CSI: Miami – “In Plane Sight” Review

Breaking: Bernie Madoff killed in private plane. Man who scammed millions out of billions found in sewage, police say. Parade marking the celebration planned for tomorrow.

That’s basically the story the writers of CSI: Miami ripped from the headlines and injected into Episode 4, “In Plane Sight.” As usual, the story didn’t start off that way. A bald limo driver who looks like the stunt double for Michael Chiklis tries to steal a private jet. Airport police stop him but smell an odor of death. They call “PD” and Horatio and Trip show up. The plane belongs to one Howard Burgess, the Madoff stand-in who conned many Floridians, including our own Trip, out of life savings or 401K money. Turns out, Mr. Burgess’s body was dumped in the blue goo of the private plane’s lavatory. Enter your own Blue Man Group joke here. Bonus points if you can bring in a monetary-themed joke. And Horatio gets to speak his pre-credit quip over the drums: “Did somebody break him out or set him up for murder.”

The writers are doing a good job of bringing in the newbies and giving us little moments of character that, together, give us a fuller picture of these guys who’ll be with us a while. Ryan and Walter show up at the plane. Jesse’s already there. Decision time: who pulls out the DB from the azure glop? They duke it out the old fashioned way: rock, paper, scissors. Ryan beats Jesse who then pulls rank on Walter. The loser dons the yellow suit and yanks the body out of the sludge. Now, at this point, my wife says “Oh, come on. The toilet tank’s not big enough to hold a person!” My only response: it’s a private jet. Perhaps the rich have, um, larger deposits? The one thing missing from the body: Burgess’s ankle monitor. It’s back home on the dog. Burgess’s teenage son, Daniel, is there, too, dealing with his father’s death by listening to some tunes.

As we all know, if there’s a kid involved, Horatio steps up. He does so here, of course, but then he’s got to go find the mother. She’s selling something at an outdoor vendor stand (cookies? I couldn’t tell) since she and the boy are frozen out of her husband’s assets. Trip nails her: “Why don’t you just sell some of your diamonds?” Rex Linn plays Trip as a man full of righteous indignation tonight, and it works well. Trip’s a direct man, and he gets to say the lines we all are thinking in real life with the Madoff types. I chuckled more than once. As this scene ended, a crowd figured out who Mrs. Burgess was. Lo and behold, all of them seemed to be former clients of Burgess. Really? Like they were just waiting around? Didn’t buy that very well. But, like all good riots and demonstrations, someone brought produce and chucked a tomato on the police cruiser that was hauling away Carlos, a victim of Burgess’s schemes who was a little overzealous toward Mrs. Burgess.

For a brief moment, CSI: Miami morphed into a doctor show (CSI: MD?). Carlos, sitting in a holding cell, was gasping for liquid. The uniformed officer brushed him off. Calleigh walks in, takes one look at him, and diagnoses–correctly–that the man’s in need of some sugar. Come on. That was just one of the ways Calleigh seemed distant in this episode. I think the writers are having Calleigh go through the motions as a sign she’s having trouble with Eric’s impending departure (if we’re to believe next week’s promos). If so, she’s been going through the motions for two weeks now.

There was a bright spot for her, however, later in the show with Jesse. When they figure out that Burgess was strangled with something mechanical, Calleigh gets all excited as this is her first case of “death by wynch.” Jesse smiles and comments that she’s just like she was when he met her (the season premiere’s flashback episode). It was a nice touch and a reminder that Jesse’s had some history here at Miami. Calleigh questions him on why he returned to Miami. Jesse’s evasive. She mentions a girl, and he doesn’t deny it completely. My guess: a daughter, but it’s just a guess.

Jesse makes Walter dig through the filtered sewage from the plane and they find a contact lens. Trip and Walter both like Carlos–who wears glasses–for the job but the lens and his prescription don’t match. Before that, however, I had a problem with the contact-falling-into-the-muck theory. I wear contacts and no, they don’t just fall out. The real owner of the plane, a Mr. Archer, does wear contacts. Burgess never made the payments on the plane and, thus, never really owned it. Arches fesses up to the crime: “I just lost it. But a lot of people are going to want to shake my hand [for killing Burgess]”. Calleigh’s cool response: “They are going to have to settle for a phone call through glass.” As Ryan said earlier in the episode when he beat Jesse’s rock with his paper, “Aw, snap! That’s the Miami way.”

While all of this was going on, Ryan was playing Elliot Ness and going through the ledger they found in Burgess’s house. Unfortunately, he didn’t get to find the missing clue. That would be Horatio who realized that the code word in the ledger (“Noise”) was actually the private jet’s tail number, NO153, if you transpose the one, five, and three. The money’s on the plane! Young Daniel is already there, too, ripping up the seats with a knife. Horatio’s pretty miffed: what youth in this show actually rebuffs the Father Flanagan of Miami? Not to worry;  he gets to console the wife who has just lost her husband, her son, and her money.

The compassion doesn’t end there. In the last scene, Jesse, Ryan, and Walter are walking together when Carlos the diabetic stops by. He was a music teacher who lost his job and now lives with his wife and kid in his car. He’s brimming with the good news: he’s been offered a job as a manager of an apartment complex, and he’ll get to live in the place rent-free. Now, I can be a softee, but I truly loved the acting in this scene. Eddie Cibrian played Jesse innocently while Carlos was on the edge of happy tears. Great scene. Walter asks Jesse if Carlos’s good news had anything to do with that phone call he made earlier in the day. “What phone call?” Jesse replies.

If I had to pick a weak episode for the season so far, this one would be it. I don’t think it is bad; it’s just not up to the standard of the previous three episodes. The compassion that Jesse has coupled with his secret reappearance back in Miami will likely play out for the rest of the season. He’s interesting, and I want to know more. Can’t say the same for Omar Miller’s Walter, so far. To date, his best scenes were in last week’s “Cougar” episode. His sole job this week is to pop into a scene and say something obvious and annoying. Looking forward to better development next week. Christian Clemenson’s second episode as the new ME was better, and his banana explanation was one of the better layperson description I’ve seen this season. Hope he continues. No Eva LaRue this time. Wonder why.

What did you think of this episode? Do you like the new folks? Do you think they’re crowding out the veterans too much? And what’s your take on Jesse’s mysterious personal life?

About Scott Parker

Scott D. Parker is a technical writer living in Houston, Texas. He writes about pulp fiction, crime fiction, music, and other things at his crime fiction blog. He writes about science fiction & fantasy at SF Safari and he has a weekly column at Do Some Damage. He has published a story at Beat to a Pulp and has written the historical mystery Treason at Hanford: a Harry Truman Mystery. A native Texan, one of his professional goals as a writer is to help put Houston on the crime fiction map.