The wife of Inspector Fiori is nearly strangled by her lover and then he gets shot. She admits to the shooting and then Stonetree, who is friends with the Fioris and wants to avoid a scandal, pressures Nick to quickly and quietly close the case. Nick, who knows that the case can't be that open and shut or else they don't have an episode for that week, defies his captain and continues to dig deeper. As it turns out, the case isn't much more complicated than it appears. Viewers with half a brain should be able to figure out the guilty party almost instantly.
To be honest, for a moment, I suspected the nerdy forensics guy Schanke hassles, Artie, might have had something to do with it since this show rarely includes a random character like that unless they turn out to be tied to the crime somehow. I could not figure out why they even had the scene with Artie until I read that he was played by a George Kapelos, who must be the brother of John. On a second viewing, there is a familial resemblance.
The real point of the episode is to address the injustice of blaming the female victims in sexual crimes, something that happens less often in modern society these days, but unfortunately still occurs. Look at the furor that arose not that long back when a police constable stated that women would be at less risk of being raped if they didn't dress like "sluts." It's an important issue, but it makes this already weak episode come off as a little preachy.
My biggest complaint with "Dead Issue" has to do with the flashbacks. Admittedly, I know very little about Hieronymus Bosch other than the fact that he painted some very trippy imagery. Some quick digging on the internet reveals that what information we do have about his life seems rather spotty, which I suppose is why the writer of this episode felt relatively safe depicting him however they needed to fit the story. It's not uncommon to for fictional properties to take liberties with depictions of historical figures, but presenting one as a rapist with no real facts to back this up seems unfair. I'm somewhat baffled why it was necessary to malign the reputation of one of the most famous painters in history when a fictional character could have fulfilled the same function. I guess it was assumed they could get away with it because he's a more obscure artist than someone like Leonardo or Michelangelo, so people are less likely to complain about the attempted character assassination.
As Nick discusses the case with Natalie, she makes him drink one of her vile vegetable concoctions that would probably make anyone, human or vampire, retch. Nick compares it to taking poison, which is funny because that is precisely what was going through my mind the moment before he said it. The good Dr. Lambert's method of pushing human food on Nick to wean him off blood is not dissimilar to someone thinking they can cure a peanut allergy by making the afflicted eat peanuts.
In the epilogue, after Natalie delivers the last line, she takes a breath and looks like she's about to say something else, but then the scene goes to black and the credits roll. I can only assume that she had an additional line which was cut, but whoever was in charge of editing did a sloppy job and let the scene run for a second or so too long, capping off a lame episode with a somewhat awkward and bizarre ending.
