InsaneJournal

Current mood:	distressed
Entry tags:	recap

RECAP: 8X17--For Gedda
Last ep of the season, and they went out with a bang. Two bangs, actually.
1. Choir is singing "The Storm is Almost Past" as pallbearers carry a casket up the hill. The reason the thing is so very heavy soon becomes apparent--two bodies fall through the bottom of the thing. The hitchhiker is a PI we've seen before.
2. Greg says he's got three publishers looking at his book about the Mob in Las Vegas. I wonder if that's going to be an abandoned subplot or if the writers will refer to it again next season.
3. Warrick pays a debt he owes Nick; it strikes Nick odd, but he takes the money. Next scene, we see that Warrick recognizes the extra body in the casket; he's clearly upset. Warrick's not the only one who knew him; the undersheriff (IMDB says McKeen) knew him too, was partnered with him back in the day. The PI's office and car are "clean as a whistle," but Archie finds computer files that show Warrick had hired the PI to investigate Gedda.
4. Gil tries to reach Warrick, but no luck. When Warrick finally calls, Gil's pissed. He's about to get a hell of a shock. Warrick's at Pigalle, and Gedda's dead. It's Warrick's gun that killed him. And the story really starts.
5. Let me back away now. This was a hell of an episode. Well written, well acted (and Gary Dourdan did a great job when they finally gave him something he could work with), well paced. There were some intense visuals. Warrick on his knees, hands cuffed behind him, completely dazed. The expressions on the team's faces as they came to the scene at Pigalle to find Warrick in the back of the cop car. The brilliant orange of the prison garb against the all black-and-blue CSI backdrop. The breakfast scene, everyone laughing and happy, so relieved. And the last scene, which they chose to shoot from a number of angles instead of only the one.
6. George Eads was terrific here. He can't believe that his buddy would do this, and he won't accept it. He takes Hodges to task for talking to IA, even though it's what anyone would have to do. In the meeting in Gil's office, he's ready to jump down Greg's throat for suggesting that they're going to crucify Warrick. He shows us Nick's loyalty without sacrificing Nick's adherence to the truth.
7. The team really pulls together. We get a tiny scrap of Bobby Dawson, some Wendy, that bit of Hodges, and some Henry, who gets to bring the good news. Day shift, in the person of Conrad Ecklie, does what it can--Ecklie shares reports with Gil. Nick and Catherine follow up the organized crime link to the PI slaying, which is clearly related. Wendy and Greg are working on the blood trace. Gil is doing what he does--looking at everything again--when he sees that the ligature marks from the handcuffs on Gedda's wrists don't match the width of Warrick's cuffs. There's a bit of a leap here, but the idea that Brass has suspected a Gedda mole in the department helps to bridge it.
8. After that, it's a matter of matching up cop prints at Pigalle and related to the PI's death. A cop named Pritchard fits the bill. Charges against Warrick are to be dropped.
9. Gil gets to tell Warrick he's a free man. Warrick still has his job, for the time being, anyhow, and when the moment passed and he didn't say, "I quit," I knew he was a dead man. Still, neither he nor Grissom knew, and he pulls Gil into a big bear hug. This time, Gil Grissom knows what to do with a big hug from one of his team. He gives it back, smiling over Warrick's shoulder.
10. The scene at the diner was so clearly a set up for something awful that I kept waiting for the guns to start blazing. Was Pritchard sitting there at the counter? Was the waitress going to be collateral damage? What about the rest of the team? Because it was clear, would have been clear even if I didn't know it was Dourdan's last episode, that Warrick was going to die. One by one they left. When it was only Nick and Warrick left at the table, I thought, "Oh, don't you dare shoot Nick in the process." When Warrick made it to the car and put the key in the ignition, I said, "It's going to be a Godfather--it's going to blow up when he starts it." But no.
11. And now I have to wonder if, for season nine, which is by all reports the last one, they'll deal with that mole in the department that left Warrick dead in his car in an alley, right after he got his life back.

Tough way to end a season, but an undeniably good episode. See you next fall.