CSI NY Episode #501 “Veritas”

Welcome back Mac and gang!

This episode wins the award for the most and biggest foren­sic “b@llsh*t” moments to date in a sin­gle episode. The whole CSI NY series has had the high­est den­sity of with these moments com­pared to Las Vegas and Miami, but this episode topped every­thing I’ve seen.

The cliff-hanger is over. We get to see what hap­pens to the kid­napped Mac. Well, sort of.

Picking up where “Hostage” left off with a lit­tle extra unnec­es­sary drama, “Vertias” starts with Mac walk­ing out of a river after pulling him­self from a sub­merged car, not remem­ber­ing how he got there. So of course it’s up to the CSIs to not only catch the bad guy, but fig­ure out what hap­pened to Mac in the after­math of the bank heist.

There were still some unclear aspects of the episode for me. Hopefully some­one can explain it to me. Why did Lauren (the bank-teller) say she needed to bor­row Samantha’s car if she had an SUV to drive, and how did the bad-guy get the red car?

On to the foren­sic aspects of the show…

1) The bul­let recov­ered from inside Mac’s shirt. So here is the shock­ing the­ory Lindsay offered to expla­na­tion how Mac got shot with­out pierc­ing his skin. A pos­si­ble under-powered car­tridge was fired through the pas­sen­ger side win­dow, slow­ing down the bul­let. The bul­let then hit the “elas­tic” fibers in Mac’s shirt, fur­ther slow­ing momen­tum so the end result was the bul­let didn’t break his skin. Mac was saved by his shirt!

Amazing B.S. First of all a pro­jec­tile that per­fo­rates pas­sen­ger side glass like on the SUV would cause the whole win­dow to frac­ture. Ever caused tem­pered glass to frac­ture? If you make a hole in it, the whole sheet frac­tures nearly instantly. What they showed for a bul­let hole in glass would only hap­pen in lam­i­nated glass, like the wind­shield of a car.

On top of that, it would have min­i­mal effect in slow­ing down the pro­jec­tile. And Lindsay’s idea that an elas­tic shirt would save Mac from the bul­let is crazy too. I hope we don’t see peo­ple go out and buy span­dex think­ing they are now bul­let proof…not just because they wouldn’t be, but because most peo­ple shouldn’t wear spandex.

2) I’ll let the whole “we can take 3-D pho­tographs in the field so we don’t have to do cast­ings of tire tracks” thing slide. Based on the wheel base, the CSIs nar­row the list of pos­si­ble car can­di­dates down to three mod­els — OK, fine.

Where it gets silly is based on the depth of the tire track impres­sions (with­out know­ing the pre­cise make and model, vehi­cle weight, or con­sid­er­ing soil den­sity con­di­tions), CSI Adam deduces the tracks aren’t deep enough for the money to be in the car.

That’s sim­ply incredible!

3) Remember from my CSI Miami # 701 “Resurrection” episode review where I said at least they didn’t try to blow up some dig­i­tal photo beyond what is rea­son­able? Well no wor­ries folks, they saved this bit of dig­i­tal magic for this episode.

So at a toll booth, the bad-guy opens the car door to pick up his dropped money. Well CSI Adam blows up the sur­veil­lance pho­tographs from the toll booth to the point where he can clearly read the tiny VIN num­ber on the inside of the car door, iden­ti­fy­ing the stolen car.

I had to pause my DVR until I was done laugh­ing. After I wiped my tears away they quickly topped that one though…

4) Remember the amaz­ing exotic bird fecal data­base, and pri­mate DNA data­base from the end of last sea­son? They went one further.

The bad-guy left a cru­cial bit of evi­dence when he kicked Mac’s CSI kit back at the bank. His shoe trans­ferred a mix­ture of soil and plant mate­r­ial con­tain­ing traces of wood. From the soil mix Lindsay not only iden­ti­fies the plant, but quickly deter­mines the wood traces came from 1930s era rail ties, lead­ing Mac and Stella to the pre­cise 10,000 sq. ft. lot in New York City that the bad-guy recently walked thru bury­ing his stash of pass­ports and licenses.

What?

Identifying the plant is one thing. The fact the crime lab knows the pre­cise loca­tion of every type of plant that grows near rail tracks in all of New York City is a bit to much for even the most devout couch-potato to swal­low with­out a lit­tle gagging.

All in all it was a great episode. But I seem to like the CSI fran­chise for dif­fer­ent rea­sons than other peo­ple. My dad has been a fan of crime drama for years, whereas I’m like most real CSIs who enjoy the com­i­cal antics of our TV coun­ter­parts that are very loosely based on real science.