Mac (Gary Sinise) bleeding from a wound to his arm, chases a man to a deserted building. He raises his gun and fires at Mac. This chase scene was reminiscent of the one he had in season 4 DOA for a Day, when he cornered the serial killer, Suspect X, in the building and also shot and killed her too.
12 Hours Earlier
Mac is called to a CS at a hotel, where a DB has been discovered impaled on the spike of an awning (and still they persist in having these dangerous spikes everywhere.) He is identified as Panthro Torres (Eddie Fernandez) from the El Puno gang. Flack (Eddie Cahill) believes it to be a hit from a rival gang. The room is in shambles, Flack: "This is why they take your credit card when you check in." He was shot twice and fell back through the window, or as Flack more poetically puts it, "...hazing out the window...ends up a shish kebab." That's another shish kebab allusion there, the first was in CSI's Blood Moon episode by Doc Robbins. (Robert David Hall.) Mac: "A lot can change in one day." So true as we'll see.
These split screens are put to much better use in CSI:Miami, they seem out of place here. Sid's (Robert Joy) out of the lab for a change and finds defensive wounds on the Vic, gun shot wounds from a large calibre, through and through and another went through his chest. Inside, Lindsay (Anna Belknap) finds no signs of forced entry. Danny (Carmine Giovinazzo) makes the same comment Flack did about it possibly being a rival gang. He finds something in a bottle which he describes as "something ugly." As well as 2 glasses. Lindsay sees lipstick on a mirror.
Sid comments on there being 6 million ways to die and that Panthro died from 3: a cracked skull from hitting the awning, a ruptured vena cava from a fragmented .45 and he would have died from exsanguination too. Jo (Sela Ward) jokingly tells Mac to "give me 'til lunch" to solve the case. All she did mostly this episode was to stick sad 'smiley' faces onto deceased gang members, sadly for me, that wasn't much! Instead we had to endure Lindsay with her rolled up jacket sleeves, someone should've told her that went out in the '80's! Also Danny and Lindsay working the CS together again, does not make for interesting viewing either! Jo tells Mac, Lisa (Yara Martinez) is the brains of the outfit; Rick (Yancey Arias) is the 'muscle' and the least brightest.
Mac pays a visit to the restaurant owned by the El Puno gang and is told by Luthor (Edward James Olmos) he'll give him his word there will be no retaliation for Panthro's killing until after his funeral. Luthor tells Fernando Flores (Mario Ardila Jnr) he should go to Mac if he needs to as he's "a fair man." Luthor and Mac shake on the undertaking he won't take matters into his own hands, Mac put away Luthor for assault. If he does get involved he'll put Luthor away and this time he won't get out and he was right.
Adam (AJ Buckley) doesn't find any prints on the glasses, but only 2 separate DNA profiles, one from the Vic and the other one isn't in CODIS. (See later with this major bloop!) He doesn't know what the fishy thing in the bottle is, but he knows a man, who knows a man, etc. He looked so uneasy there when he said that. Hawkes (Hill Harper) says the bottle was tampered with. Danny gets a DNA match on the lipstick to Hazel Ortega (Lymari Nadal), an escort.
Hazel carries a .45 and Flack apprehends her. En route to the station, well he's hardly left the alley when he's ambushed by 2 men with guns. In one of Flack's best action scenes (my bias again!). He anticipates it's a hit and tells her to get down, saving her life and fires off bullets to defend themselves. Hazel is wounded and Flack tells Mac: "I'm good, I'm pissed" she was shot on his watch. Hawkes finds the bullets are marked with a letter 'P', which Flack says are for intimidation. Mac wants them found as they fired 50 rounds into a police car. (Yeah more worried about the car than the Flack!)
Neat trick, cutting to the ambulance, making us think for an instance, that Flack maybe didn't get a shot off or was hit! Also before this scene when the shooter had the gun pointing to him, it appeared Flack turned around and just froze, as he did in one of last season's episodes and couldn't fire his gun, like he almost hesitated - luckily he just ducked! Great to see him saving his prisoner when faced with fire from all directions. He was on the ball with his quick thinking and reflexes to determine it was a hit. Good to see he was concerned about Hazel being wounded on his watch too. He's come a long way from season 1.
Adam calls the fish head in the bottle 'Fishzilla' - a snakehead fish which are illegal to the US. Jo at the hospital, talks down Hazel from holding a policewoman hostage and she insists she didn't kill Panthro. He was alive when she left, but someone else came in but she won't say who, out of fear. Mac meets with Luthor once again and doesn't believe his getting out of prison and the deaths are just a coincidence. Luthor doesn't hustle, he won't look Mac in the eyes and lie. He didn't order the hit on Hazel but someone in his gang did. The men will surrender themselves at a designated place.
Hawkes discovers the stria from Hazel's gun don't match, but he pieced the bullet fragments together to find a 'P', revealing it to be an inside job. That was obvious when Adam made the comment about the snakehead eating its own. Flack says much the same thing with his "someone inside's eating their own" comment. None of the El Puno gang can be found, but Mac comes across Fernando running from the restaurant, seconds before it explodes. Lisa's body is found inside, along with a cut gas line, a palmprint and Danny finds another bottle. Mac determines a Molotov cocktail was used to start the fire.
Sid tells Mac there was no smoke in Lisa's lungs, she was shot twice, he found "mushroom .45s." Danny finds another snakehead, "Cajun style." Adam's source informed him of the arrest of a smuggler who sold 3 of the snakeheads to a Puerto Rican man. Fernando turns himself in and will only talk to Mac as he's "a fair man." Lindsay calls him telling him she matched the palm print. Which was to Luthor. Funny that when Adam examined the DNA on the glasses he only got one hit back and didn't get one for Luthor, as he's an ex-con his prints would have been in the system and should have come back much sooner!
Mac finds Luthor and Rick together and warns Rick he's the next target but he doesn't believe him. Rick fires at Mac, thus the wound in his arm in the opening teaser, and then runs away. Turns out the man Mac was chasing in the opening was Luthor. Luthor's motive was the way in which the 3 of them had changed the ideals of the gang from the old days, it was not about protecting the neighbourhood any longer. Luthor fires at Rick, Mac turns around to see Rick fall to the ground - only after he's got off 3 rounds of his own at Luthor. He doesn't want Mac calling for help. He started it and he ended it too.
Going back 12 hours made very little difference to the plot of the episode or the outcome, since it w as apparent Mac would not be fatally wounded in any way. Due to Luthor's conversation of the 'old' days and ways, Mac should've realized Luthor wouldn't kill him, since Luthor had kept his word on all occasions with Mac, like not going after the others until later. Although Luthor wanted to be the one to bring the other gang members to book for corrupting his gang.
The chases were left to Mac this episode. Think these gang episodes are better suited to CSI:Miami, got to admit they do them so much better. With Mac stealing Horatio's (David Caruso) line here of telling Luthor "you should've come to me" and they would have taken care of it together. Mac didn't need to get 3 shots off since he just appeared to be going for a kill rather than defending himself. It was a case of what Hazel said to Jo about 'whoever got off the most kill shots, survives.' That's what Mac did here, but he shot at the wrong man and from their 'understanding' and they shook hands, Luthor had too much respect for Mac. He was there to kill Rick and that's what he eventually did, to the detriment of his own life. Shooting his own brother to save Mac isn't too heroic since he wanted him dead anyway. Mac again just appeared to be there for the job and to get it done "at all costs" in a cold way.
The title meaning "blood for blood."
CSI:Miami's Spring Breakdown episode had a DB falling out the window and being shot by a flare gun, before landing on a large protrusion. Also the episode, Dude, Where's My Groom, where Jesse (Eddie Cibrian) discovered a palm print on the limo which lead to the identity of the killer.
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