CSI NY Episode #421 — “Hostage”

[rat­ings]
What hap­pened here? Did they hire spe­cial guest writ­ers? Where was the rare species DNA used to crack the case? It broke with the estab­lished pat­tern — refreshingly.

The entire con­cept for the episode was bril­liant. Bad guy who claims he’s inno­cent takes hostages and forces a CSI to “prove” his inno­cence. The ONLY foren­sic bit was that crazy was the the portable CT scan­ner to per­form the vir­tual autopsy that was deliv­ered in under 2 hours. Well that and the fact our res­i­dent ani­mal DNA expert/computer vir­tual basic IP trace hacker is ALSO a latent print expert. But then I guess Detective Monroe is a foren­sic super­woman. At least the other CSI fla­vors gen­er­ally keep peo­ple experts in just a cou­ple of fields. But we can over look that bit due to the over­all great­ness of this episode.

But seri­ously, if this episode is more on par with the writ­ing of a CSI NY episode I’ll have to give it a sec­ond chance. And tell my wife she threw in the towel too early on this series. Excellent use of foren­sics, well planned out plot twists, and skilled enough writ­ing to keep a story pro­gress­ing only using one main shoot­ing loca­tion. This was the oppo­site of the CSI Miami effect, where they are jump­ing around so much they have to use split screens to show you what minor detail is play­ing out at four dif­fer­ent loca­tions all at the same time.

The whole episode makes me want to watch Inside Man all over again.

So in sum­mary, great episode, excel­lent writ­ing, bril­liant use of foren­sics — fire the guy(s) who wrote the Cabbie Killer story arc. Heck even the name “Cabbie Killer” seems awful.