November 20, 2006: I Cannot Believe I Took a Bullet for You
"Going, Going, Gone," was certainly comprehensive, and, for the most part, it was actually pretty good. Before I get to the last 10 minutes, I'd like to say that the first plotline that was introduced was a nice change of pace from what we've had lately. It was a straight-up boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-kills-girl story that make up the better episodes of this show. Rebecca had simply outgrown her fiancé, and so he stabbed her with a letter opener. However, we did finally get to see Alexx talk to a dead body again, after weeks of her not having much to do. Speaking of that scene, it was very cute when she pulled the camera up to her face to ask Ryan if he wanted to come do her job. I especially loved the exchange between her and Calleigh after Calleigh told Ryan he was doing a great job: "Hey, hey, hey, what about me?" "You're fabulous!"
Johnny Whitworth was back as Jake Berkeley - the undercover cop who can't do anything right, but seems to do no wrong. He got Rebecca killed, but he also saved Calleigh's life, and the degree of flirtiness between the two of them on the pier at the end indicates that he'll probably pop up several more times this season.
And now to those last 10 minutes. Seriously? I'm not totally sure how they managed to tack a terrorist attack subplot onto a typical murder story line (especially since the actual murder had absolutely nothing to do with the attack, except by
CSI: Miami's increasingly circuitous logic), but the fact is that Season 4 of
24 did it better (
and it had
Shohreh Aghdashloo). For those of you who may have fallen asleep before the end, it turned out that terrorists who wanted to blow up a nuclear power plant were blackmailing Peter Kinkella and had kidnapped his family. Hence, all of the heroin-dealing, and the "bachelorette auctions" (cough, cough) were to raise money to get them back. George (our Viagra popper, who bought off both Rebecca and the Homeland Security agent) was in fact working with the terrorists to pack plastic explosives into trucks.
Based on all of this information, it would seem that we should be grateful that Rebecca's jilted fiancé decided to kill her, or the Turkey Lake power plant would have been destroyed, and no one would be visiting Miami during the holidays.
I appreciate that this show is trying to be a little more political this season, but the fact is, I enjoyed the less-controversial plotline last night a lot more than the end. We had some great light moments, like that scene in the morgue that I mentioned above, or when Rebecca's ex said (in the funniest line from the episode), "We're from Virginia! We met in a church, if you can believe it!" Even Calleigh and Jake's scene at the end was kind of sweet. I was therefore surprised when the murder investigation was wrapped up with at least one commercial break to go, as I was thinking that this was such a strong episode.
Overall, I was happy with last night's show, and I'm not going to count the terrorist plotline against them because it felt so disconnected. On the plus side, it's given me incentive to get excited for
24, though I don't think that's quite what they were going for.
