What's it like to fit in somewhere? At 17, Carensa Sanders wants to know; living in Casper, Wyoming is getting old and she's ready to leave home. She applies to be a SuicideGirl, and one year later, performs in a crazy punk show with the Girls in Queens. Unfortunately, she doesn't survive the night.
The CSIs take in the scene; Carensa, or Omen, as she's now called, lies dead in an alley only blocks from the club. Though she's covered in what looks like blood, Danny deduces it's only cherry syrup. Cause of death is determined to be massive hemorrhaging in the brain from a stab to the top of the head. Her hand has been stomped on as well, but why? Sheldon focuses his attention on the girl's tattoo, which reads "Til Death Do Us Part, Omen 'n …" He can't read the name because it's been obliterated by a stab wound.
Meanwhile, Stella and Mac head out to join Flack in Rucker Park to cover the murder of a basketball player, Alonzo "Chopper" Tevis. He was homeless, but won fifty grand playing in a one-on-one tournament against an NBA star the prior day. Too bad he won't have a chance to enjoy his winnings. He left a blood trail, crawling to the park as he was dying, and Mac is confused by strange spatter patterns that don't indicate where Chopper was first taken out, or how.
Here's what I thought:
Spoiler:
Okay, this was the first time I've ever watched any of the CSI family of shows. My wife and I watched because it started right after we finished watching our TiVoed Jericho and she wanted to check it out.
Meh.
First, you've got police doing these amazing science fiction things in the forensics lab.... automatic laser retrieval of fingerprints from a broken glass shard rendering into a 3D morph of peaks and valleys that are instantly cross-referenced against a database to yield the suspect's name, address, bowling average, current GPS location and digestion status of his most recent meal? Gimme a break.
Second, in a move I've only seen on Murder, She Wrote, the show goes to it's last commercial break, and THEN introduces brand new evidence leading to brand new characters from out of town who just happen to have the murder weapon lying in their partially open suitcase where Lieutennant Dan can eyeball it, resulting in an unforced confession. The rest of the episode leading up to this point -- where they hunted down and interviewed other suspects after using the lab wizards to conjure up their next lead -- was seemingly unnecessary, it was probably just an excuse for CBS to sell advertising time while they played along with the plot until the writers decided they had enough material to let them skip over the rest and introduce us to the REAL evidence and the REAL killer.
There must be a reason CBS has three (?) of these shows currently airing, but I'm suspecting that it's not because of the sophisitication and education level of the average Prime Time TV viewer. I'm glad I got to see one of these, so now I can summarily dismiss all of them.
