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Tuesday 4 December 2012

CSI: NY 7.19 "Food for Thought" Review


                                          
Hawkes skips work spend a day with Camille at a gourmet food festival, where he witnesses a murder and gets into trouble with Mac, so what's new.

Hawkes (Hill Harper) attends a food festival, coerced by Camille (Lesley-Ann Brandt) where one of the food truck explodes.   The chef, Derby Chayson (Daniel Bonjour) is dead.   Flack (Eddie Cahill) thinks it may have been a terrorist attack.   Mac (Gary Sinise) states the position of the truck and the time of the blast would not lead to loss of many lives.  Mac finds traces of TATP, an explosive made from household chemicals, that's why liquids are not allowed on planes.   Jo (Sela Ward) comments on Hawkes calling in sick and he should save the explanations for Mac.   Jo finds a bottle lid on the floor.  Mac indicates the splash pattern shows the blast originated from the side panel, where the propane tank would have been located.   The ignition source was the bottle.   Mac thinks if they piece together the shrapnel it may tell them something.

Regular as clockwork, Lindsay (Anna Belknap) pops up.   It's a CS, but she's complaining about not eating anything.   No, it's all about her again and her food cravings, though she's not pregnant.   I won't repeat the hefty food list she asks Danny (Carmine Giovinazzo) for.   Lucy is now 2, that was fast.  Danny and Lucy made her breakfast and she says it was 2 years ago for Mother's day.   Now she's keeping score!  That was a boring, senseless scene, she's not the one into food, that's Flack and Jo! But she gets all the foody lines and the food!  Instead of doing the job, she's more worried about not getting out before it's dinnertime.   Jo scarcely mentions it's lunchtime, later on, but we don't see her and Flack grabbing  a bite.  

Danny tells Hawkes, he'd have taken a day off for Camille too.   Don't let Lindsay hear that!  Hawkes notices writing on the inside of the takeaway container, but why write on the inside?  Sid's (Robert Joy) autopsy reveals the force of the blast, smoke inhalation and burns were the COD.   His apron kept him intact and prevented the flames from coming into contact with his T-shirt.   Which reveals a contusion on his chest.   Sid's seen the pattern somewhere before but he can't recall.  

                                             

Camille calls Hawkes about a  party she's throwing and talks him into coming even though he's busy with work.   Thought Hawkes would have had more restraint and will power than to give in to her so easily.   She's a bad influence on him.   Danny brings Lindsay a burger, if they can't eat in the lab, why's she telling him to bring it in and she was going to eat with those dirty hands of hers.   She found dark surfaces on the propylene tank.   Wasn't it full of propane as Mac said earlier on.   Danny thinks it could be glue used to attach the bomb to the tank.  And she couldn't work that out for herself either, until later, no she has to run off with the burger bag.  (Thought she'd disappeared for good!  No such luck.).  

At the party, Hawkes walks in on people smoking joints (weed).   Camille refers to herself as a goody-two- shoes, yeah maybe in another life.   Hawkes tells her he's "done many things in his life and, not all of which he's proud of."  Camille's never smoked a joint before and wants to live for now.   Hawkes oversleeps the next day and Danny covers for him.  Showing how far their relationship has come, where it was probably second nature to him.   Adam (AJ Buckley) analyzes the T-shirt to find traces of bird spit from the Chinese Cave Swallow saliva.   Mac has to say "excuse me."  Still don't know what Mac's problem with Adam is, well I do, and it's not even funny, but it's getting old news by now, not one nice word to say about him and Mac's always so abrupt with him too.   Not like Adam's done anything wrong, or was he venting a little of his anger over Hawkes onto Adam.  

The stain is where Derby was hit on his chest; but Adam can't find anything exotic on the menu, and he can't find the 'No 3 Special' either, that Hawkes told Jo about.   Adam questions Mac whether if a bird spits on you if it's the same good luck, and Mac walks off abruptly, telling him to work it out for himself.  No need for that type of behaviour.

Flack tells Jo he sometimes has thoughts of the pastrami truck outside, okay, he said he looks at it, and there's plenty of competition between gourmet trucks.   He found 8 complaints against Derby, filed by one man alone, Odelin Gonzalez, (Raoul Trujillo) who owns a hot dog stand nearby.   Flack asks him to tell them about his "au natural beef" with Derby.   Jo and Flack believe he isn't capable of murder.   There are plenty of hot sauce bottles with those lids in New York.   Jo mentions the TATP trace on the bottle fragment, (it was a lid), and that they need "hard science connecting him to the CS."  Jo uses science instead of evidence, which is the normal word used.   Danny and Hawkes are selected for random drug testing, causing frustration for Hawkes...we're meant to believe he shared a joint with Camille.

Sid tells Mac about the Summer cookery course he undertook and recognized the contusion pattern is from a potato ricer, which is part of a chef's kitchen.   Adam finds that bird spit is used in bird nest soup, which Jo immediately tells them is made from the nests of the Chinese Cave wallow, so all he had to do was ask Jo, ha.     Which was used by the former employer of Derby.   Jo states they should have focused on fine dining.   Mac: "Let's go see if murder is on the menu."  Braxton Langley (Anthony Azizi) says Derby was stealing his recipes so he beat him with the potato ricer.

Mac, "there's a nice table waiting" for him downtown.   Hawkes matches the writing on the take away box, which points to a hotel address and a Gus Stilton (Matt Nolan).  Okay, this is about food, partly, but did they have to call him Stilton, as in cheese.   Flack knows the name but can't place it.   He owns 50% of the truck, as well as owning 6 other trucks.   He has a record for pandering, which is why Flack recalls the name.   There's a lot of that going round in this episode, first Sid not recalling the potato ricer, then Flack not remembering Gus and Hawkes bumping into the bomber in the opening.

Flack had some "fun" with the 'No 3 Special,'  so at least some laughs from him.   Flack: "Am I gonna get everything I paid for...on second thoughts I'm not that hungry!" Great!  Mia (Tyler Kain) tells Jo it's better than working the streets.   Flack recalls Gus trying to keep warm with his girls under a bridge and guess who had the blanket!  Mac calls him a pimp and Flack calls him a criminal.   Jo asks Mia how she felt about Derby and she replies it was good work.  Jo: "And all he had to do was serve you on the side."  Well, at least she got one foody remark in.   Derby turned away customers.  

Gus says he had a perfect operation going on without the knowledge of the NYPD so why would he kill Derby.   Mac is perturbed they don't have any evidence on either of their suspects and no lead on the killers.   Hawkes concentrates more on looking at the drug testing guys.   Cue Lindsay, as smug as ever.  Thought she was missing as per usual and had to make an entrance.  Finding a partial print on the ceramic glue, well Danny already said it was most likely glue; belonging  Odelin Gonzalez, Jnr (Alex Merz).  Quick someone wipe her smile off her face!

First thing I said was all that pottery was gonna smash!  Flack had to announce their presence.   Hawkes recalls passing him at the festival now.   Finding the son as the killer was a bit convenient and too easily wrapped up.   Flack tells him he made  a mess (and not just of the pottery) of things.   His father didn't have a future with his business.   Hawkes suggests he could compete by working harder, that's easier said than done, does he think it's easy making a meagre living from a hot dog stall!

Made Hawkes look like a complete unintelligent fool in this episode (Sorry Hill!) and we know he's far better than that.   Hawkes should apply that logic to himself where Camille is concerned, he can't help being led astray by her and he should work harder at thinking for himself.   They question him at the shop and not downtown.   Odelin knew the best meal in town doesn't cost $500 and something was going on.   Mac posits he did something his father wouldn't do and blew him up.   He was rather clumsy getting glue on his fingers and leaving a print behind, considering the number of ceramics he must have glued together.

Mac waited until the end to give Hawkes his dressing down and that was a bit of an anti-climax.   He didn't have much to say and Hawkes sounded like he was just making excuses for himself, exactly the same as Camille said about her life passing her by and not living.   Mac doesn't want to talk about this at all.   Hawkes says he wasn't using and that the cannabis was secondary exposure.  Mac has to believe him, like Mac adds he had to believe he was sick.   The show likes these lines in here, you know, believe and trust like in season 3's  episode where Flack said why should he trust Mac after what he did in Consequences episode.

Mac tells Hawkes it's about bad choices, not bad luck.   Hawkes and his sob story about having to do good and not being able to do anything else, Camille understands that.   There's no policy against having a good time and he should show up tomorrow and honour his oath and get some sleep.   Yeah don't think so.   He didn't have any problems like this when he was an ME, that's cos he didn't venture out, ha.   Ahh the good old days.  Camille turns up naked and he can't say no to her.

At least Hawkes didn't get "told off" in front of the others.   Hawkes gets a love interest , but clearly she's no good for him and he's too easily swayed by everything she wants.   As for her being a goody-two-shoes, she isn't really.   She knows who Hawkes is and what he does but she still insists he should cross the line: miss work by taking a 'sickie' and then drag himself to her party when he needs to work.   He needs to either find a way to put her in her place, being blunt, or ditch her.   It's what Jo said in the Smooth Criminal episode when we first encountered Camille and she saw them together, she said they look like they're talking about "hot, steamy sex."  It's more "lust at first sight" between these two than anything deeper.   Let's face it, does Hawkes really want or need someone like Camille in his life.   His character is much stronger than that and she's just bringing him down.

TATP was mentioned and used in CSI season 11 episodes, Shock Waves and Targets of Obsession.    In CSI episode Recipe for Revenge, a chef was also killed.   Lots of food episodes in CSI:NY, including season 1 Grand Master, where food was served on nudes and Danny was way into that!  had lots of one- liners in that too, including 'the killer being the table'.   Season 2 Dancing with the Fishes, where a food market was involved.   Also Fare Game which had an exotic cuisine event boasting strange creepy crawlie delicacies of the several-legged variety.   Also many bomb episodes, including Charge of this Post and Green Piece.

Great to see CBS have renewed the show for an eighth season, but no news on the number of episodes yet.   Finally seeing sense.   Yay, more Eddie/Flack fixes for me!  ha.   Also that means we can watch the remaining three episodes of the season without baited breath, done that already with the earlier episodes.   Wonder if the season finale will be viewed by us in the same way as US viewers, that the episode could have been the series finale.   Expect some people just won't care either way.  (Written a while ago)

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