Last Week's CSI Miami

You may notice that CSI: Miami skipped the end of October, robbing us all of the joy of discovering what Horatio Caine would dress as for Halloween. It’s not a cheat, though. Apparently they just don’t have Halloween in Miami. Who knew?

Someone’s in a costume, anyway, as a bride freaks out because her husband and his groomsmen have yet to appear for the wedding ceremony. Obviously she doesn’t know that she’s on CSI: Miami, or else she’d understand that weddings tend not to go well there. Although at least for once it looks like the bride isn’t going to get shot on her wedding day.

Hey, the father of the bride is that guy from Murder One! Neat!

As anyone who’s ever seen a television show can predict, the wedding turns out to be nothing but hitches, as some groomsmen are lying, unconscious, in a fountain, surrounded by human blood! And they’ve got no idea where the Groom is, but that’s probably his blood!

Oh, look! Someone in the CSI: Miami writer’s room saw The Hangover during the break!

Also, Jessie’s black sidekick has been added to the opening credits. Because the show didn’t have a big enough cast already.

Now I’m just being a jerk for no reason, because if Christian Clemenson was in the opening credits, I’d be cheering. Of course, as the coroner, he might serve some use in episodes, while black sidekick is just yet another lab tech.

Time for some motives, as the bride announces that she used to date the best man back in college, giving him a motive to kill the groom! Also the groomsmen’s lack of memory is caused by a drug, but it’s unclear whether those drugs were taken voluntarily or not. Because of the memory loss, remember? They process the groomsmen, but come up dry – the fountain was chlorinated, destroying all the evidence.

Wait, I’m unclear if one of the groomsmen was the best man who was obsessed with the bride. The bride mentioned his name, but neither of them have been referred to by name. The team raids the hotel room where the party was being held, and find a pair of panties leading them to Miami’s hot new strip club, ‘perspire’. Seriously. Of course, this is CBS, so it’s one of those strip clubs where everyone is surprisingly covered up.

The stripper at the club announces that she handed over the underwear, but claims that she didn’t drug the two men in order to get bigger tips. The key piece of information here is that ‘Sean’, the stalkery best man, wasn’t at the strip club. So, wait, if they got the drugged alcohol at the strip club, and he wasn’t there, how did Sean wind up with amnesia?

No one asks this question, though, since the video evidence proves that the bride followed them to the club and saw the groom with strippers, even though he specifically promised he wouldn’t go to a strip club. Seems like she’s overreacting a little, it’s not like they were hiring prostitutes, but I’ll admit that I’m not exactly knowledgeable about bachelor party etiquette.

Science finally starts pulling its weight, and turns up a legible receipt from one of the groomsmen’s pockets. It turns out to be from a bail bondsman – Sean, the stalkery one, was under put under the arrest the night before for offending some kind of hotel magnate, and the bail was paid by the father of the groom! Who claims that the money was a gift to the groom. He gets out of the interview without being accused of murder the way Bride and Sean were, so he’s still possibly on the hook.

A conversation with the Hotelier reveals that he was throwing a hot party the night before, and the three men showed up, extremely drunk and rowdy. Sean was arrested, and the other two made a getaway in a stolen limo! The Hotelier also reveals that he sent a private security guard after the limo, and look where he wound up:

That seems to be a pretty good clue about where the blood came from, doesn’t it? Socrates Poole drops by to examine the corpse, and determines that he’s got skin under his fingernails and green fleck that matches something from the other groomsman’s clothes. Smuggy tries to take it, but Socrates won’t let him, which leads to an exchange in which someone finally calls Smuggy out for being a snarky dick.

As a result, I am happy. Especially because it was Socrates Poole who said it.

The flecks turn out to be really old green paint. As in pre-WW1! Naturally the Hotelier turns out to have been an art collector. Did the groomsmen steal something? This leads to an absurd flashback, in which we get a look at Jack, the other Groomsman, using a mini-crossbow to shoot bolts into the stolen painting.

Wait, a mini crossbow? What kind of party was this? This scene also wraps up a bit of a plot hole, for those of us wondering how Jack was able to pay Sean’s bail with a cheque made out to groom. Well, it turns out that the cheque wasn’t made out to the groom at all, and it was also blank. Which seems less like a ‘here’s some money to help you get started’ gift, and more like a ‘write in the number you want so that you’ll get lost’ gift.

Although that still doesn’t explain why he would write it out to cash, which is incredibly suspicious and really should have been asked in the interview.

It’s not, though, because smuggy and black sidekick are too busy wondering why the Hotelier had such a bland painting of a deer in his collection:

Naturally science is there to lend a helping hand. Through use of x-ray glasses they discover that there’s a Thomas Crowne thing going on, where a stolen Matisse had something else painted over it! They rush back to the Hotelier’s estate to arrest him for the theft and murder, but when he doesn’t immediately confess, we know that he can’t be the killer, because he’s been officially accused.

Bookending this 20-second interrogation is an hilarious incident from the ‘police work takes longer than that’ file. When they’re walking up to the house Horatio tells Smuggy to ‘tear [the place] apart’ looking for the groom. Exactly 28 seconds later Smuggy walks back out, announcing that there’s no sign of the groom.

Yeah, that’s not enough time to thoroughly search my place, and I live in a four-room apartment. Do you have any idea how many closets there are in a 20-room estate?

Back at the lab they find the groomsmen’s skin under the security guard’s fingernails, and their fingerprints in his blood on the limo. And since the murder weapon was the car door, they just have to figure out who did it! Again, science picks up the slack, coming down from its mountain on high to reveal that the killer was left-handed! And since only one of the groomsmen was, he must be the killer!

Despite not remembering, they still confess to the murder, leaving just one question – where’s the groom? An out-of-the-blue phone call from the strip club’s manager provides the necessary information – the stripper is quitting! I’m not sure why the manager called the cops to tell them that, but whatever. Jesse illegally searches the stripper’s bag, then uses the evidence he illegally finds there (the memory drug, duh) to threaten her into confessing her part in the groom’s disappearance.

Because she doesn’t know that they can’t take her daughter away based on evidence gathered in an illegal search.

She was paid to drag groom out into the alley, where he was thrown into a car by ‘some rich guy’. Ready to guess who it is?

Here’s a hint – what character hasn’t been accused of murder yet?

Yes, it’s the father of the bride! Naturally he admits to the whole ‘trying to bribe groom to leave’ thing, but then claims that the precipitating incident for the kidnapping was the ‘strip club’ thing. He tries to explain that it was a spur of the moment decision, although bribing a stripper to lead someone into an alley, then throwing them into a car and driving them out of town doesn’t seem very unpremeditated.

Finally he reveals the groom’s location. Daddy set him adrift on a life raft. Seriously.

Post-rescue the Groom and Bride reconcile over the whole ‘strip club’ affair, and it’s a happy ending for everyone.

THE END

Oh, except for the father of the bride, who’s presumably going to jail forever because of the whole ‘kidnapping and attempted murder’ thing.

Also, why did the Hotelier leave a stolen 20 million dollar painting in the back of his unlocked, keys-in-the-ignition limo during a wild party?

God, this is a bad show.