CSI Miami Episode 805

The day starts ordinarily enough, with Eric dropping by the creepy ME’s hospital to check in with his doctor, then chat with his old friend. In an amazing coincidence there’s an emergency case just as Eric’s leaving. A young woman comes in, barely able to breathe, accompanied by her boyfriend. Eric takes the boyfriend aside to talk, where he announces his plans to propose to the girlfriend, which means, based on the laws of television writing, that she must immediately die, making it more tragic. She does, and then Creepy ME tells Eric that the boyfriend probably did it, well within earshot of the guy, making this perhaps the first ever pre-credits murder accusation in the show’s history!

Yeaaaaaah!

It seems that the girlfriend died of kidney failure, probably from poison! Yeah, it seems that Jesse’s Black Sidekick has now officially replaced the British guy in the lab. Weird. Eric interviews the boyfriend, and hears the girlfriend felt sick after going to a restaurant earlier that week. As Eric questions him about the poison he interprets boyfriend’s shaking and sweatiness as suppressed guilt, rather than considering the fact that he may have been poisoned as well.

Yup. Eric’s not quite ready to get back to work if he missed that one. See the guy falling over? Eric thinks he’s being attacked.

Apparently the gunshot wound turned him into a moron.

Eric swings by the altar of science and tests her blood – it was full of E.Coli bacteria! For some reason Smuggy doesn’t think it’s their bailiwick to cover food safety issues, but he’s overruled, and the team gets to work! Eric and Callie head over to the restaurant where the poisoning occurred, who refers them to their produce grower.

Said grower turns out to be Jack Conley, the time travelling demon from Angel! He shuts down their investigation because they don’t have a warrant, but then they get back on the case by threatening to check if his workers are illegal immigrants! All of it seems to be a waste, though, since none of the food turns out to be contaminated. So where else were the vegetables that would have allowed them to be filthified? The delivery trucks, of course!

Normally that would seem like a bit of a truck, but when they find the head of the trucking company tries to flee when he sees Horatio and Frank coming. He claims to be uninvolved in the contamination, explaining that there’s no plausible way E.Coli could have gotten onto the produce through shipping. So the grower must have been the problem… but how? Through tainted water, of course! It seems they don’t have enough for a warrant, though, and are forced to ask for permission from head of Fake Archer Daniels Midland, the agri-business giant who owns the guilty farm.

If you’re wondering how we can be sure at this point that FADM is the guilty party, it’s simple – the president is played by Steven Culp:

With all legal options set aside, Jesse, Smuggy, and Black Sidekick head out to illegally collect some water from the farm, hoping to get the health department involved. They do this by wandering all over the farm grabbing water from the sprinklers, which it takes forever for the workers to notice them doing. Luckily the worker who corners Jesse with a shotgun doesn’t work for FADM – he’s one of the people they’re trying to force out! And how do they do it? By tossing patented seeds onto neighbouring farmland, then claiming that the farmer stole them! Diabolical!

Even worse, the whole E.Coli thing happened because FADM runs a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation right next door to the farmland, and doesn’t dispose of the waste properly! Man, this company is just a complete environmental disaster, isn’t it?

Although if their sanitary conditions are this bad I’m not sure why there’s only been two cases of poisoning.

Horatio takes all the evidence to the health department, but she’s too cowardly to do anything about it because FADM is an incredibly powerful company, and it’s illegal to publicly question produce safety in the state of Florida! Oh, and it turns out that she’s not just a coward, she’s also corrupt – she used to work for FADM!

We’re closing in on the 30 minute mark, so it’s time for another twist… the boyfriend didn’t get E.Coli poisoning – he’s been poisoned with a horse of a different colour! Not literally, of course. Amazingly enough it was also FADM’s fault – his last meal was made up of genetically engineered corn. Studying the corn leads to something amazing – a montage that goes on for so long even the characters get annoyed with it!



Evidence that the writers know this is a comedy, but no one else does: 2, evidence that this is an actual serious drama: 0

Also, maybe she could have worked faster if she didn’t have to operate in three windows at once.

A look into the tome of science proves that the genetically engineered corn has been made more digestible by adding botulism to it! Which means that two utterly different and preposterous side effects from two different products that FADM makes killed two people at the same table – oh, that’s right, the boyfriend was killed by botulism. I neglected to mention that earlier.

In a hilarious attempt to justify his actions, Culp explains that botulism only shows up in the corn less than 1% of the time. Which isn’t a comforting number when we’re dealing with food, since thousands and thousands of ears of corn are pulled from every acre, that would mean hundreds and hundreds of people would be dying from botox at every harvest.

Yeah, they’re going to notice that.

Culp admits to all of his evil practices to Horatio, explaining that he’s done nothing illegal, and can’t be charged with a crime – but then Horatio reveals that he taped Culp’s ‘confession’, and is going to give it to the families of the dead people, allowing them to sue FADM more effectively. I’m not sure that an unknown recording is entirely admissible, but that’s for the Florida courts to decide. And now that the corrupt judge is in jail, maybe they’ll have a shot!

Then it’s time for the amazingly creepy coda, where Eric swings by the morgue and looks sadly at the boyfriend and girlfriend, who are on side-by-side morgue slabs.

That’s creepy. Creepy ME-level creepy. It gets even weirder, though, when Eric takes the engagement ring out of boyfriend’s effects and puts it on girlfriend’s finger.

Which, if I’ve got my civil law down, makes them ghost-married.

Eric then talks to Callie about his plans for leaving CSI because he’s seen too much tragedy. But they’re apparently not going to break up. Which means occasional guest-starring appearances?

Then we cut to Jesse, who’s out surfing and cleaning up the beach.

Christ, we get it. You want us to like Jesse. You gave him a black sidekick, you have him going out of his way to help the downtrodden, you even have Smuggy act even more like an insufferable prick when Jesse's around to make him look better by comparison.

We understand that we’re supposed to like the new guy. But you don’t need to go so far as to show him recycling. If you’ve got so much time to kill just show us some more story.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, while Horatio poses, everyone else goes to work at a community garden. Cause man, that’s where the real people are, don’t you know?

THE END