Translate

Saturday 14 February 2015

CSI 15.4 "The Book Of Shadows" Review

                                                Image result for csi the-book of shadows photos
A boy, Mason (Nathan Gamble) films himself and some of his school 'friends' and one of them, a girl, Hannah (Bella Thorne) who lives next door to him, is really mean to him.  With another boy, Turk (Taylor John Smith) asking if he'll help him with some work.  Also a man comes out of the back after an explosion, on fire, being referred to as the burning man.  The janitor, Ed (Skipp Sudduth) tries to douse the flames but it's too late.  David (David Berman) tells Greg (Eric Szmanda) that the man was a chemistry teacher but he was too far gone to be saved. Morgan (Elisabeth Harnois) has already checked out the lab, suited in a 'bunny' suit as Greg calls it and it's okay to go in, so eh doesn't have to wear one, but he refuses to carry her case for her.  Mason and his mother, Rebecca Brewer (Myndy Crist) who is a teacher there, are brought in for questioning since he sent the teacher a text, saying that he'd "better do the right thing or there'll be consequences."  He says he didn't want to harm him, but just threatened him cos he wanted his grade changed to an 'A' and wanted to do well for his mother.  Obviously this ep left little to the imagination, cos although Mason's mother, vehemently objected to Mason being innocent, she infact was my main suspect.  Of course my motive wasn't clear at this point, but it did have something to do with Mason, only this time it wasn't his grade and he also says he had been sick.

Doc (Robert David Hall) carries out the exam on the DB, Chet Messner (Mark Chadwick) and tells Finn (Elisabeth Shue) who's back from Seattle, but we don't get any mention of what she found there, or didn't find there.  He found Chet was formerly part of a gang, similar to a Neo Nazi biker gang. He also finds evidence of cyanide poisoning, which explains Hodges' (Wallace Langham) message to Finn, about the nose knowing all before the nose knows, or along those lines. But hey it's pretty similar to what I used to say about the 'nose knows!'  A while back! Ha.  Doc explains Hodges' nose is able to detect cyanide just by smelling it.

Moran and Greg check out the lab and Greg thinks his prep for an experiment probably went wrong, but Morgan's deciphering her own theory.  She thinks he was doing the Gummy Bears experiment where phosphorus is burned and a bear added to the tube cos the sugar makes an explosion like a Roman candle effect, but it isn't supposed to blow up.  He was working on a controlled experiment so it shouldn't have happened.

Nick (George Eads) finds DB (Ted Danson) still looking over the pics of the Gig Harbour Killer and tells him he thinks Chet was probably making meth cos he had a shipment of red phosphorous delivered to his home.  Officer Mitchell (Larry Mitchell) clears the house and Nick and Crawford (Alimi Ballard) check out the barn which is sprawled with pentagrams and other paraphernalia, which Nick thinks is used for devil worshipping.  Crawford doesn't think so and he finds a spell was carried out using a cauldron at a ceremonial alter, similar to another case.  Nick later returns there with DB to check for evidence and there's a hair inside the cauldron.  They take samples from the candle of a print, and blood, as well as some of the phosphorous.  Nick again remarking on the star.  DB tells him it's nothing to do with devil worship, but more to do with Wiccans, as he finds a Book of Shadows. Chet was a witch.  DB mentioning his parents knew a Wiccan which is why he knows so much about it.

Hodges wears a robe and tells them he's worked out that the spell was a banishment spell and he's a bit of a Wiccan himself, or at least he dated a girl who was one, but wasn't too big on bathing! Saying that Chet was the target so they're looking for a new witch, taken over from him.  There are four other witches part of the coven, only two of them have alibis.  The others are Brewer and Meadows Marissa Jaret Winokur).  As well as the janitor.  He tells them this way of life saved him cos he was addicted to cards after he arrived here and it cleaned him out.  He doesn't tell them who else is in the coven, as doesn't Brewer.  Who is the newest member of the group.

Morgan mentions that the first rule of "being in the coven club is don't mention who's in the coven." Greg has been analyzing Chet's records and finds that he's been giving out steroids, or rather selling them.  He's used a silly system of keeping tabs on the names, such as QB for Quarterback, referring to Turk.  Nick and Crawford head to talk to him at the pool, but Crawford's found him floating in there.  David says he had blunt force trauma to the back of his head, he was hit from behind and someone threw him into the pool.

Morgan tells DB she's found the murder weapon, paper.  It was laced with cyanide solvent and was on the Chemistry test.  She analyzed all of the papers and found this one.  It was in Chet's desk drawer cos she also found a message telling Turk to get it there.  But she found the message in the soundcloud and it wasn't deleted.  She's finding out who sent it and she gets a hit on Hannah.  She denies taking the paper and killing any of them.  But Morgan confronts her with the evidence that she's taking steroids too and she does the butterfly at swimming, thus her name is BFly.  She says she didn't kill Turk but she wished he was dead cos he attacked her.  She was at a woman's shelter getting counselling.  Morgan checks this out and tells her not to despair or give up since there are good people out there.  Referring obviously to Mason, no doubt.

Doc finds a puncture on Turk's arm where the killer withdrew blood from him since the vein didn't fill up with blood again.  Nick tells DB he's suspicious about the 'hocus pocus' stuff and he's found a fingerprint from Turk's car, leading to Meadows.  Also DB asks her about sleeping with a student, they found DNA in the car on the windows and the condom had her prints.  She was sleeping with him, he was 18 anyway, cos her husband is having an affair too.  She's part of the coven but she didn't kill him, though she wishes she knew who did.  She thinks maybe the janitor took Turk's blood.

Back in the janitor's closet, Morgan remarks how his mode of transport, i.e. his broom is still here so he couldn't have gone far.  She notices gravitational blood drops on the floor and this leads to the closet where they find an alter.  He turns up with a knife and is arrested, after trying to curse them. Finn says that the blood at the alter belonged to Turk.  Hodges is carrying out a ceremony of his own and he tells them, he found a cherry opal.  This means the spell wasn't a banishment but a healing spell.  He also found another blood sample and this one had medication in it which is used for chemotherapy, someone suffering from a blood cancer.  The sample belongs to Mason and his mother did the spell to save her son from dying.  He's been given six months.  But she also had to ensure that when the blood was taken from the sacrifice he was also killed.   DB tells Mason he won't be sent to an orphanage and Hannah tells him she can live with them, she was horrible to him and apologizes.

CSI delving into the world of wiccans and witches didn't go down too well with those who are themselves wiccans.  Especially since it didn't accurately portray them or what they do.  It was a predictable ep none the less and one that seemed very deja vu anyway, at least the motive was.  She really believed she could save his son, had given up on everything but at the end of it all, she left him to be alone when he needed her the most.  Trust Hodges to be up on this and even get into garb, as he says this is Vegas after all and anything goes.

Sara and Henry were missing from the ep.

No comments: