CSI: Miami

The Writers Guild of America strike is already beginning to take its toll on the CSI shows. I am beginning to see a wave of recycled storylines from one show to the next. I have seen this storyline before in not one, but two episodes of CSI: NY. One of those episodes aired just a few days prior to this one. OK, the point that the quest for revenge can backfire and have disasterous consequences has been made several times already. It's time to move on to the well written and original stories that make CSI and its spin-offs great.

Most spiritual teachers or philosophers in the world say that evil actions imply more evil because the are simply bad. I think it was a great example that they are right.

All the people of dead boy's family were revengeful and all got punished for their actions. The chain reaction is especially terrifying when you realize that each step costs a life of a guilty/innocent person. To me it was more of a philosofic episode. Not too much action and no personal plots (which is good because they rarely mix up well). That's what I like at CSI Miami -- the TPTB risk a bit to change the form of a show at times and they do it nicely (but just for a one ep.!).

I feel sorry for that family. They in fact do have p e r m a n e n t v a c a t i o n. You see, sometimes a tragedy causes another tragedies and ends up as a hecatomb... extremely sad, but true.

CSI: Miami continues it's downward trajectory this season with another episode that provides the only reason I hope for a long writer's strike. This off-key installment had me looking at my watch as it lurched awkwardly from scene to scene only to reveal an extremely obvious perpetrator. The long drawn out "shocking" final sequence was exactly the opposite. I knew what was going to happen and afterward I checked to make sure I actually hadn't seen this episode before and just forgot about it. Sure enough, the CSI: Miami writers did not prove me wrong. Bang! And with that, the best part of this episode final came: the credits.



A few questions as we autopsy this corpse of an episode. Firstly, why did they make the family canadian? I was intrigued at first. Maybe the perpetrator had a hatred of all things canadian? Were they connected to a case in Canada? Was this prelude to Bruckheimer's next series, CSI: Calgary? No! It was to make canadians look like a bunch of rude, dysfunctional, fornucating, gun toting murderers. What? Secondly, what was with Dean Cain's (playing the canadian father) weird overacting? The "you wished it was me father-son" angle was poorly acted, out of place and has been used in a thousand other bad plots. The only reason a rational person would act like this is if they had something to do with the murder. This would have been cool. But noooo. I had to suffer through that scene for nothing.



One blessing this episode: No Kyle. However, this only makes me fear the return to that disaster of a plot all the more. The only reason why I return every week is to see just how far this show will fall. Hopefully after the strike the writers will get to work and bring this show back from the abyss.

Okay the concept of a tourist being killed on vacation not unique. Which is fine. The creative link to local gangs was a little bit of a stretch. The adoring under brother was a sentimental touch. Overbearing belittling father, not a surprise. The big surprise was that the mother pretty much disappreared for most of the episode. Until she showed up to see her own form of justice. I liked the bellhop have individual punch shapes to indentify them. I thought it was very creative. I wondered with the interaction of the father & son, if the father hadn't egged his surviving son to go after the man thought to have taken out the golden one. It ended up being gang related, not surprising. Also no surprise is H saving another kid in trouble.

This was a nice episode, that had me changing my mind about the murderer about 5 times!

The story wasn't that new - visitors to a city (country) getting hit by gang terror. But what made it interesting was the family's reaction. The father's first reaction of shock and grief was soon replaced with a need for revenge. And the way he spoke to his youngest son during the interview with Horatio showed that he was totally losing it. In my opinion, it was his words to his son ("You let your brother down; you let me down.") that made his younger son attack the bellboy/construction worker. And what good did that do him, the man being innocent!

And then there's the mother killing the killer. When she first asked to be allowed to speak to him, I thought she portrayed her sorrow very well, and I was pretty sure then already that she was going to do him harm. You could see it in her eyes. And when she put the pocket watch into her bag, I thought a gun was going to come out. I was actually surprised when she just walked away. Good acting on her part!

About the team - well, I thought they all did well to portray the shock of the moment. Especially Natalia! Her reaction to being the first on the scene showed just how vulnerable one can be when the scene hasn't first been "sanitized" by the ME. I also loved Eric in this episode. (And it has nothing to do with how sexy he looked in those pants and jacket!) Somehow he showed a lot of ... something, that made him seem very involved. The scene in the warehouse where he confronted the killer was beautiful. He obviously knew that Horatio and the other cops were there, but still one got the feeling that he wasn't going to let the killer get away, even if it meant his own death. And Horatio being the one to "save" Eric - it shows the special bond between the two. It's not over emphasized, or spoken of directly - it's just in the body language, and the eye contact. The writers are doing a good job of portraying that bond.

And of course, Horatio going to the bellboy asking him to help the boy who attacked him. That was a nice touch, though not really unexpected. One sort of comes to expect of Horatio to be the saviour of the underdog!

Finally, on a different note: The technology they use - expecially that "table" where they analize the pictures, fingerprints, etc - is very advanced. I was wondering if these kind of stuff really exists? It really does look like a very big improvement on some of the older systems used.

A young Canadian boy is murdered while he and his family is on vacation. First of all, let me add that you shouldn't go after the people who killed a family member at all as a vigilante. As that is against the law. Plus, you should leave it to the proper authorities to go after them. And really I think that vigilante justice is just plain wrong. The parents I hate that they showed lack of emotion. As the father I wanted to haul off and hit him for his attitude towards this. Matter of fact, the whole entire family acted really wierd in this episode. In the end, the killer got killed himself by the mom.

This episode made a mockery out of vigilante justice. While I understand the concept of an eye for an eye, just make sure the correct eye is being killed. What made this episode so unwatchable was the fact that the parents didn't show any emotion for their dead son and the brother acted like the death of his only sibling was an inconvenience. I didn't have an ounce of sympathy for the hot-tempered father who's only display of emotion was showing disgust for his surviving son who was trying to make an honest effort to describe what he saw while standing outside the hotel. I saw the son's murder attempt on the baggage handler to be just a way to get into his father's good graces. When it was revealed that the boy was killed as part of a gang initiation, I was past caring. Anything but a gang-related murder would have make this episode more exciting. I gave a big thumbs down to Natalia for not watching the mother more cosely when she said she wanted to talk to the man who killed her son. The very least she could have done was keep a close eye on the woman and made sure she left the police station. That's what Horatio would have done.



The only good thing about this episode was that it focused on the crime and left the romance alone.