April 16, 2007: They Tried to Make Me Go to Rehab
When
Law & Order does ripped-from-the-headlines, it is so stunningly similar to real events that the disclaimers at the beginning and end seem superfluous. When
CSI: Miami does the same, they take three weeks worth of
Us Weekly, stick it in a blender, and see which elements survive. It makes me recall the
Paris-
Nicole rip-off from last year, where one of the girls ended up electrocuted in the tub by her assistant.
What did we have this week? The actor from a podunk town made into a sex symbol (I'm going to pick
Ashton Kutcher on this one), the starlet who goes into rehab though she's not actually addicted to anything (
Lohan with a twist), and um,
Britney Spears (renamed "Elvina"). But you know what? It kind of worked for me.
As always, for those of you who fell asleep before the end, it was the first person interviewed, Eddie Cabbott, who killed Brody Lasseter. Why would Eddie kill his best friend from Podunk, PA? Turns out that Brody had just confessed that he had killed Eddie's older sister in a car accident. Eddie was, understandably, upset about this, so he pushed Brody to the floor, which resulted in a hematoma. Thinking Brody was dead, he staged a suicide using Jolene's dental-floss rope, which obviously killed Brody.
It is my humble opinion that
CSI: Miami thrives when it takes on tabloid culture, because it's so over-the-top that it just fits the sensibilities of gossip really well. For instance, in the same hour we saw Brody possibly being gay, Holly pretending to get herself arrested for the publicity, and yes, a crazy-ass celebrity shaving her head. Based on what's happened over the last couple of months, this seems like the
CSI:M scenario most likely to actually happen in real life. Is there something totally wrong about that? Probably. But it's a nice change from scalpings and courtrooms blowing up.
Things we found out about our characters this episode: Delko can be just as creepy as Horatio, and Calleigh is a closet gossip-freak. The Delko thing isn't exactly surprising, but Calleigh's guilty pleasure (or should I say "addiction," heh heh) certainly was. She struck me as so no-nonsense about everything that I guess I imagined her curling up in bed with
U.S. News and World Report, not
Star. But it adds a new dimension to her character, and ya'll know how big I am on that. Here's to continuing character development!
I'll see you all next week. Try to stay out of rehab until then.
