elmyraemilie (elmyraemilie) wrote in csi_lv_slash, @ 2008-01-10 23:01:00 |
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Current mood: | pleased |
Entry tags: | episode recap |
8X11--Bull--crossposted from Oh No Nicky on LJ
Geez. It's been a pretty good season. Too bad there's no more after
1) Who's the young woman singing the national anthem? Was that Jewel? I actually did identify Johnny Cash, who sang backup to that great opening film montage of the bull riders.
2) Cody Latshaw rides, is thrown, catches a hoof to the neck, but stands up to ride again. Only once, though. Third time is definitely not the charm; we see him in the ring, deader 'n a doornail. Gil and Jim are on the scene--Gil points out that Latshaw is not wearing a glove, despite the presence of the bull rope next to the body.
3) Doc gets x-rays on a thumb drive--the guy was practically bionic, he'd been patched up so many times. Cause of death turns out to be a broken neck. There's an x-ray that shows it started as a hairline fracture caused by the bull's hoof. Why exactly a physician took x-rays then either never had them read or let his patient walk away with a hairline C1 fracture is beyond me, but hey--this enables us to have 40 more minutes of episode, so we'll let it ride.
3a) Absolutely fabulous special effect of the "xray" of bull and rider as they buck around the ring. Fascinating.
4) The bull's owner, one Ms. Terwilliker (never did get a first name), explains the whole rope-around-the-testicles myth to Gil: "If I tied a rope around your testicles, would you feel like jumping up and down?" I like her a lot. (Husband suggested here that the answer to that question might best be found with Lady Heather.)
5) It takes some doing, but Gil processes the bull's hooves, and a cotton fiber matching Latshaw's shirt turns up. Cath gives Hodges a lesson in how to use scissors; turns out they both cried at Brokeback Mountain.
6) Nick and Greg draw a hit-and-run. Vic is a pretty young woman, Tiffany Rigdon, laying half-way in the street. Both Nick & Greg are wearing black leather gloves; I don't remember that from previous episodes, at least not used consistently. Not that the gloves and vests aren't quite lovely, but it just struck me as odd.
7) Turns out that the truck that hit the young woman belongs to the dead bull rider. Geez, what a coincidence. Nick's in the lead--he was wearing a red shirt, was he not? Or am I hallucinating? He just looked particularly luscious tonight for some reason. Perhaps absence made the heart grow fonder; maybe it was the very casual control he exerted over the case--he was really very much the man in charge.
8) Keys in Cody's truck and Rigdon's pocket are for the same hotel room. Cath and Nick do the honors; Catherine reads out a poem our cowboy wrote to his inamorata. Nick doesn't seem to think much of it; perhaps he's more the Elizabeth Barrett Browning type. But there's another piece of original writing in the room: a goodbye note from Tiffany. She's marrying another man.
9) Grissom does like that poetry; he likes cowboy poetry in general, finds it a way to organize thoughts and feelings. Nick notes that it's not Shakespeare; of course, he can't know how close to home that comment hits, but Gil replies with one of those epigrams that implies much more than it tells. Nick's left standing in the hallway, staring after his boss, processing some feelings of his own. (This scene is a slasher's wet dream. I was kind of distracted afterward.)
10) Wendy comes in with some romance stories of her own while Nick and Greg are processing the contents of Cody Latshaw's vehicle. Greg appears to be quite ignorant of herd management practices; he also appears not to be able to identify a phallus-shaped object when he sees it. It's a good scene. I like the way these three characters interact--it's a nice easy working relationship, apparently both on screen and in the studio.
11) So someone was using that, erm, bull vibrator (cannot recall the correct name for it) to stimulate WindTwister(?), planning on selling the sperm, which is definitely a lucrative deal. Jim talks to Ms. Terwilliker about this, and she proves that she can handle all kinds of male animals.
12) Turns out that Tiffany's pimp (did I mention that her relationship with Cody was a commercial matter?) is Precious Ricky, aka Eric Hong, who did battle with Nick in a previous episode this season (at least, I think it was this season). Nick thinks he's the one who ran Tiffany down--she's going to leave him to marry an unknown someone. He denies it, but Nick seems to enjoy pulling his chain, so there is banter. This is not a bad thing--Nick is really shown to good advantage in these sorts of scenes.
13) By now we know that Cody Latshaw was already dead when Tiffany was run over; therefore, someone hit her while using his truck. We are now in a country bar--Shooter Jennings is playing, and the girls are all in Daisy Dukes while the boys lean on the bar and sip shooters. It's an odd place for Precious Ricky to meet his end, but he's dead, dead, dead in the stall of the men's room. Shotgun. Greg comments that they've had ___________, cattle rustling and now a shooting at the dance hall (did not get the first part of that trio); "Welcome to the wild west," says Nick. An interview with one of the witnesses at the bar leads them to the preacher who was supposed to marry Tiffany and her new beau, young bull rider Troy; from there, we get the guy's name. She stood him up, or so he thinks.
14) Warrick! There he is. Back from his suspension, I suppose. He looks to the left when he parks in the PD garage and sees Troy sitting in a pickup truck they just described over the radio. He's got a shotgun propped under his chin. Warrick is all by the book now, apparently chastened by his time on the street; he radios back to dispatch that he's got the truck in view before he tries to be heroic.
15) Brass is the initial voice of reason as they all converge on the poor kid's truck, but it's Nick who saves the day, Texas homeboy to Texas homeboy. Troy killed Precious because he thought Precious, being Tiffany's pimp, wouldn't let her come get married. He didn't know she'd been killed.
16) Meanwhile, the search is back at the arena; Nick and Jim are looking for whoever it was that was driving Cody's truck when it hit Tiffany. The bull handler, Cash, tries to cover it up, but Ms. Terwilliker is not a woman of great compassion when it comes to the law--she makes him give up his things to a search, and vials of bull semen are found. They take him in on robbery charges.
17) By this point, we've almost lost track of the fact that it's Cody Latshaw's death that started this whole thing, but Gil brings it back around. Prints on the truck come back to one of the bull fighters, Dustin. The guy runs, but gets nowhere; turns out he and Cash were after a little extra money, and were milking semen from WindTwister on the sly. Cody found them and called them out; the first punch from Dustin finished the job the bull had done on Cody's neck, and he was dead. They put him in the ring to make sure neither of them were implicated. It was just dumb luck that they his Cody's regular hook-up on her way to be married to a completely unrelated bull rider.
18) I do adore the end. Nick holds up the image of the cowboy as a solitary man when Catherine talks about how lonely it must be to be a bull rider (though she dated one, apparently). Gil deduces that the poem about the brown-eyed love was not written for a girl; it was written for the bull, WindTwister. Ah, romance. Sometimes all you want is someone who understands you.
That's all she wrote for season eight. Wow. Hope there'll be a season nine--it's such a shame. So far, this season was the best since season five.