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Friday 27 September 2013

CSI 11.14 "All That Cremains" Review

                                                                                             
The CSIs investigate the remains of a dismembered man found at a thriftstore. Putting together the pieces, they follow the evidence to someone much closer to the Vic. Ray's ex comes to town.

Two old ladies in a thrift store open boxes to reveal dismembered body parts.   Nick (George Eads) arrives on the CS with Sara (Jorga Fox) this time and not Ray, (Laurence Fishburne) as is the norm; who is busy with his own personal issues.   Det Frankie (Katee Sackoff) tells them his head and foot were found.   Sara admits to shopping at this thrift store, as they have some good things.   Sara doesn't find any leakage in the boxes and Nick believes the rest of the parts must be in the boxes.   They were dropped off by a truck on a pick-up route.   Nick wonders how much the killer thought the DB was worth, "times are tough."  That was the supposedly funny line.

Nick takes Gloria (Tracee Ellis Ross) to see Ray who's conducting an experiment with Hodges (Wallace Langham).   Nick comments he looks more like "Dr Dre than Dr Ray."  Ray can't believe she's here.   Hodges has to have his say, interrupting them to add she's got a good man here and they're all family now at the lab.   His present case could be described as fun, if the DBs are omitted.   He welcomes her and she drops a bombshell: she's getting married to Phil and she invites Ray to the wedding.   Not many people invite their exes to their wedding.  So perhaps they must have parted on good terms, but why they did isn't mentioned here.   She wants Ray to meet him.   Was that to gain Ray's approval, show off Phil, or just to show she's moved on and he should do the same.   She shows Ray her engagement ring, but she doesn't seem to notice Ray is still wearing his ring.

Nick with the DB's head in his hand when she's leaving was kind of funny.   He points Gloria out to Sara and David (David Berman).   Sara calls her pretty and David says he's been here two years and he's never met her, even Doc Robbins (Robert David Hall) hasn't met Gloria and he and Ray are meant to be best buddies.   Nick thought she would be more "bookish."  Why was that, cos Ray's a doctor and more into his books and academia.   Oh the gossip in the lab!  Nick points out the Vic had dirt in his mouth.   Sara stipulates if he was buried he'd have had dirt all over him.   Nick finds there's someone else in his mouth and David indicates the presence of bone fragments.   Sara notices the ash and Nick calls it cremated human remains.   Sara: "Cremains."  Doc Robbins thinks a flexible saw was used to cut the parts.   Ray presumes it was more likely a wire.   Doc also finds the presence of contusions on his chest.   He's sent them for IR (Infra red) photos so they'll have to wait and see what they show.   Doc Robbins suggests Ray and his wife should come over for dinner and he didn't get a chance to meet her.   Ray would have introduced her, had he known she was coming.   Ray doesn't like to share his feelings so easily.   Ray says he was alive when the cremains were fed to him and the cremains were the murder weapon.

Henry (Jon Wellner) finds alcohol and sedatives in the Vic.   Ray says he was comatose when he ingested the cremains.   The killer tied him up, poured cremains in his mouth and asphyxiated him.   Hodges would prefer burial to cremation.   He wouldn't like to be a mobile urn and would like a tombstone, so people can "worship" him.   Together he and Nick find bone, a gold tooth, hip replacement and Nick comments if the crematorium were doing their job this wouldn't happen.   Ray meets Phil at the bar.   Ray calls her "fashionably late" and she walks in saying Ray almost didn't make it to their wedding, she can talk.   Didn't know what to make of her, she appeared to be rubbing it in Ray's face, the whole, she's found someone else and is getting married, thing.   Also seemed a bit scatty.   Phil notices Ray's ring and thinks he's already re-married.   Funnily enough she didn't mention his ring.   Ray's coming to the wedding.

Greg (Eric Szmanda) gets a hit on the gold tooth, belonged to a death row inmate who died two years ago.   The other DNA was from an unknown female.   Nick and his shady crematorium comment again and that it's burning more than one body at a time.   Nick and Frankie give chase at the crematorium and Greg stops them in their tracks with a plank of wood.   Frankie identifies the unknown female DNA cremains as Sabrina Pose.   The wife of the Vic, Ron Pose (Peter Smith).   They had a daughter, Camryn (Madison Davenport).

 Sara indicates the house across the street was the pick-up for the thrift store.   Nick and Sara process the Vic's house.   Nick notices the void on the mantlepiece where the urn probably was.   In the bedroom, Nick finds ash on the lampshade and Sara finds ligature marks on the bedpost.   There are cremains in the bed.   Directionality from the ash reveals Ron was dragged from the bed by his feet and they follow an ash trail to the bath, where he was dismembered.   There are fresh cut marks on the tub.  Sara finds traces of blood around the bathtub ring.

The house across the street belonged to a minister (Sean O'Bryan).   Camryn gets home from school and tells them she looks after herself.   Nick prevents her from going into the house and she's to stay with child services.   She was just feigning grief.   Greg gets a hit off the work card belonging to a dancer, Sydney (Christine Milian) Ron's ex girlfriend.   Her prints are everywhere.    Dancers clothes were found in the boxes and Greg surmises she came back to exact her revenge.   Ray comments her actions indicate "she's a monster."  Ray's usual choice of word there.   See Blood Moon episode where he said to Nick they deal with monsters all the time.  Officer Mitchell (Larry Mitchell) tells Sydney she needs to come downtown with them.   She saw Ron two weeks ago, he cheated on her.   She didn't want to see him and that's why she didn't collect her things.   She is genuinely shocked that he's dead, and I believed her.   She was too obvious a suspect anyway.    Ray thinks she could have killed him, Sydney loved him; but he had many women and provides Ray with a list of names.   She's also sincerely concerned about Camryn and those aren't the actions of a killer, or a monster.   Ray asks for her DNA.

The minister lived there 15 years and he knows Sydney better than he knew Ron.   Camryn was always alone even when her mother was alive.   Being an only child, they had a connection to each other.   See in the flashback it's apparent Cameron's heart was broken when Sydney left.   They fought about some videos with girls.   They go over the evidence and Greg says they have plenty of it.   Nick comments they're dealing with the cleanest house in town and all the prints are explainable.   All the blood evidence belonged to the Vic and Sara adds the killer knew the house.   Nick still believes Sydney killed him.   Greg returns to the house and finds the tapes in the safe with women's names on them.   They turn out to be dance auditions.   Out of 30 tapes, number 15 is missing.   Sara questions Trufant (Ian Reed Kesler)  the name on the tapes.   He explains he made the tapes for Ron as potential women he could date.   He wasn't a club goer and he gives them the original of tape 15.

It's Sydney's audition with her guitar and she's wearing kneepads.   Sara believes the cremains could be Sydney's way of telling Ron he belonged with his wife.   Sara doesn't find any prints on the guitar and four strings are missing.   Sydney tells Ray she didn't want anyone seeing her tape, not even them since she didn't want anyone to know she fell for it.   Ray says the guitar strings were used to tie him up and the kneepads were used to hold him down whilst he was choking.   There were two sets of DNA on the kneepads, the minor donor was Sydney but the major donor had half of Ron's DNA; meaning it was Camryn.   She claims she didn't kill him, nor did she use Cameron to do it.   She questions her.   Camryn says Ron was angry she was playing Sydney's guitar and told her to throw it out since "Sydney's dead."   She never had any parents until Sydney and she wanted him dead like her mother.   Nick has a hard time believing Camryn killed him because all the children he's come across, at least the majority of them; have been victims of crime and not killers themselves; leaving him speechless.

Camryn shows Sydney the urn as proof she killed him.   Ray tells Sydney it's hard to accept the truth about people they love and "denying it doesn't make it go away."  He's also talking about himself here too.   Camryn still loves Sydney.   Ray opens up to Nick, as I thought he would.   He and Gloria were divorced two years ago, hey that's when he got here so maybe his work was one of the reasons for their marriage breakup.   She was the best part of his life.   Nick says he thought that was being here with them.   He loved her and misses her, but she had a look in her eyes showing she's happy.   Nick believes if she's happy then Ray should be happy too and calls Ray a good guy.   He advises Ray to remove his ring before the wedding, which he does.

Good to see some more bonding on the part of Ray and Nick, even if David said earlier on that Ray and Doc Robbins are best friends.  Camryn was ruthless, she didn't even show any remorse and thought only about herself and her own happiness.   A bit of a gruesome episode showing how her grief and loneliness led to so much anger and bitterness.   The flashbacks to the killing and the dismemberment showed just how cold blooded she really was and yet after it all, she still expected Sydney to see her in the same way.

Catherine (Marg Helgenberger) and Brass (Paul Guilfoyle) were missing this episode.

Also in CSI:NY Stella (Melina Kanakaredes) told Mac (Gary Sinise) he should take off his wedding ring since he'd been wearing it too long.   Ian Reed Kesler played officer Shelley in the season 7 NCIS episode Reunion.

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