kyle is now in the Army and stationed in Afghanistan. I’ll admit that I saw it coming a mile away but it still made for some great, intimate moments as Horatio and Kyle have a short video con call. The young man has matured and talks about making a difference, just like his dad. I certainly hope that isn’t a way to write off Kyle (because I’d like to see a more mature Kyle return to Miami), but I can also see how news of Kyle’s death might put Horatio into a downward spiral sometime in May, in time for sweeps and a cliffhanger ending (leaving the badge at the station and walking off into the Miami sunset, out to find his son’s killer).

What did you think of last night’s episode? Did you like the personal moments as much as I did? How about the big whoppers of plot holes? And are you looking forward to CSI in Space next week?

Jesse has some experience with the Shakiru, the Japanese mafia, from his days in LA. As he’s paging through some photos, Walter notices an interesting trait among the men in the pictures: some of them are missing pinkie fingers. Jesse explains that if a soldier of the Shakiru disgraces the organization, he is expected to cut off his pinkie. It’s a visible sign of dishonor, and it also renders the man unable to wield a katana. A double-edged punishment. Together with Horatio, Jesse goes and speaks with Takoshi Yamata. He’s in the process of getting tattoos applied with bamboo shoots, a particularly painful method. In the exchange, Yamata produces his own hands and points out that three of his fingers are missing. The first pinkie for disgracing Shakiru, the second for a girl “I wish I never met,” and the third for indiscretions with the boss’s daughter. Oddly enough, he seemed proud of his wounds. Horatio is not impressed.

Tripp, Ryan, and Natalia head to Turner’s house to investigate the scene. As mentioned earlier, network television programs are like comfort food, and things rarely happen to lead characters. By and large, the characters begin and end an episode unchanged. It’s fun when you like the characters, but, ultimately, it starts to ring hollow after awhile. That’s why I am particularly interested to see where the writers take Natalia. A few episodes back, she and Ryan suffered an explosion at a meth lab. Natalia emerged with her hearing damaged (what about Ryan?). The next week, not a mention of it, and I feared the issue was going to be glossed over. Last night, it showed up. As she and Ryan poked around the second floor, she didn’t hear the footsteps of a person holding a katana. Turns out, it’s Turner’s son, Kenny. However, with his Asian appearance, “I just don’t see the resemblance,” as Tripp so ignobly says. “You’ve got ten fingers and the sword and that makes you my number one suspect.” Ah, Trip. Can we spin you off for a series of your own? Or, better yet, write a book: Tripp’s Guide to Life, where witty one-liners fill the pages.

Horatio confronts the boy because the katana he held is the murder weapon. Kenny tells his story: Turner adopted him, never knew my mom. We were eating lunch when he told me to run. I did and took the sword, thinking I’ll be next. After Horatio questions him more, Kenny produces a photo of a man with whom Turner had harsh words. The man is none other than Horatio’s old partner, Sully, last seen in this season’s flashback premiere. Sully runs security for Yamata, and he’s not out to help Horatio At All. Guess the police loyalty only goes for old-school cops, of which Horatio is not. That, or Sully still holds a grudge from 1998.

After Walter goes dumpster diving and finds the bamboo shoot used to give Yamata the tattoo, it’s revealed that Kenny is, in fact, Yamata’s biological son. Horatio and Jesse confront Yamata with the facts. He doesn’t deny it. Instead, he tells the CSIs that the boy was stolen from him. Their conversation leads to one of the most chilling back-and-forths of the evening:

Jesse: You had the his father killed.
Yamata: [Turner’s] death was inconsequential.
Horatio: Not to the boy.

Yamata promises to get his son back. Cut to scenes of Tripp driving Kenny home, and wham!–another car smashes into his. A black-clad figure emerges and takes Kenny from the unmarked police vehicle. Tripp corners the person, and, with the aid of timely backup, the culprit lets the boy go. Turns out, it’s a woman. And not just any woman but Kenny’s biological mother. Her story fills in the gaps: Yamata charmed her, tattooed her, raped her, and expected her to bear him a child for Shakiru. She fled to America, met Turner, who convinced her to change her name to a Chinese surname, and gave the infant Kenny to him to raise. All the name of protecting Kenny from the influence of Yamata and the Shakiru.

When Sully stonewalls Horatio again, he and Jesse line up all the waiters at Yamata’s establishment. Calleigh, who shows up halfway through the episode, provided a key piece of evidence. The smell of pine needles was on the victim’s clothing. It got there from a leaky sprinkler system. If Turner had it on his clothes, chances are good the killer would, too. Horatio notices one of the waiters has a bandaged hand. Seems he lost himself a pinkie. He confesses he did it to “save” Yamata. Curious, Calleigh and Jesse look into Yamata’s criminal history from Japan. It seems Yamata’s blood type changed somewhere along the line. Jesse points out that the bamboo-shoot method of tattooing puts the ink deep into the skin, preventing sweat from escaping. Long-term exposure to this could lead to liver failure. Calleigh said that people with liver transplants have been known to have their blood chemistry altered by the donor organ. His liver is failing. And they realize why Yamata is after the youth: Kenny is to be an unwilling organ donor.

Horatio confronts Sully with overwhelming evidence, and the older man finally (!) complies and gives up Yamata’s location. It’s a helipad. Horatio’s off in his Hummer and arrives just in time to see Yamata, a henchman, and Kenny making their way to the helicopter. In one of the best, kick-ass scenes in CSI: Miami history, Horatio breaks the Hummer and, through the open window, takes out the henchman. He confronts Yamata, who holds the boy as a hostage. Not for long. Horatio takes him out, and Yamata dies before Kenny’s eyes. Something tells me that he’s going to need some counseling.

Interspersed through these scenes, Natalia goes to see a hearing doctor. He runs a hearing test on her. Eva La Rue does an excellent job here. Natalia, with the camera focused on her face, is smiling, raising her hand each time she hears a sound. The smile falters at one point, clouding over to genuine concern, then to pure doubt. A bit later, she goes in for an MRI. The doctor gives her the bad news: she has a noise induced hearing loss. In addition, there’s evidence of a pre-existing condition, one that damages a certain part of the ear and can be caused by a hand slap. The implication is clear when the doctor slides a brochure about battered women over to Natalia. She’s angry and tells the doctor to return his focus on the matter at hand. And, yet, the camera lingers, allowing Natalia to think, to remember her ex-husband’s abuse towards her. He’s dead now, and he’s still haunting her from beyond the grave.

The interesting main story made for a very good episode. It is the personal story of Natalia, however, that put this episode over the top for me. I like it when real things happen to characters on television shows, and they are changed by it. I hope the writer’s don’t drop the ball with Natalia’s hearing loss like they did with the original CSI and Grissom’s hearing loss. CSI: Miami is more hyper-real than real so it’s always refreshing when actual problems emerge for the characters to deal with and overcome. I’ll be looking forward to seeing more of Natalia in the coming weeks as she copes with her hearing loss and how it affects her job.

Am I alone? How did you enjoy the episode?

In the opening shots of “Show Stopper,” Phoenix and her band are rocking the house. The choreography is great, the tune is good, and she looks hot, especially when she catches on fire mid-song. She falls dead on stage. Quick as a flash, the EMTs are there, whisking away the still-alive body of Phoenix. Ferris Bueller’s friend, Cameron, is there (Alan Ruck), and he’s keeping the press at bay. But he can’t hold back Horatio Caine. The lieutenant moves forward, with Dr. Tom, the ME, and investigates the body. Uh-oh, Dr. Tom says, the fire didn’t kill Phoenix. She was already dead.

With that puzzler, the CSI: Miami team is off. Jesse, Ryan, and Calleigh investigate the crime scene, interviewing the pyrotechnics guy who seemed to blow up stuff “by the book.” Phoenix’s make-up lady told Calleigh that the bronzing make-up was worn every show. It’s also, Calleigh tells her, an accelerant. Ryan collects cell phones from the grieving throng outside the arena.

Rick Stetler makes an appearance in this episode. He’s calling Calleigh on a mileage discrepancy on her expense report. She waffles, apparently trying to hide the fact that she loaned the car to Jesse. She tells Rick she’ll figure it out. He gives her a one-day deadline.

After determining Walter is a fan of Phoenix, Ryan and Walter find evidence of copper wiring in Phoenix’s dress. It’s part of a stun gun and it helps Dr. Tom with his pronouncement that Phoenix died of a heart attack. However, the body on the slab isn’t Phoebe Nichols, the young woman who took the stage name Phoenix. It’s Vanessa Patton, a back-up dancer and dead (heh) ringer for Phoebe/Phoenix. Horatio calls Julian Teal, the manager, on the fraud. Julian tells Horatio that Phoebe bailed on him. That may be, but it’s still fraud.

Phoebe’s mom and former manager wants to see her estranged daughter. Calleigh doesn’t know where she is but vows to find out. The IT guy in the lab does with all the confiscated cell phones what Batman did with them in The Dark Knight, namely uses all the images to reconstruct the concert. What they see astounds them: Adam Lambert! Well, not really, but the young man is dressed to look like him. Robbie is Phoenix’s Number One Fan (uh-oh), and he just wanted to get back a bracelet from Vanessa the Fake Phoenix. He professes that Phoebe promised him a managing gig but fame changed her. Jesse and Ryan aren’t buying it, but Robbie, in his most assertive, teenaged voice blurts out that he’d tell them if he knew who killed Phoenix.

After a little web surfing, Calleigh and Jesse locate a house owned by Phoenix’s company. After a testy exchange regarding the mileage discrepancy, they discover none other than Phoebe herself, drugged and held captive. Suspicions falls back to Alan Ruck’s hyper doctor who confesses that his job was to drug her for the three to four months (!) of the current Phoenix tour. Again, Julian the slimeball manager throws up the “I’m just doing business” curtain. Horatio just moves forward.

The wound on Phoebe’s arm is, in fact, the incision where a GPS device was implanted. The unit is still active, and it goes back to the mom! She’d been ostracized by Julian, and this was the only way she could keep tabs on her daughter. Interspersed in this action is Phoebe coming to terms with her fame, Vanessa’s murder, and the desire to go back in time and just sing for the joy of singing. Calleigh’s there with her, taking a big sisterly role here. This kind of thing is usually reserved for Horatio, and it’s great to see another character step up.

“Adam Lamber” gets tagged with the ownership of the stun gun (after tracing the serial number on the electrodes) and lets slip that “We” just wanted to expose Vanessa the Fake Phoenix. Oops! Well, the other half of the “we” was…the Mom!

Up until the end of the episode, we had a pretty darn good story. The final scene takes it up to eleven. Jesse and Calleigh are alone in the police locker room. Calleigh confronts Jesse, telling him she can’t trust him. She badgers him into revealing what he did with the police vehicle. He confesses he used it to follow a woman. The man she is with, he says, is very dangerous. This man killed his wife by slitting her throat so deep that she was almost decapitated.

Calleigh understands. “He’s in Miami.” 

Jesse looses the bombshell. “He also killed my wife.” He turns and walks away. Calleigh is left alone, stunned into silence, Emily Proctor’s face clearly showing the shock and disbelief and grief Calleigh is entitled to. Brilliant ending, and I’m looking forward to further developments with this story arc.

I’m also glad to see, in the trailer for next week, that the writers are following up with Natalia Boa Vista (no-show in Monday’s episode) and her hearing loss injury suffered when she and Ryan were in a drug dealer’s house when it exploded. Too often, television writers let interesting aspects of characters fall by the wayside, kinda like Horatio’s son from last season (where’s he been this season?).

I thoroughly enjoyed Monday’s episode. A VCR snafu delayed me watching it until Tuesday evening (thus, this recap is a day late). I have to admit: watching the episode via CBS.com and my laptop sans commercials wasn’t a bad thing. Perhaps the future of television is changing.

What did you like about Monday’s episode? How’d you take Calleigh’s larger role in the episode? And did you get a feeling that Horatio distanced himself from Phoebe towards the end of the episode?