CSI – Recap & Review – Family Affair

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CSI
Family Affair

Original Air Date: Sept 24, 2009

Nicola – Associate Staff Reviewer
nicola@thetwocentscorp.com

Broken glass, bullets flying, blood splatter – just another day at the CSI labs. And haven’t we missed it!

The lab’s a bit busy at the moment, what with Riley gone (and when did THAT happen?), and Ray is choosing to help out by updating his training and getting himself promoted to CSI 2. That ought to balance things out a bit.

The team is called to the scene of a vehicle collision. The victim is Olivia Hamilton, evidently a popular actress (don’t you love it when entertainment goes all meta on you?). Ray discovers that the driver of the SUV kept his foot on the gas even after it had crashed into Olivia’s car. He didn’t even try to stop. However, he survived, but just barely.

Greg bitches a bit about heading over to another case at a crappy hotel but he goes reluctantly. It’s an old man who was beaten to death in his hotel room. May not be as high profile of a case as Olivia’s but Greg is going to do his best.

Brass has a bit of an interview with Denny Ocampo, Olivia’s boyfriend. He seems quite broken up, understandably.

Doc goes over the autopsy report with Catherine and tells her that Olivia was pregnant. It seems like she probably knew about it.

The driver Richard Wilkes was both drunk and high when he crashed the car. He also seemed to have a bit of a thing for Olivia. They find memorabilia in his car all relating to her. He also has info about her filming schedule so he knew where he was. But Ray brings up the fact that duct tape and rope would suggest that he wanted to kidnap her, not kill her. Nick disagrees, but Richard wakes up and gives them the chance to ask him. He doesn’t say a whole lot at first, though he does say that he killed her.

Nick and Ray look at footage of the street where the crash happened, though the crash was obscured. Her light was red when all the synced lights were green, which means someone overrode the signal. They pull the records and found an uncoded emitter, which is illegal, stopped the light. But they didn’t find one in Wilkes’ car.

Ray goes to see Wilkes and examine him. He’s got seatbelt bruises on him even though the first responder said he wasn’t a seatbelt. The bruises also show that he was sitting in the passenger seat. The killer moved Wilkes and then snapped his neck to make him look like he was driving and then broke his neck in the crash.

Ecklie swans in and demands to know how information about the case got leaked to the press. He calls Catherine’s leadership to attention and comments that Riley had something to say about that before she left. And it’s at that time that Sara decides to make her entrance.

Wait… is Greg serious about Sara and Grissom being married?! Either way, she’s here to fill in while Grissom is lecturing in France.

Catherine sits down to read Riley’s exit interview and sees that she majorly slams Catherine’s leadership abilities. Hodges comes in to confess that he was the one who talked about the case. Whoops.

Nick and Ray discover that Wilkes was staying at Denny’s dad’s casino and was talked to by Tom O’Neill, the family’s security guy. Tom says that he was just asking Wilkes to leave Olivia alone. Ray commandeers Tom’s gym bag which was in surveillance videos with Tom. He has a crash helmet in his bag, which is understandable because he races, but it’s also covered in air bag dust, which could be from the crash.

David goes into the morgue and finds it in chaos. Bodies are pulled out of drawers, water is spouting out of faucets, and men in black with guns are crawling all over the place. They take a body and scram but not before causing some serious damage.

No CSIs were killed but a couple were shot. One of the bad guys was killed. He’s not a mortician – he’s Russian mob, probably hired to steal Olivia’s body. But it wasn’t Olivia’s body that was stolen, it was Gregs bum. Who turns out to be Olivia’s father. The “body” turns up later after being processed through a wood chipper.

Olivia’s father was schizophrenic and he was never part of her public life. How did she keep that silent? It looks like Tom O’Neill was paid to follow Olivia around so he could get some dirt on her so the Ocampos could get rid of her. He saw her with her father and took pictures before killing her dad.

Nick and Sarah piece through the meat. Ray finds some fiber between Olivia’s father’s teeth and a shadow on his ex-ray, showing that he bit off a cufflink in the struggle. They find it in the remains and it’s definitely Tom’s. Case closed.

Catherine solves her leadership issues by promoting Nick to Assistant Shift Supervisor, which basically means he has more work to do. Lucky him.

And we end on an enigmatic note: Doc Robbins asks Ray to help him look at a routine corpse and they find something out of the ordinary. But we have to wait to find out what it is.

Hey, since when has Catherine been a crappy supervisor? Because I don’t remember that being too much of an issue. I also don’t remember Riley having that kind of problem. Granted, it’s been a whole summer since I’ve watched CSI… Do you think this is just the writers acknowledging the fan’s disgust about Grissom being gone? Or am I just deflecting?

I have mixed feeling about Sara being back. I was never her biggest fan but I think I prefer that to bringing someone new in. But seriously, when did she and Grissom get married? Did I miss something?