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Monday 20 May 2013

CSI 13.13 "In Vino Veritas" Review

A couple arrive at an expensive mansion to a swinging party.  Jonah Drake (Damian O'Hare) is accompanied by Samantha (Nicole Steinweddle) and he leaves her to attend a meeting with Vogel (Edward Herrmann).  As well as speaking with Jack Davari (Jeff Branson).   Drake agrees to buy something.  Greg (Eric Szmanda) and Sara (Jorga Fox) arrive at a CS where blood appears to be leaking from a wine barrel.  Sara has already smelled the decomp and they assume the DB was dumped here since there's no blood.  Greg opens it up to find a DB inside dressed in a tuxedo.  As Sara says he was, "dressed to kill."  Greg adding, "or be killed."  David (David Berman) takes the DB and Hodges (Wallace Langham) examines the barrel for trace.  He knows it was for wine as he can still smell the aroma inside and takes a good long whiff.

Mac (Gary Sinise) arrives to meet with DB (Ted Danson) as he's meeting Christina later who's here for a restaurant convention.  Hodges says he can't be here unless he has clearance and DB says the head of the NY Crime Lab and would know his way around a crime lab.  Hodges wants to shake his hand but has blood on his gloves.  Greg is with Doc (Robert David Hall) as he examines the DB, finding a cufflink with the initials 'JD.'  The Vic was killed with a GSW to his face.  There's also a wound on his hand which was caused by an object with a head, Greg thinks like a nail.

Hodges examines the barrel as he tells Morgan (Elisabeth Harnois) it is charred which adds to the enhanced flavour of the wine.  She'll stick with vodka.  He knows plenty about wine as Elisabetta's family are in the business.  Morgan making another snide remark about Immigration not getting hold of that info and then apologizes.  She hopes her Green card comes through.  The barrel is made of white oak hailing from France.  Sara tells DB that the DB's stomach contents show he had whale.  Leading them to Vogel.

Brass (Paul Guilfoyle) and Sara arrive at the mansion and see Tom (Nichols Bishop) outside with wine.  He'll sell her some for $100,000.  They show Vogel the Vic's photo and the cufflink which he IDs as belonging to Davari.  He runs an auction house here and there was one here last night.  Davari had an argument with Mark Ratelle (Christopher Heyerdahl) who is a famous winemaker from France.  Marc was trying to buy back his own crate of wine from Davari.

Mac and DB arrive at the hotelroom but there's no answer.  DB notices the blood on the handle.  Surprised Mac didn't see this first.  Mac breaks down the door and inside the room is a mess.  Finn (Elisabeth Shue) and Nick (George Eads) process the room.  Finn notices blood on a rock like object but someone's hand must have left the blood there.  Also the table's been smashed.  Thus whoever entered the room was already bleeding, which also explain the blood on the door handle.  There's a bloody shirt found under the bed but whoever had the shirt on wasn't the one whose blood was found.  Henry (Jon Wellner) finds the blood belonged to an unknown female.

Greg and Sara find Marc checked out of his hotelroom and there's a callout to Vogel's.  Here Brass and Mitch (Larry Mitchell) find Marc smashing bottles of wine.  His wine.  He says they're not real and Mitch threatens to taser him even if he is standing in wine.   Morgan finds Marc had a bottle of the 1936 wine which is valued at $82,000.  Hodges finds all of the wine was fake even if it had the expensive labels on it.  He then uncorks the expensive bottle and he and Morgan sample it,, for evidential purposes.  Yeah well the cheese they were having with it, wasn't so expensive.  The fake wine contained radioacive isotopes since after the nuclear attack in World War II, the fallout changed the Carbon 12 and 14 in the soil all over the world, which shows in the grapes used in the wine.  Marc wanted to buy the fake wine since being a vintner  has a reputation with it, but didn't kill Davari.  He also has an alibi.

Nick puts together the broken pieces from the table, didn't those pieces look like they had been cut and not broken, they had perfectly rounded edges.  He finds a print on the glass but no match.  He then finds a diamond too which has a serial number and is traced to Sadat jewellers.  Outside the shop the door is open and there are two DBs.  Finn also finds Christine's phone, which conveniently has Mac's photo on it too.  A print was lifted from the safe which is matched to James Boyd (Kirk Acevedo).  Mac knows the name since he was Christine's former restaurant manager.  She fired him and wanted nothing more to do with him as he was into gambling.  Texts on the phone show she was opening another restaurant in Vegas with Sadat as an investor.  Also the texts sent by Christine to Sadat are very intimate, as Nick describes them.  Finn calling them flirtatious.

The wine was bought by Drake and Brass questions both him and Samantha.  She claims they had an argument over the wine as she didn't want him spending so much money on buying more.  She's from Boston and they don't like to show off their wealth.  The argument over the wine should have made her an immediate suspect.  Greg and Sara check out Davari's warehouse and here they find blood on some corks, as well as on a corking machine.  There is still some trace left inside the machine.  It's an operation set up for making wine.  Davari got the hole in his hand from the machine.  The blood is matched to Tom but contains levels of estrogen in it.

Tom tells them he and Davari were into making and selling fake wine for a fortune.  They collected open wine bottles for their labels and Davari had a knack for making the wine look authentic.  He has an alibi as he was at the Acid Bar and everyone confirms this. Greg looks at Tom's medical records and finds he was a bone marrow donor for a sibling, in this case, Samantha.  She fell in love with Drake and wanted to get out of their scam.  But Davari wouldn't let her go, threatening to expose her as a whore.  Drake wanted to buy more wine but she didn't want him to lose his money.

Sadat;s car is found with traces of blood and in the boot they find a DB of a woman.  There's also white trace on the side of the car which shows Boyd changed cars.  Nick tells DB they've found Boyd and he wanted to tell him first.  DB thinks it's a good idea if Mac was part of the interrogation.  He demands to know where Christine is and he tells them she's in new York.  She was never here.  He was scamming Sadat for money to finance the restaurant so he could pay off his gambling debts.  He used his girlfriend cos she looked like Christine and so the texts were from him.  Things fell apart so he stole the diamonds.  He needs to take them back to New York but his brother has Christine, only both of them will be killed if he doesn't return.  Mac needs to take him back and DB agrees to accompany him too.

Mac and DB met at a forensics conference in Kansas and became friends, who knew?  As he's over here now to surprise Christine with Celine Dion tickets.  SO it's no surprise when they begin an investigation here.  Would have thought they'd have checked airport surveillance at least to see if she actually got on the plane since it was discovered she checked in but isn't found there.  Just about anyone cold have checked in for her and this case had more holes than the wine barrel.  Now they're sloppy and don't check hotel surveillance to see who she may have left with!

Also Hodges becoming quite the wine connoisseur as we find out he's engaged to an Italian was rather convenient.  As was sharing that bottle of wine with Morgan of all people.   Thought she was into vodka!  You'd have thought the wine case would have ended up being connected to the Christine disappearance, but alas no. Don't really see the need for the crossover since it's been done so many times before, with Horatio, Gil, Ray and it wasn't even that compelling a storyline except to have Mac act worried and declare his love for Christine.

The title means "in wine there is truth" in Latin, yet we don't get any answers about Morgan and Hodges and their kiss either!  So we still don't get any answers about Sara's call from Gil.  Keep us waiting why don't you...

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