CSI

So far this season, CSI has forced viewers to suffer through plots such as sharks in public pools and vampire beheadings by werewolves. Along those ridiculous lines, "Sqweegel" just threw more gasoline on to the fires of stupidity.

This week’s episode was so bad I am actually at a loss for where to start. The only fair way to begin is with the one part of the show that I liked, that being Ann Margret as Margot Wilton. Margret still looks good and her interactions with Langston were very well done.

With those two minutes out of the way, we can now look at the other 40 minutes, or as I like to call it “40 minutes of my life that CBS owes me.” I am just going to break this down one at a time:

First and foremost: the killer’s name. He is referred to by the little girl witness as “Sqweegel." Brass tried to say it’s the noise made by the car washer blades against the car. It would be more believable to say the writers had just finished a Lord of the Rings marathon and decided they wanted a Smeagol of their very own.

Wait, let’s not forget the name he left on a receipt: Ian Moone, which Ray quickly figured out was an anagram for “I am no one.”  Oye.

Then we have Smeagol, er.. Sqweegel, wearing a suit of patent leather from head to toe. I won’t argue the trope that he doesn’t leave evidence behind. However, wearing a full suit of leather and hiding in the back of an SUV (in the tire well) in the desert is beyond stupid.

Pets have died when they are left in cars with the windows open.  He would have died of heat stroke in minutes. Actually, that would have been a more believable case for the team, “How did this leather clad corpse get stuffed into the tire well?”

Ignoring the name and the costume, I just did not get why he was walking foot/hand, hand/foot. What was the frakking point? I also sat with one eyebrow raised the entire time he was getting Margret to confess as he kept twisting around for no reason at all. Seriously, wasn’t the full leather suit with a zipper for the mouth freaky enough?  Have the writers ever heard the term “less is more?”

The writing also fell apart around the character of Ray Fink, the firebug paramedic that turned up dead. I knew the moment he said hello to Nick that he was either going to die or be the killer, as the CSI team never stops to chat with “random paramedic #1” without it being part of the plot. Honestly they should have just put him in a red shirt from the beginning. Ray being another victim of Sqweegel, completely off stage, just points out the huge hole in the plot of: “one death does not make a serial killer.”

What truly made this episode one of the worst ever? Langston. First, he started discussing the “Hourglass of Evidence” as if the others have never heard of it. Isn’t Ray the newest member to CSI? Wouldn’t the rest of the team be teaching him this lesson?

Second, Ray is supposed to be a medical doctor. What doctor is going to take hour’s old stitches out of a huge gash to take pictures? Anyone who has every had stitches (especially anyone who has torn a stitch out) will tell you that there is no way a doctor would have risked opening the wound again being by taking the stitches out just to get a picture of the cut without them.

Again, we had no sign of our new bomb tech and it looks like they have replaced the bomber as a recurring bad guy with Sqweegel, given they didn’t catch him. I am baffled by the writing the season. At the rate this show is going, it may be my final season watching.