Recap: “Fallen Idols”

You’d think this past week’s episode of CSI:Vegas would have had something to do with the recent news about American Idol contestant Antonella Barba, but you’d be wrong. Although the plotline did revolve around the actions and adventures of a few high school students that ended in death for two of them.

Here’s the brief recap from TV.com:

Grissom and his team are discouraged when they find a pool of blood as they begin investigating the disappearance of a high school basketball star and his cheerleader girlfriend.Grissom’s quip that the young lovers may have run off to Mexico is soon quashed by the discovery of drops of blood by Ryan’s vacant parking spot at the school. After finding a letterman jacket and cheerleading sweater in the field house and a pool of Ryan’s blood nearby, the team tries to determine what went awry.

I felt this was a pretty good episode, although disturbing as I believe it probably portrays somewhat accurately the things that go on in our high schools today (aside from the actual murder part).

The story starts off with a high school basketball game and the star player and cheerleader are obviously dating the way they look at each other throughout the final minutes of the game. The guy ends up making the winning shot and the cheerleader comes out to hug and kiss him at the win. There was a really nice Matrix-esque videography of 3-D still images as they pan through the various people on the court and in the crowd.

A little bit later you see two sets of parents in Brass’ office because they haven’t seen their kids. Members of the team are called into investigate the missing kids, Grissom goes back to the parking lot where Grissom finds blood on the parking lot in the assigned parking space of the basketball player. Grissom and Stokes go on to find other clues on the school property and follow a trail that eventually leads them to some football equipment with arterial blood spray and a pool of blood soaked into the football field. Stokes then sees a storage shed. The storage shed ends up being a little make-out place where they find ropes tied to some equipment.

The investigation brings them an interview with a friend, Sheila, that let them know about the two others hooking up after the game. She says she’s been suffering with a headache since the night before. They also talk to a high school teacher that teaches photography and also introduces us to Charlie, who’s the friend of Megan, but not a big fan of her boyfriend, Ryan. (I was the Charlie character growing up if you’re interested, friends to all the girls, but none of them ever considered me a boyfriend option.)

Accident debris brings them more clues, including a bloody shoe of the cheerleader. Following the details they end up finding the cheerleader’s body way of the side of the road as she was hit by the car and knocked away hundreds of feet. She’s still alive!

Nick Stokes interviews Charlie, who was Megan’s next door neighbor. This is where we’re also introduced to the idea that Charlie doesn’t like Ryan. It turns out that Ryan had some STD issues, which turns out to be the instigating force behind the actions that led to death of Ryan.

We return back to the police station where Sheila ends up dead on the couch. Turns out she had a concussion, but from what? During the autopsy we also find a memory card from a camera in her stomach. The card (which amazingly still works after being in the girl’s stomach) shows video of the girl and Charlie making Ryan admit he’s got crabs and they’re threatening to put it on YouTube. They interview Megan to get more details of what happened.

They find Ryan’s “Friend Agenda” page with is like a MySpace page. On his site he’s got a “Hit List” of girl’s names that appear to be a list of his sexual conquests. Some of the names on the site are Dianne Ketner’s (the photography teacher), Sheila’s, and Megan’s. The auto-impact debris match Dianne’s car and she denies having any relationship with Ryan.

After collecting more evidence, another interview with Charlie gets him to confess more details of what happened. Ryan’s dead, Sheila’s dead, Megan’s partially paralyzed and Nick Stokes has photos of his shoe impressions and screen grabs of the video.

Charlie shares that it all started as a prank and things got out of hand. He gets loose after they get the video and Ryan hits Sheila in the back of the head with the camera giving her the concussion. When Ryan through the camera at Sheila it caused her to swallow the memory card. He said Sheila shoved Ryan and he fell on the football sled cutting his throat. Although it’s a good story, the way Charlie’s sharing it, something just tells me he’s lying. We find out he and Sheila put Ryan’s body on the sleeping bag and put him in the van. Nick asks if there was anyone else in the room because Sheila was holding the camera and Charlie was holding the cue cards. Who was holding the light? Charlie says he was holding both the cue cards and the light.

Grissom does more bug study with Ryan’s crabs and gets blood DNA out of them that lead them back to the photography teacher. They go to her house which leads them to a warehouse where it’s setup like a huge art gallery of projections of pictures of Ryan in a maze layout. They end up finding the teacher and Ryan laying naked with each other dead and a camera taking pictures of them.

One of the pictures shows an image of Megan pushing Ryan, SHE WAS THERE, and was the one that shoved him into the equipment killing him! Nick Stokes confronts her about it, and she makes the statement that she’s suffered enough. The DA drops the case and Megan, although paralyzed, gets away with murder, which obviously doesn’t go over to well with Ryan’s parents.

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THEN! The episode ends with Sara shaving Grissom’s beard with a straight razor. Sara asks if he trusts her and Grissom answers “Intimately”. What is the deal with those two? What is going on?