CSI: Miami Watch: "Going, Going, Gone"

Another week, another nuclear meltdown narrowly averted. After last week's rather lackluster installment, this week we got a cracking episode -- what starts out as the standard murder of a woman in skimpy clothes becomes H versus the terrorists. All in a day's work for our heroes.


This week's episode starts out during -- what else? -- a feminist nightmare brothel clearance sale charity bachelorette auction. As the producers of CSI: Miami seem contractually obligated to show scantily clad women in the opening scenes of every episode, it seems they've given up and admitted that women are merely objects to be assessed and sold to the highest bidders. And what's better than one scantily clad woman up for sale? Twins! Split-screen twins!

That dude on the right ends up hiring two women -- not the twins, unfortunately (?) -- only to realize that he's been so inured to women in skimpy clothes from living in the Miamiverse that his littlejohn isn't working. He scuttles off to the bathroom for some Viagra, and when he returns to a darkened room, one of the girls has disappeared and the other one is -- well, not covered in chocolate sauce, as our hapless john surmises. In fact, she is covered in...her own blood. YEEAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!

Alexx and Ryan deal with the body, and discover that one of the unfortunate bachelorette's fingers has an impression of a ring on it. Not just a pale band of skin where the ring was, like everyone else in the world, but an incredibly complicated interwoven pattern that resembles a garden trellis. How lucky for our team and also, may I add, completely plausible!!! I'll give you one guess who ate stole that ring.


While Alexx and Ryan bicker, Delko gets the task of talking to all the women who were at the auction/gangbang. I realize talking to hot extras seems to be a prerequisite of the job, but aren't they just asking for trouble getting Delko to do this? Isn't he the one who had the (admittedly short-lived) sex addiction a couple seasons ago? Even if he doesn't contaminate the potential witnesses with Delko juice, he's still there to leer at them creepily. Though, come to think of it, all the men on the team tend to leer creepily, and Calleigh just gives condescending stares of automatic judgement, so I guess it's six of one, etc. Here we see Delko working what appear to be pool-boy scrubs and lasering a woman into a black-and-white split-screen. Has she appeared to him in a disembodied vision to warn him that if he goes anywhere near her nether regions, his Little Delkoid will suffer? Or are CSI: Miami's producers so desperate to keep viewers' eyes on the screen that soon the show will be nothing but a collection of random floating bikinis interspersed with explosions? I think we all know the answer to that one: both.


Actually it turns out that this woman is actually an undercover cop investigating -- sigh -- a drug cartel. Can't the criminals in Miami have a little imagination? Does it always have to be drugs? What about some clown murders? (Actually I shouldn't be complaining, as this episode has quite a twist later on.) In completely unrelated news, this week marks a return to Alexx's corpse whispering -- she has been mysteriously silent towards them in the past few weeks. Oh, how I missed your creepy, delusional conversations with dead people, Alexx. I await the day when they respond (and knowing CSI: Miami, that day won't be long in coming).

Meanwhile, H asks the guy who was running the charity auction / prostitution ring if he can have the guest list. Charity- Auction Dude agrees, explaining that he was about to have his own date with Sonya, a vaguely menacing Russian chick, but was interrupted. This will be important later. For now, Horatio assesses Sonya with a leer somewhere between judgemental, lecherous, and melty. His standard leer, in other words.

Eventually the murder is solved -- it turns out it was the girl's jealous ex-boyfriend, and the one who gave her her trellis ring. No wonder she left him. Especially fun is the show's implication that because the woman left the guy because she wanted more freedom, she of course became a prostitute, and ultimately got what she deserved (i.e., was murdered for it). Nice. But that's not all, folks -- namely because there are ten minutes left in the episode. Out of absolutely nowhere, we get this exchange:

Horatio: You kidnapped [Charity-Auction Dude's] wife and children to fund your terrorist cell.
Sonya the Evil Temptress / Terrorist: That's crrrrazy.
Horatio: Is it?

Through some truly baffling CSI:Miami-logic, the team has discovered that for no particular reason or philosophy, Sonya and her terrorist buddies are planning to "change the world forever." I cannot stress enough how bizarre and out-of-nowhere this twist is -- and how half-assed it is, too. It's like we wander into it halfway through the plot, the first half of which they apparently forgot to film. Why they would save this bizarre plot twist for the last ten minutes of an otherwise boring episode is beyond me. Why not devote an entire episode to it? Or were they so desperate for excitement that they had to shoehorn an explosion in at the end? At any rate, they just happen to find out that this murky terrorist cell is -- OMG! -- planning to blow up a nuclear power plant. Pretty lucky that they didn't take a long lunch that day, because apparently no other law-enforcement agency (even the unit that was investigating it undercover) was aware of this until our intrepid crime-solvers stumbled upon it. And since the usual protocol for defusing terrorist plots is to call in crime-scene investigators, Horatio is here to save the day!



Oh, how do I even pick out a favorite moment? People shouting "Turkey Point"? Wolfe saying "nucular"? The action subtitles that helpfully keep certain key phrases on the screen longer than others? Horatio's unerring aim for blowing things up? His somewhat confused expression at the end?

If that doesn't make you love this show, I don't know what will.

"Going, Going, Gone" Stats:

Horatio's (Disconcerting) Send-Off Into Credits: A really lame one this week, as if the writers couldn't be bothered to come up with something snappy and just said, "Fuck it, send him out on a Caruso Two-Step, that's good enough." And strangely enough, somehow it was.

Horatio: I want to know who bid what for whom and how much they paid.
Roger Daltrey: Yeeaaahhh?

Ripped-Off Plot of the Week: Several seasons of 24, every procedural show ever.

Natalia's Awful Blouse of the Week: This week accompanied by awful hairdo. It looks like a purple silk shirt with shoulder pads and little cowboys all over it. Did Patricia Field get hold of this show when I wasn't looking?


Number of Caruso Two-Steps: Three. A respectable amount.

Most Ridiculously Fake Camera-Phone Photo of the Week:


Horatio's Most Patronizing Line:

Charity-Auction Dude: Well, you can't just barge into my home.
Horatio: I can...when it's a crime scene. Excuse me. [barges into his home]

Clumsiest Exposition: A tough choice this week, as there were several strong contenders.

Wolfe: What is that, plastic?
Delko: Looks like an aglet.
Wolfe: The covering of a tip of a shoelace?
Delko: That's right.
[They go on to conclude that the light-colored threads in the aglet must mean the shoelaces were light-colored. Clear out Baker Street, we've got a new Sherlock Holmes.]