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Tuesday 7 October 2014

CSI 14.19 "The Fallen" Review

                                               
Debbie Hughes (Scottie Thompson) organizes a shift change and puts her husband, Blake (Mike Faiola) onto the reception desk to deal with the public at LVPD.  After everyone remarking they should get a room, wait they're married so they don't need to, DB (Ted Danson) tells them.  Soon all hell breaks loose, as a teenage boy walks in and pushes into the queue.  Knew what was coming next. He pulls out a gun and shoots Blake, before taking a woman hostage and firing at all the other officers there.  Even shooting Mitch (Larry Mitchell).  He kills one fatally and wounds four others who are rushed to hospital.  The boy enters and takes DB hostage, as well as Jacob (Mark Shively) who is arrested again even after Nick (George Eads) warned him about using lasers on airplanes in the ep??

They have no eyes on him and Brass (Paul Guilfoyle) needs to know what's happening in lockdown. Everyone else is informed of what's happening and Nick and Greg (Eric Szmanda) go over there. Sara (Jorga Fox) heads to the hospital and Finn (Elisabeth Shue) takes over (now why didn't that come as a surprise.)  Sara looks at all the blood at the hospital and finds them working on Mitch.  As Brass sends Debbie to be with her husband who's in surgery.  She tells Sara how she was the cause of him being here since she put him behind the desk, if it was any other day he wouldn't have been there, calling it a domino effect.  Well there's what you'd actually call an admission to being behind it right there.  Didn't trust her anyway (and not cos she was Jeanne in NCIS either!)

Jacob lies bleeding as he was shot by a police bullet and needs a doctor but the boy won't release him. Instead DB manages to talk him into getting a first aid kit after Brass calls and he's allowed to communicate with DB.  He also wants a computer.  Finally they get a picture and sound on the camera feed and Greg volunteers to take the supplies to them, including a bug in the epinephrine. Greg tells DB he got it from his desk, so he knows what's in there.  That being the exact thing the boy picks up.  DB asks him for help with the water bottle and manages to get his fingerprint on there, covered with blood and Nick manages to figure out that there's a print on the bottle which they can scan.  Took a while to do that, hey.

Morgan (Elisabeth Harnois) needs the bullet from Officer Dodd's (Jeff Pierre) DB, which Doc (Robert David Hall) removes, so they can probably match it as well as the gun that the boy dropped on the floor, so they can find out his ID. The bullet doesn't help, but the gun is traced to Arizona, but they don't know how he got hold of it.  The print IDs the boy as Mark Powell (Brenden Meyer) who has a sealed juvvie record.  His mother, Cynthia (Stephanie Michels) is brought in and speaks with him, he's upset that she's here and he realizes DB tricked him into finding out who he is.

Greg and Morgan check out the van he drove here in and find he was living inside it, as well with old blueprints to the building, as well as how to dismantle a gun and put ii together.  They also find e-mails on this computer where he's talking with Lookinglass 49 where they plan an assault on another police station.  He's disgruntled over the police shooting people, such as a homeless man on a park bench.  They don't know what other police station will be attacked.

DB reasons with Mark and talks about his St Christopher cos DB's wife gave him one too.  He lets Jacob leave as his lung is filling with blood and he needs a doctor, he's not a policeman so he shouldn't be here.  His mother tells Nick of how he was close to his neighbour, Elliot, they were like brothers and one day he was shot by the police in a store.  Mark has been in trouble ever since including the vandalism and Nick asks why she didn't do anything when she saw the warning signs.  She said she got him therapy, took him to church and he even went on the police sports programme.  That was another clue.

Greg finds that the e-mails originated in the police station and tells Nick one of the officers was Lookinglass 49.  (The name was a big giveaway cos no man would use that as a name!  Re Alice Through the Looking Glass etc and being associated with vanity.)  Greg has to check 72 terminals and has only done 11.  Of course the trigger happy officer Dolan (Billy Miller) was the one we were supposed to suspect since he wanted to shoot him already and end it all.  DB tells Mark that no one else needs to die today, but as soon as he said that again it was apparent what was going to happen.

He gives up his guns and breaks down in DB's arms cos he wanted DB to kill him cos he couldn't shoot himself, but DB put the gun down.  As they walk out, he reaches for his St Christopher, but the same officer Dolan fires first and the rest follow suit.  Which was a little pointless and crazy since DB knew he didn't have any other weapons.  They find it was Dolan sending the e-mails, but it wasn't him as Sara tells Debbie it was her.  She had a affair with Dolan and she confessed to Sara herself about the dominoes and putting Blake on the desk, this way Mark would come in and shoot him.  She used a 16 year old boy to shoot her husband, but doesn't know why, cos he was beating her, cos he'd never let her go.  Having had an affair with Dolan. Well as said, that was obvious.

 A bit of a hit and miss ep, (no pun) looked like it was trying to ask, do you sympathize with a 16 year old carrying a gun who shoots everything in sight.  Even if he was set up and convinced to do that and his vulnerabilities were preyed upon by someone who should have known better.  The short answer being, it doesn't matter the motive, all killings are wrong.  Especially with what's gone on in   the past with gun crime in the US and is still happening everyday.  With DB saying all he saw was a confused kid, just like his mother did.  That it's not for people to judge but for God and also for God to forgive.  Yet people have to read the warning signs and this ep once again speaks to the issue of gun control.

Secondly, the officers couldn't take him down, but he got off so many rounds and wounded 4, killing 2 in the end.  Why didn't they lift his prints from the gun, clearly he wasn't wearing gloves, so that entire bottle ploy wasn't needed.

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