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The final installment of the CSI Trilogy returned home to Las Vegas, where Dr. Ray Langston was still searching for the missing Madeleine Briggs. After the trail goes cold in New York, she is spotted in a Vegas casino and Langston is determined to find her and take her home.
Previous ‘event’ episodes on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, including the special two-parter directed by Quentin Tarantino and the 200th episode directed by William Friedkin (of The Exorcist fame), have always provided bang for their buck. But this Trilogy finale, with the absence of any characters from either CSI: Miami or New York, felt like another routine episode. The only evidence we had that the story had started elsewhere was a couple of emails from Horatio Caine and Mac Taylor glimpsed on Langston’s Blackberry.
Having said that, despite not being as explosive as one might have expected, it wasn't a bad episode, and the original CSI has always been the best of the three. Seeing the aerial shots of the Las Vegas lights felt like coming home, where these glittering colours are contrasted with the cold blues of the Lab and autopsy. The Las Vegas forensic lab isn’t packed with cutting edge, space-age technology, unlike those in Miami and New York, so we are less distracted by the gadgets and more focused on the forensic process.
Another signifier that we had returned to Vegas was the hedonistic world of casinos and party people. Miami might party by day on the beach, but at night Las Vegas comes alive. The LVPD CSIs take this all in their stride, along with the pimps and hoes that go with it, to say nothing of the fact that senior CSI Catherine Willows (Marg Helgenberger) was previously an exotic dancer.
The law’s casual attitude towards this environment came back to haunt them this week, however, as they arrested a dancer in a club at random purely to get information out of her. When they returned her to her pimp and followed her, she paid the price for her ‘carelessness’ in getting arrested with a serious beating by her ‘daddy’. Fortunately for the CSIs she turned out to be crucial to the case, but the attack on her seemed easily avoidable. Sometimes the tactics employed by the LVPD in the form of Detective Jim Brass (Paul Guilfoyle) can be harsh, and Brass (a name that’s a bit too coincidental) is not always the most likeable of characters; but he gets away with it because of his badge, and the fact that the people he insults are criminals.
Brass is also one of the funnier characters on the show, and having previously complained that the show had lost its personality within the formula, it was nice to see the humour return in recent episodes. In one scene towards the end, we see the CSIs’ disappointed reactions as they open their souvenirs brought back by Langston from his time in Miami and New York (how did he have time to buy souvenirs if he was working non-stop on the case?) Most of the comedy comes from the character of Hodges, played by the ever-reliable Wallace Langham, who was finally rewarded this season by a long-overdue position in the title credits.
Hodges' relationship with DNA whizz Wendy (Liz Vassey) could be the next Grissom/Sara ‘will-they-won’t-they’ dynamic, something that’s been missing since both Grissom (William Petersen) and Sara (Jorja Fox) left last year. Speaking of Sara, she was conspicuous by her absence this week, having returned to the show for several episodes since her character’s departure. Grissom’s absence is always felt, however, especially as he isn’t there to deliver the signature one-liners before the title credits roll.
The ending of the episode seemed like an anti-climax given all the action of Parts 1 and 2, but maybe they wanted to end on a more subtle note. Even so, the final scene was a bit of a Horatio moment – in a gesture that was reminiscent of Horatio comforting a grieving mother in Part 1, Langston embraced the returning Madeleine as her saviour, telling her everything would be all right which, to be honest, was what we’d been hoping for since the beginning. Well done Ray.
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