CSI:NY – Recap & Review – Vacation Getaway

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CSI: NY
Vacation Getaway

Original Air Date: May 26, 2010

Maria – TwoCents Reviewer
maria@thetwocentscorp.com

That Shane Casey is one crazy, crafty criminal. He’s the guy who started killing, leaving cryptic clues to his motive for the CSI “science guys” to decipher. His brother had been convicted of murder, and while in prison he hung himself. Shane Casey was convinced of his brother’s innocence and wanted revenge on everybody who was in that courtroom. Sheldon Hawkes was the testifying MD on the case.

After fleeing from a cop car on the way to jail, Casey returned episodes later to get his revenge on Hawkes by framing him for murder. It was another cat and mouse game, until Danny Messer proved Casey’s brother had actually committed the murder he was convicted of. Casey was imprisoned but returned years later. He had somehow gotten hold of Danny’s police badge, wallet, ID and used this to escape from prison after he orchestrated a murder, which forced the prison into lockdown and trapped Hawkes inside. Posing as ‘Danny Messer’ Shane Casey was able to walk out of the prison.

Now he’s back, and after a very dramatic chase Flack is able to catch him and arrest him. How will Casey manage to escape this time?

Casey is placed in a room with one guard, who he is able to kill quite easily. Then Casey jumps out of the window, using the body to break his fall. Mac and Stella are there to witness this, but couldn’t apprehend him as Casey used the dead guard’s gun to take a hostage, he went to the other side of the road, a bus passed, blocking Stella and Mac’s line of sight and when then when it cleared there was no sign of Shane.

Meanwhile, Danny and Lindsay are packing for their vacation, Lucy watching them in curious manner. Well, Lindsay is packing, Danny is relaxing. Lindsay jokes about how the headline for today may be about Casey’s arrest, but the headline for tomorrow will be about a wife who murdered her husband. She jokingly threatens to kill Danny, explaining how she won’t get arrested because she’ll claim self-defence. She takes it further by pleading her case to an imaginary judge, even applying a few crocodile tears. Danny admits to being a little scared of her. As am I, Danny. As am I.

The rest of the CSIs are busy trying to track down Casey, and that includes going back to where he was first spotted. Honestly, I’m not quite sure what happens at this point, so please forgive my summary for being so sketchy. There is a dead body, Casey’s ex-cellmate. And there are clues on that body. Clues I still don’t fully comprehend. There were also cryptic clues at the bar Casey wanted himself to be spotted at. There was something to do with money.

I think the cryptic-ness was to stall the CSIs from figuring out his plan but at the same time it was bragging about his plan. It worked, since any member of the audience who saw the promo for this episode or read the summary for this episode knew what Casey’s plan was a LOT sooner than the CSI team. The plan was to go after Danny.

Now, the team just has to find out where the Messer family is vacationing. Another thing the audience knows, which the team takes a frustratingly long time to figure out (to be fair, Danny didn’t make it easy, and it was supposed to be their vacation but I think he could take a leaf out of “NCIS” Gibbs rule #3: Never be unreachable)

The team figure it out through Casey’s cryptic clues. The Messer’s are at a lighthouse on Long Island, but is it too late? As Danny, Lucy and Lindsay reach the top they are greeted by Shane Casey. Thankfully, Shane isn’t interested in Lucy or Lindsay so he lets them go. A struggle ensues between Danny and Shane, Shane falls through the glass (he seems to have a habit of that) and is dangling off the edge of the lighthouse. Danny tries to help him up but Flack arrives just in time to see Shane Casey let go and fall to the sea beneath, where all those jagged rocks were (that is why there’s a lighthouse there, after all).

Mac and Stella remark how the body hasn’t been found but the Messer’s have gone home to enjoy what is left of their vacation. Danny and Lindsay fall asleep, Danny muttering promises of how he’ll never leave her.

Danny ‘wakes up’ after hearing Lucy cry so he checks on her. Shane Casey is holding her with one arm, and in his other hand he has a gun. Cut to black. There is a gunshot.

It’s dramatic stuff and I wish I could say I enjoyed it, but I can’t. I strongly suspect the cliff-hanger is a dream, and I have issues with being shown dreams in otherwise realistic shows. I feel like it’s a form of voyeurism, worse than what Mac did last episode. Showing a dream and not telling the audience a dream is cheating, it can’t happen in real life, and makes me feel like I am being tricked. There are times when tricking the audience can be a good thing. I don’t find this one of those times.

If it isn’t a dream, Shane Casey survived (I don’t suspect for long. I think the gunshot was him being shot). It isn’t realistic he survived! If he did survive and shot Danny, Danny was shot in the last season finale and I wasn’t satisfied with the way his injuries were written for so many reasons: a miraculous recovery lost impact due to the reasonably short number of episodes it took, especially written alongside the Compass Killer storyline as apparently he’d only been killing for a month or two. The time-line didn’t add up and it made me question the writers.

Also, I can’t find the way Lindsay casually joking about killing her husband, all the time with her young (true, too young to understand, but I’m still sure it could have some effect) daughter listening, entertaining. I take things literally though. I just don’t think it’s a joking matter.

The interaction between the Messer family was believable, and when Lindsay wasn’t threatening to kill her husband, I actually enjoyed it. The Casey part frustrated me more than I thought it would. He’s too infallible. Even when he makes tiny mistakes he can fix them with ease (he got caught, so he killed a guard and escape using his corpse to break his fall, and wasn’t injured at all). The clues he left didn’t intrigue me because I was already aware of his plan.

I would have found this a good episode… if it wasn’t for Shane Casey’s magical feats of disappearing and indestructibility. And the unnecessary cliff-hanger. What did you think? Leave your two cents below.

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