William L. Petersen will receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, next year. The CSI: Vegas star is definitely an icon of the new millenium, with his good looks and dead pan delivery. His work on the epic procedural series has led to a broad appeal, and certainly the right to his place on the world famous sidewalk.

The other recipients represent a motley crue, indeed, including the likes of Robert Downey Jr.; Hugh Jackman; William H. Macy; Cameron Diaz; Tim Burton; Kyra Sedgwick; John Stamos; Kenny “Baby Face” Edmonds; Dave Koz; Harry Shearer of Saturday Night Live, KCRW, and The Simpsons fame; musical artists The Miracles, Rush, Shakira, and, finally, The Village People.

Notably, legendary, 76-year-old chimpanzee actor, Cheeta, was once again left off the list.

The purpose of this 24-hour Blog-a-thon is to bring in support for the Actors’ Fund. You can help by making a donation here.

Post from: CSI Fanatic

Episode 8.15 – Two and a Half Deaths
Air Date: 8 May 2008

Loads of fun, this episode was written by the people who bring us Two and a Half Men. It’s also quite funny, and packed with guest stars, including Diedrich Bader (Office Space, Drew Carey Show), Katy Sagal, and even Jon Cryer, Charlie Sheen, and Angus T. Jones. This is also a good example of a couple different shades of meta-fiction –various types of fiction portrayed within a work of fiction, or references to fiction. For the most part, I found the action to be funnier than the dialog.

Annabelle Fundt, a feisty, mean comedic star, is bitching at her show’s creator, and everyone else involved. The next morning, she’s dead on her hotel room floor, with a blow to the head, and a rubber chicken stuffed into her mouth. The team estimates time of death around midnight. The creator tells Brass that the rest of the cast and crew returned to LA, right after rap. Annabelle insisted that he stay behind, because she doesn’t travel at night.

Annabelle’s former driver, then writer, then producer, rushes into the hotel room, and tells the team that he and Annabelle married two days earlier. [Everybody! Suspect time.] Annabelle didn’t like to look at him after sex, so they slept in separate rooms.

Mr. Little: [in the crime lab corridor] Beautiful people doing high tech police work. There might be a series in this.
(click on “Read More” for the rest)

Natasha shows up in the hotel surveillance cameras, the second time with a garment bag. She tells Brass picking up wardrobe from Annabelle’s room is part of her job.

Examination shows cause of death to be from a blow to the back of her head. The chicken was inserted post-mortem. It also showed that Annabelle had a hysterectomy, but, ironically, had tampons on her.

David: She has no lady parts.
Al: She had a hysterectomy.
David: Okay. Um… Then, why was she using one of these?
Al: Nostalgia?

The tampons, though, were loaded with vodka. They would only hold about 19 grams, so it’s not enough to get an alcoholic drunk.

The carpet shows bloody woman’s footprints. The team is called to the studios in LA. There we see the usual backlot shots, and a compulsory cameo of the actual Two and a Half Men. On the lot, Natasha –Annabelle’s stunt double and the team’s prime suspect- died in a car accident during an attempt to finish the episode using her in place of Annabelle. Yards away, Grissom and Brass spot Annabelle’s co-star Megan crying over her also-dead dog, just a few yards away.

LA Crime Lab found an after-market chip in Annabelle’s Ferrari, which Natasha was driving when she had the accident. Perez Hilton’s website yields camera phone video of Bud and Annabelle exiting the chapel after their wedding. A closer look reveals a mole on Annabelle’s chin. It’s not Annabelle. It’s Natasha!

Bud’s desk yields a box of tampons and a bottle of vodka. “She was a mean drunk, but she was worse when she was sober.” Semen found in Natasha leads them to believe Bud was dosing Annabelle, while spending time with Natasha. Bud admits that their plan was to kill Annabelle, but Natasha found her dead.

Further examination of the hotel elevator video reveals that one writer went upstairs with three others, but didn’t go down until five hours later, around the time of death. Jimmy, the new guy, was drinking from the same brand of bottled water found at the scene –that bottle, though, was filled with urine.

Prints on the scene’s bottle match those of Richard Langford. Warrick and George are passing out flyers with Langford’s photo. One he hands to a street performer dressed as a robot, who looks an awful lot like a tin Langford. Warrick doesn’t notice, but George does. They arrest him.

Three years earlier, Langford appeared, once, in a bit role on the Annabelle show. His assurance of a regular role disappeared, though, when he refused to have sex with Annabelle. He said he couldn’t get TV work after that. He sneaked into Annabelle’s closet, when she was berating the three writers. When they left, though, she left, leaving him behind in the closet. He saw Annabelle and Bud’s strange sex scene, which ended when Annabelle kicked Bud out for not being able to perform. Langford came out of the closet, and Annabelle, upon recognizing him grabbed his private parts. He pushed her away, and she hit her head on the coffee table. It was an accident.

They find an anti-coagulant in Annabelle’s “mouthwash”. They realize that not only Bud, but Megan knew that Annabelle was drinking vodka from her mouthwash bottle. She had received extra anti-coagulant from Binky’s vet. She plays dumb, af first. She tells Brass and Grissom about spiking the vodka, because she was tired of being second to someone that she clearly outperformed –she is smarter. Then, she smugly tells them they have no physical evidence.

They let her go, with plans to watch her. She leaves with

Bud cuts his neck shaving, and the blood thinner in his vodka prevents the bleeding from stopping.

What did you think of Two and a Half Deaths? I liked this episode. There were trists, but I think they fould have done better.

Post from: CSI Fanatic

This episode of CSI: Vegas was incredible! It’s hard to beat the fun packed into this hour –or 42 minutes. Do you agree?

• Are there not enough lawsuits involving Tasers?
• Why did they change “thiocyanate” to “thiocyte”? I’m mystified by this.
• What did you think about all that green blood? Is that feasible? Did they sufficiently justify the sulfur/drug idea?
• Did you just love the way they inserted (with no explanation) Adam & Jamie from Mythbusters into the lab when they were using Mythbuster-esque test tactics? How fun was that?
• How campy was this episode? Did you love it, as I did?
• Cyanide-sniffers?
• Killer ground squirrels?
• What are your thoughts about Grissom’s explanation of how everything was connected by String Theory? Any physics professors out there? We’d love to hear your opinions!!

Post from: CSI Fanatic

Episode 8.15 – The Theory of Everything
Air Date: May 1, 2008

This episode was good CSI fair, with some interesting twists, stupid suspects, and some classic smart talk –both kinds. Grissom and the team investigate a case involving a deer that has been shot with an crossbolt, potentially liquored up, and dressed up for dancing on the town.

Brass: Okay, so you got a DUI, resisting arrest, several new and unique wildlife violations. You’re in a truckload of trouble, Kyle.
Kyle: I… I… I found her like that.
Brass: In a cocktail dress?
Kyle: [laughs] I didn’t put no dress on her. I was taking her to the vet.
Brass: Sure it wasn’t a nightclub?

After Brass and Stokes question Kyle about the deer, and give him a breathalizer test, Kyle bolts out the door and down the corridor. After an officer had already sprayed Kyle –to no avail- with pepper spray, Brass, Stokes, and an officer come out of an elevator. Brass gives the order to “light him up”, and the officer shoots Kyle with his Taser. The charge, though, ignites the suspect, enveloping him in flames, and killing him.
(click on “Read More” for the rest of the recap!)

Grissom and Sanders are documenting the scene. Sanders considers the possibility that the grain alcohol that Kyle had drunk had ignited from the charge. Grissom, though, indicates that he’d been in the PD for several hours, so the alcohol would have evaporated.

The IA investigator questions Brass about his order to “light him up”.

Brass: “Poor choice of words.” [Yes, very unfortunate.]

Dr. Robbins and another medical examiner check out Kyle, sharing aloud on the potential irony, and karma, of Kyle’s lying there next to his victim, the deer.

Stokes checks out the Taser video, and runs diagnostics to confirm that the Taser is working normally. Grissom tests the Taser against some human ballistic gel dummies. Neither the control dummy, the one soaked in alcohol, nor the one soaked in alcohol and pepper spray ignited. Grissom is perplexed. Grissom remarks that Kyle had just gotten divorced.

He then asks if there are any night vision goggles, lights, etc. No. He thinks Kyle shot the deer during the day, then committed any other acts later that night.

They decide to investigate Evelyn, the woman who shows up nightly wrapped in foil –her deflector suit- complaining of harrassment by aliens. She encountered Kyle just before the Taser incident.

Stokes arrives on a scene to find police looking over Evelyn’s body, wrapped in the usual foil, face down on the pavement. A truck driver, returning to the yard at the end of his shift, had struck and killed her. Evelyn has a cracked butane lighter on her, and $200 dollars. She also has green blood coming from her wounds.

At a rail yard not far from where Evelyn was found, they’ve found a blunt force trauma victim –Connor- also bleeding green blood. He also was wearing three pairs of sunglasses and earplugs. Grissom tells David that that’s how you make it dark and quiet to sleep on the streets. Sanders finds the apparent weapon, a pipe.

Tests prove that the green blood is caused by high levels of sulfur. Kyle’s parents file suit against the department, and the team watches a internet video, apparently shot by an ambulance chaser seen in the PD surveillance video. His phonecam video shows that the pepper spray can was yellow, not the red issued by the department. The yellow cans contain isobutane, unlike the water-based spray in the red cans.

When testing for sulfur compounds in the green blood, the team discovers overdose levels of migraine medication, “thiocyte”. [Obviously, they mean "thiocyanate". Obviously...Sheesh. ] Grissom connects the migraine issue with sensitivities that would warrant Connor’s sunglasses and earplugs. They decide that Evelyn may have had the $200 to buy the drug, and that the dealer may have killed Connor.

Meanwhile, Willows and Brown investigate a case of an elderly couple who died in their sleep, in each other’s arms, at the same time. No green blood, no sign of apparent suicide, or trauma. They both wore still-functioning pacemakers. Their back yard has a cat grave, a lot of holes, several dead ground squirrels, and a “painless” pest control device.

The next door neighbor welds art, by day. She doesn’t know much about the dead couple. Both Mr. and Mrs. Martin’s pacemaker memories indicate rises in heartrate, around eight hours before their deaths, then returned to normal. Mr. Martin’s stomach contained wine and pasta, apparently ingested about four hours earlier. The team find a fingerprint match on the pipe that killed Connor. The fingerprint bleonged to a man named David Bohr.

They find David Bohr at his house. He’s freaking out, and bleeding green blood. He says that Connor said he couldn’t pay yet, then attacked Bohr with the pipe. He got the pipe away, and struck Connor with it.

Light from the window seems to spike Bohr’s freak out episode. He totally loses it, and green blood comes out more vigorously from his eyes. Bohr’s autopsy finds green heart, green (sea foam) brain. The brain also has a tumor pressing against his amygdala. This would cause migraines, as well as paranoia. As it grew, it caused the cerebral hemorrhage that the team witnessed at Bohr’s home. Sanders remarks that he was “self-medicating for the wrong condition.”

Catherine and Brown test the pest device found in the Martins’ yard. It doesn’t emit any radiation that would have disrupted the pacemakers. Neither did the toxicology screen indicate any lethal medications. Willows remarks that natural causes are just too coincidental, but, perhaps whatever killed the cat, and the ground squirrels, killed the Martins.

Grissom autopsies the rodents. Hodges comes in and recites a 1996 interview where one “Gil Grissom” revealed that he performed necropsies on dead animals as a boy. Grissom asks Hodges to stop stalking him. (LOL!)

Hodges smells “bitter almonds” in a squirrel’s stomach –cyanide crystals.

Hodges: Yeah. Anytime you need a sniffer to detect it, my nose has the cyanide gene.
Grissom: What gene turns your nose brown?

Willow didn’t see white crystals in the Martins’ stomachs, though. Grissom wonders if they somehow ingested it in a different manner. Henry’s extended toxicology panel indicates lethal levels of cyanide, available from –duh-duh-dunnnnh- jewerly makers.

Brown talks to the Martins’ neighbor. She’s upset, because she just found out that her ex is dead, shot by a police officer… with a stun gun! [Hello, Kyle. Coincidences abound, tonight!] She admits that she poisoned the ground squirrels with potassium cyanide, which she uses in electroplating. The cat got into it, though. She is shocked to hear that she killed the Martins.

Willows watches Hodges sniff around the Martins’ house for cyanide. They discover traces of it in the carpet under the bed, as well as melted older carpet beneath the newer carpet, that had been laid directly over it.

Hodges goes into the crawl space and discovers the culprit that caused the “meltdown”, that triggered the subsequent gas, that carried the hydrogen cyanide along with it, killing the Martins. The team considers the weird coincidences.

Grissom, a non-believer in coincidence, ties it all to String Theory. [Hmmmm...]

Post from: CSI Fanatic