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Tuesday 8 July 2014

CSI 14.6 "Passed Pawns" Review

                                                 
Jeremy Sikes (Eric Frentzel) a homeless man enters Pike's Casino and goes on a winning spree.  The pit boss, Bobby (Steven Bauer) thinks he's cheating and replaces the dealer, Kristi (Shannon Lucio) but Jeremy decides he wants to quit now.  Should've quit while he was ahead.  Bobby offers him a room where he can clean up and then come back and play again but he wants to cash out.  Jeremy is later found in an alley, apparently stabbed.  Morgan (Elisabeth Harnois) is at the CS when Sean Yeager (Matt Davis) turns up from Dayshift, telling her it's his case since her shift was over two hours ago.  He wants to get in touch with her Supervisor, cue DB (Ted Danson) who is called by his wife, Barbara (Peri Gilpin) as he needs to pick her up from the airport.  He mentions Sean being CSI 2 and he needs one more case solved for promotion.

They work together and Sean finds a bloody briefcase in the dumpster.  David (David Berman) says there wasn't a wallet and Sean says he already looked which riles him up cos he can't touch the DB without his say so.  Sean just looked and there weren't any bulges.  Back at autopsy, Doc (Robert David Hall) finds the wounds look familiar as two of them seem to be bigger than the others and thinks it could be a familiar pattern.  Greg (Eric Szmanda)says he'll check the cases to see if there's anything there.

Morgan processes his clothes and finds a pawn ticket for Ruby's pawn shop.  It's called Ruby's but is run by her sons, Kyle (Max Adler) and Zeke  (Harrison Thomas).  Here she finds that Jeremy pawned a watch and a ring. Zeke knows the name and address of Jeremy from memory and what he pawned.  The watch is found to belong to Simon Holt who happens to be Kristi's husband.  She also has disappeared, so Morgan and Finn (Elisabeth Shue) posit that Jeremy and Kristi were both cheating together at the poker table and she killed him to take the money. Stabbing him in the back.  Morgan doesn't believe in coincidences and she doesn't believe in luck either. Sean saying they should call it destiny then or fate.  Also adding that he's Rizzoli and she's Isle's.

So Hodges (Wallace Langham) and Henry (Jon Wellner) analyze the cards at the casino and the shuffling machine and find that everything was in proper order.  Hodges agrees with Morgan however that Jeremy must have been cheating.  They also watch the video from the casino but she's not cheating.  Also noticing that Bobby talks with Alonso Pierce, thinking he was sent to kill Jeremy.  Especially since Jeremy wrote 'De' with his own blood.  Kristi's husband was killed in a home invasion and they believe she hired Jeremy to kill him. Considering she didn't report the expensive watch as stolen.  However video also shows that Kristi was being interrogated by Bobby at the time of Jeremy's murder.

Kristi is found and interviewed by Brass (Paul Guilfoyle) as she says she was hiding out from Bobby.  She claims she found her husband dead when she returned home and she bought the watch for their anniversary. His life insurance paid off his debts.  Of course it had to be a woman cos in their flashbacks, the outline of the killer is that of a woman, not many women were in this ep, aside from Kristi and Ruby (Illeana Douglas) narrowing down the suspects.  So if Kristi was with Bobby, that leaves Ruby.

Alonso  is seen on footage from the pawn shop, bringing in some speakers and a stereo.  Zeke gives them to Morgan and she finds money inside.  He's impressed she can use a drill.  Sara (Jorga Fox) walks in and watches Morgan and looks at the photos.  She notices Alonso doesn't have any blood on him and he didn't have time to change his clothes from the time stamps on the videos.  Instead, Brass finds Bobby with a gun, having shot Alonso and stuffed him into the boot of the car.  Bobby admits he did it cos he was old school, it's not like the days when Sam Braun used to run the casinos, where they'd threaten the players.  He didn't tell Alonso to kill Jeremy but just rough him up and get the money back, but he stole from him.  Also it's a question of honour. He tells Brass he wants to be put in prison with the old boys, out of honour.

Greg tells Morgan that Doc found the tip of the knife was actually a bullet, so Jeremy was shot twice and the killer made it look like he was stabbed, thus trying to hide the actual method of killing.  There was an old case like this where an informant was stabbed after being shot and the suspect was Delgado (Jason Manuel Olazabal) a member of the Mala Noche who has moved here from Miami.  Well they had to get that name mentioned in Vegas, as an homage to CSI:Miami possibly, ha.  Delgado was involved in a home invasion a few months ago and was shot.  He survived and he is the owner of the ring Jeremy stole.

Delgado runs a strip club and tells Brass he didn't report the ring stolen, thus he can't have it back.  Also saying he couldn't have shot him cos he was with his elderly mother.  DEA surveillance shows this is true.  It transpires there were similar home invasions, where one member was found dead.  Jeremy was actually being hired to kill them and then was given the unreported items as payment.  A search of the pawn shop reveals all the items that were stolen and in all cases, an item wasn't reported as stolen by the owners.  Kristi admits she hired him to kill her husband who was cheating on her and also used to beat her up as DB surmizes.  But she never knew that Jeremy was the man who had done this for her.  As Morgan puts it, that was just dumb luck.  She mentions the pawn shop and that Ruby had set up the hits from there.

The pawn shop has been shot up by Delgado and he's taken Zeke in return for the drugs that Ruby stole. Kyle is killed and Brass confronts Delgado telling him the drugs are gone and he's never getting them back. Brass shoots one of his men in the knee and he then says it's up to him if he wants to die.  Zeke is found safe and Sean tells Morgan she has a fan.  She replies he's just impressed with her power took skills.  She and Sean will see each other around and he lets her have the case cos she worked on it and deserves it.  Oh look, potential love interest for Morgan in the form of Alaric from the Vampire Diaries.  Okay I had to get that in, ha. But don't tell Hodges or Greg! Obviously she and Sean were going to argue as soon as she got on the scene and it seems Morgan may follow Ruby's advice when she tells her he's a keeper.

Elsewhere things looked to be prickly between DB and Barbara as she arrives at his office.  She knows he's busy and she tells him that Charlie has been offered a scholarship at East Indiana, but wants to tell DB in person.  At the end they find time for dinner, as Finn is covering for him.  She tells him she knocked on the door of the house in Seattle they always wanted to buy.  She's ready for that now cos he can't work forever and it's getting to him and something's bothering him.  He denies this but also says they have a house here. He promises when he's ready they'll knock on the door together, but for now he's staying.  She says he's got a family in his CSIs.

Brass also had some hairy moments this ep as if he was goading Delgado into making the first move, so he could have a shoot up.  Telling Delgado, "we all gotta die sometime."  Seems he is still affected by the events with Ellie.  Showing the differences between DB and Brass in terms of his doing the job for so long and maybe it's about time he calls it quits. Whereas DB still wants to continue, he's still go so much to do.  Brass is very much a man from the old days of Vegas and one reason why I think producers wanted to bring in some changes and have his character bow out.  Still a shame though cos he had the best one liners in many of the eps!

Somehow I didn't really enjoy this ep that much, it was mostly done before and used a tried and tested storyline of a casino winner getting killed apparently for his takings and then uncovering some other plot twist which wasn't that interesting.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

what is kristi's husband who died name !!

mila said...

Not sure of the actor's name, as he had a small part he was probably credited at the end of the episode, so maybe you can find his name there. Most sites only list 'first billed' cast. Maybe someone else can help on who played Simon Holt in this ep?