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Tuesday 6 August 2013

CSI:NY 9.2 "Where There's Smoke" Review

                                             
The episode begins with Leonard Brooks (Rob Morrow) talking about the first fire he started to his shrink and how he felt in control.  Today, he traps a woman in a lift and sets it on fire.  When Mac (Gary Sinise) et al arrive, he watches them from outside in his truck, makes you wonder why no one else saw him, I mean all the area's a CS right, not just the lift and surrounding area.  Said Vic is burnt to a crisp and Jo (Sela ward) is horrified at what she's seen, Mac calls it "a torture chamber."   Noticing the pipes across the roof is where the fire started.  Flack (Eddie Cahill) IDs the Vic as Rita and security footage shows Leonard at the scene.   Mac and the team go to Leonard's apartment but he's not there.  Flack wonders what he's up to and Mac responds he had "fifteen long years to plan it."  The phone rings and Mac replies to it as Flack looks through the window but sees no signs of him anywhere.  Oh Flack looking through the window again!  Leonard tells Mac this Vic wasn't innocent.  Danny (Carmine Giovinazzo) and Lindsay (Anna Belknap) process the scene and she finds a hidden camera.

Sid (Robert Joy) conducts the autopsy and finds her internal organs weren't really damaged even though her DB was charred.  The heat was strong enough to kill her but she wasn't burnt by a single flame.   Hawkes (Hill Harper) notices she's wearing a personalized pendant, "To Jen with Love."  Jo ponders why Leonard has started killing people now when he only set fires to damage property.

A new officer arrives at the precinct (groan, ok huge groan)  another Det Angell, only give me Angell (Emmanuelle Vaugier) anyday, at least she was pretty and had a sense of humour to boot.  She and Flack were made for each other.  Apparently Flack was the only one who was meant to be impressed with her skills, what trip over suspect with a chair and give him the boot, not likely.  Oh and give me Lorelei Martins (from The Mentalist anyday too!!  Emanuelle Chiriqui had spunk!)  But Det Jamie Lovato  (Natalie Martinez) is tooooo Angell, even her red suit!!  Yeah I'm possessive of Flack!! ha.  Anyway she demands a desk and excuse me if the Watch Commander handles that why wasn't she expected to have a desk before she arrived, after working narcotics and having her cover blown! For another storyline.

Mac tells Flack that Rita wasn't her real name which is why Flack wasn't able to find anything on her and he finds it difficult to tell him to put out a bulletin, he has to say he needs to send out her face over the wire.  She was hiding from Leonard.  Who watches a man in a park eat his lunch.  He finds his sandwich distasteful and then takes a sip of water, before he falls to the ground.  The DB, Jimmy was suffering from hypoglycemic shock and he was burnt alive from the inside.  Flack sees Leonard on the surveillance cameras in the park.  Lovato finds their connection, Jimmy and Rita were related.  She was a nurse and would have been appointed to look after Leonard.

Lindsay tells Mac that Jimmy was killed by ingesting caesium which was added to his mayonnaise and when he drank the water, this set off the digestive juices in his stomach and reacted to form hydrochloric acid and he burned on the inside.  The deli is where Jimmy used to buy his lunch everday and is opposite where Leonard lives.  Eeww who'd want to get a sandwich from someone looking like Leonard, I mean personal hygiene, general appearance, yuck!  Jo watches endless tapes of Leonard's sessions with his shrink, trying to determine what set him off in the first place, or rather who.  Danny says Jane Fonda wants her workout tapes back and that he doesn't care what his problems are, no one can do something like this.   Also telling Jo he's worried about Mac.  She thinks he's resilient and has done well to return to work relatively unscathed.  My problem here is that Danny has known Mac longer than Jo and if he's worried about him, then she should have taken this on board.

Flack with a smidgen (ha) of help from Lovato finds Rita's real name was Jennifer Brooks (Victoria Hoffman) and she was his foster mother, along with another boy, Jimmy.  So he killed them both, he must have suffered something horrific after his father's death between the ages of 9-12 to make him the way he is. Danny tells them of Rachel (Cara Pifko) she was another foster child.  Adam (AJ Buckley) traces her to a rehab clinic.  Leonard feigns a fire at the rehab clinic and during the confusion of the smoke, he kidnaps Rachel.  Hawkes finds trace at the scene as well as bottles of ammonia/bleach.  So he made it look like there was a fire.  Hawkes finds the trace was silver nitrate but it came back as being ten years old.  Mac inferring it's used for treating burns.

Jo tells Mac about how Leonard spoke of a deer in the castle and how hunters were after it.  Mac infers St Aiden's was the castle and Leonard was the deer.  Jennifer was a burns unit nurse at St Aiden's.  Leonard was abused by his mother and Rachel used to see him, the furnace being on full blast so that's his attraction to fire.  Jennifer did nothing.  Flack and Mac arrive in time to save Jennifer as we get Flack going for a flying leap to get the lighter away from Leonard.  When Jimmy showed up, he thought he'd help him but he abused him too so he wouldn't suffer the same punishment.

Lovato gets her desk with a plant and Flack tells her there's a pool going betting on who will last the longest, her or the plant.  Oh boring, no really and what's it worse is this was going to be the last series and we got lumbered with Lovato as a love interest for Flack, hoping it doesn't go anywhere!!

Leonard is reading Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis and feels the sunlight in his cell, he takes his glasses off and starts to burn the page, then puts the fire out!  Apparently the deli where Jimmy got his sandwich, Birabaum's is meant to be Mac's fave deli as mentioned in 6.17 Pot of Gold.  Where he met Aubrey.  So obviously Mac won't recall the name of it since he's got memory problems, he couldn't recall Christine's fave dish either last ep.

Flack's funny lines: "Turns out Brooks has no known friends or associates, which doesn't shock me having met the man."  Danny surprised Cher had a work out video!  Of course Leonard was going to have some sort of mother complex/issues, it's always related to one parent or another and mother is the obvious choice.

There are a growing number of people on twitter who really think they have a licence to be horrible to people who don't like the same characters as they do on this show.  Which is downright out of order.  Not everyone has the same tastes or has to be a sheep and follow suit.  I don't like Lindsay and I've always admitted as much in my reviews.  Everyone has an opinion which shouldn't be open to abuse by others.  I find this highly troubling, no I'm not going to mention any names but there was one who was abusive towards me and I said let it rip, cos I'm gonna give you hell!!  Stupid woman!!  Apparently she doesn't like it either when someone tweets Carmine or Eddie as if she's got dibs on them both too!!


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