April 9, 2007: Little Big Caine
Just to get this out of the way, was there ever a more nonsensical piece of dialogue than, "Harassment is not without its consequences/My team thrives on consequences"? I'm serious. What does that mean? How can one thrive on consequences?
I have to admit to being slightly uncomfortable with this episode. Did we really have to have a Native American scalping someone as retribution? Granted, this Doug Lansing fellow did not seem to be the most altruistic person, but scalping? For those of you who might have fallen asleep before the end, the murderer did end up being the very first person the CSIs talked to: the room-service attendant, who did it because he was 1/16 Native American.
I do have to point out that O'Shay is a pretty brilliant evil mastermind. While in the end the Doug Lansing murder had nothing to do with him, he still managed to get Reggie Venton and his wife out of the picture by having a common thief sneak into Anna's house to steal her black book (which apparently hookers pass down from generation to generation), which contained Reggie's contact information. His wife was so incensed that she stabbed him
in the face.
This face-stabbing incident brings me to my next point. I'm not the squeamish type, but this episode really had my stomach turning. From the oft-repeated shot of Doug getting scalped, to Ryan actually finding the scalp, to the big splashes of blood falling from the ceiling, it all seemed shocking just for the sake of being shocking. It was one of those increasingly rare times that I was glad not to have an HD television.
All of our CSIs (save Horatio) seemed a little more human than usual this week. In the past they've been somewhat one-dimensional, but this week, they tended not to exhibit their signature personalities. Ryan wasn't an obnoxious know-it-all, Delko wasn't defined by his brain injury (though in all fairness, he wasn't doing anything particularly taxing), and Alexx didn't even talk to the body on the table. It was a nice change of pace.
As much as I was not a fan of O'Shay's in his first appearance, I'm kind of hoping that we haven't seen the last of him. I'm almost a little sad that he wasn't in the previews for next week's episode, which looks like it'll be suitably bizarre. From the looks of it, we'll be back looking at scalps, but at least they'll still be attached.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go not stare at "retracted" scalps. Till next week!
