A girl staggers through the hall with a wound to the back of her head and drops dead. The other pupils can only stand around, stare and take photos on their phones. Got my killer straight off, after she was interviewed, it was too easy: jealously, the girl scorned, made fun of, the boy never noticing her. It's been done before. Flack: (Eddie Cahill) "The digital grapevine is in full effect." They even snap photos of Jo (Sela Ward) and Mac (Gary Sinise) arriving. The Vic was Olivia (Cassandra Jean) valedictorian of her senior class.
Flack wants the student body cleared from the crime scene. Would've thought they'd have done that as soon as they arrived. Those students were just making a spectacle of the Vic. Imagine going to school with that shallow lot, though most teens usually are, but not everyone. Jo comments on how most of the rich kids shop on the Upper East Side. She was murdered on school grounds. Flack: "used to be you'd tell your kids you'd be safe walking home from school; not through." Mac translates the school motto but clearly they were not preparing for life. Flack: "someone at Archford had a different idea."
Lindsay (Anna Belknap) had to be first on the main scene. Mac comments on the lasceration to the back of her skull, which took some force. Olivia staggered from the primary CS. Lindsay says the students will never forget this day. Actually they'll remember it for reasons other than compassion or suffer nightmares from it. Lindsay still recalls in detail the night her friends were murdered. As we get a flashback. She had to bring that up. Here we go again - everything suddenly becomes about her and not the Vic! Mac on the other hand actually hopes one of them will recall what happened here for the investigation.
Danny (Carmine Giovinazzo) removes a book on Greek Tragedies from Olivia's backpack, a library copy. Danny: "You got a hallpass young lady." Jo flashes her badge. There's medium velocity blood spatter on the edge of the sink. Olivia apparently was smart and had a book on Calculus C. Jo didn't realize there was an A or a B. Jo finds shoe treads on the toilet seat and unknown trace. Danny's line of that being an unusual way of doing your biz! Well, in some countries, the toilet seat is exactly where you put your shoes to do your biz. Oh digression.
Flack: "Popularity has its price" and someone tried to take Olivia's spotlight. Jo questions Olivia's parents who tell her she didn't have time for boyfriends. Her parents didn't know what she was like at school, but then they're always the last to know the real truth about their children. Jo promises to find her killer, just as Horatio (David Caruso) would promise. The Vic reminds Sid (Robert Joy) of his niece. The COD was epidural haematoma and the murder weapon was the sink. There was no evidence of substance abuse and there was skin rash on her knees; which developed within hours of contact. Traces of a microrganism. A mark on her finger reveals an 'F'. Prompting Mac to ask, "How does the smartest girl in the school, get an 'F'." Cos she wasn't smart.
Adam (AJ Buckly) processes her clothes and her backpack. Danny incubated Sid's sample of the microrganism, which was mould, all grown indoors. They need to grow cultures and isolate where she was. This turns out to be the library. Lindsay wants Lucy at this school, she's very easily impressed with outward appearances. Danny's adamant she's going to go to a public school like he did and not one with such kids. He mentions the Dewy-magicimy codes on the side of the book, which he never could figure out. Lindsay has to call it by name, the Dewy Decimal system, what a show off, don't see her explaining it to him though! What was the point of that line from Danny anyway, you don't need to understand it, unless you're a librarian.
Needless to say what followed next between the two was so forced and highly embarrassing for want of a better word. When Danny finds signs of activity in the back: handprints on the table and Lindsay would have to notice the bum (ass) print! Did we really need a 'demo' from them on the table - it's obvious what was going on there and something we didn't need to see! Danny: "extra curricular activity" and Olivia must have witnessed it. The prints on the table match Benjamin (Austin Butler) that was convenient. Having a record, so the school lets anyone in. They search his locker to find porno DVDs he's filmed at the school. Danny asks the principal what they're being taught here. So that's his decision of not having Lucy here justified!
Flack questions Becky (Cherilyn Rae Wilson) the girl on the DVD and she's worried her parents will find out. Well a bit late for that now. Flack: "I didn't realize having sex was considered homework." Flack doesn't want a complete description of what happened. Mac thinks Olivia threatened to tell what she saw Benjamin was up to, but on the contrary, she wanted in on it. Adam believes he's found Martian soil on her blazer. Jo asks Adam if the dog ate his homework. Lots of school jokes from the team this episode. Adam tells of the same chemical consistency of the soil from Mars. Jo asks if she should get Flack to put out an APB on a little grey man. Good to see Jo as the voice of reason here, advising Adam there's another explanation for this as secondary transfer, but equally good to see Adam acting so flustered and worried at the prospect of telling Mac, to the point where he's off when he sees Mac approaching. Adam has to be sure of his findings.
Hawkes (Hill Harper) just when you thought he wouldn't be in the episode, says he's found the trace was from the intestinal remains of a scorpion. The biology teacher, Booker (Jeremy Glazer) tells them it was stepped on when one of the students played a prank on Emmy (Scout Taylor-Compton) she and Olivia were very different from each other. Emmy and Allen (Matt Angel) are working on a project together and who could have missed that soil in the cage! And the lava lizard from the Chilean desert, would have a completely different habitat. Emmy hid in the toilet after that incident. The cheerleaders knew she was there and were talking about her on purpose.
Jo was a cheerleader and says to Lindsay, "Don't act like you weren't." Lindsay doesn't strike one as being a cheerleader, she doesn't look the type, and she doesn't answer either. So whilst she was suffering from the trauma of what happened to her friends, she was on the cheerleader squad, don't somehow think so. Mac suggests they're not looking at the evidence close enough. Mac notices Russian names on the water bottle label, found in Olivia's backpack, so again it was apparent Olivia was the one who was cheating, but as she was the Vic, it was assumed she was innocent; because she was popular, didn't mean she was smart. Lindsay trying to be clever again, but is caught out when she says the 'A' in National Security Act stands for Agency! Jo calls it a cheatsheet. Hawkes is impressed, but he's never cheated. Hawkes finds prints on the label belonging to Olivia and another set inside the label, but no match.
Adam tells Danny about the teacher's computer being hacked to get the exam questions by way of a remote desktop access programme and demonstartes this by hacking into Mac's computer. Jo comments every school has its cheaters and Olivia had everything going for her, but a popular girl also lacked a boyfriend. Adam matches the soil to the Chilean desert. Jo reads a note on the school paper from Allen to Olivia. Flack says Allen forgot to remove the barcode from the bottle which was traced back to a credit card used by his mother. Allen had study sessions with Olivia and he was helping her cheat, but he had an alibi. Flack asks why he helped her cheat and finds there is a motive. Mac explains there are three reasons for murder: money, revenge, jealousy.
Leading them to Emmy, at last. She knew Allen in the third grade and he noticed her for herself, he didn't treat her like the others. Jo tells her at that age she had braces and was made fun of all the time, like Emmy, she took that. So Jo was a cheerleader with braces, ha. She shows Emmy the school paper with the photo, she was jealous of Olivia. Who exploited Allen to get what she wanted. Olivia tells Emy she looks at Allen like he looks at her. Clearly he was overwhelmed by Olivia, so he'd do anything for her. Emmy regrets killing Olivia but she doesn't have regrets over saving her best friend.
More 'digital snapping' as she's arrested and taken away. Jo wonders if Allen knew she loved him. Mac says they learn all sorts of things not on the curriculum. To Jo high school is not the end of the world, it's just the beginning. Mac adds life's not a lesson that can be learned in school. Was Allen really worth having as a freind when all he could think about was impressing the prettiest girl around, who clearly had no interest in him, other than using him.
Don't know about you, but this episode had pangs of the show Popular about it, aside from the murder, but nothing changes in school, over the decades; it's always about the popular girls and the jocks versus the geeks and the ordinary girls. As for Emmy saying she regrets killing Olivia, she doesn't seem remorseful at all, that she was found out only serves to draw out the confession from her. In the flashback to where she actually kills Olivia, it's so cold blooded and vicious. She didn't really do it for Allen, it seems she did it for herself, without Olivia in the picture, she would be free to have Allen as her friend and the way she denies he's not her boyfriend to Olivia, just makes her sound desperate, that she wishes he was, but knows she'll never have him. Though Olivia was the Vic and she didn't deserve to be killed, there's not much sympathy to waste on her. She was just using Allen to get what she wanted and a better thing would have been if she had got her comeuppance as a cheat, losing her poplar status, than Emmy being marked and remembered as a murderer. But what I say is today's news is tomorrow's deleted text message!
Not CSI:NY's first foray into elite schools as the episode Dancing with the Fishes, featured a private Manhattan school where parents would go to any lengths to get their children a place and perhaps this episode shows what happens when their children get there!
Lindsay making judgements already about Olivia's death affecting them, when this is just something that's news for them. She wasn't around when Flack, Jo and Mac arrived initially, so she didn't see the spectacle that was the real students at the school, snapping away. Hard to believe any of them had consciences, which is generalizing I know, but at their age, they're not going to be reminded of this or be haunted by it either. Yet even after Lindsay finds out what's been happening at the school, the writer didn't have her taking back this earlier observation.
Hawkes having to add he's never cheated, we know about his background from other episodes, so he didn't need to cheat, nor is it in his character, but it felt like he was having to justify himself, a bit like Adam does. Even whenAdam figures out where the soil really came from and congratulates himself, he doesn't get any recognition from Mac. Not letting on he hacked into Mac's computer was wise. Also Hawkes just wanted Adam to tell them his findings, perhaps since Mac was around, but earlier on in the season he teased Adam along with Danny in Unfriendly Chat; they do act differently when Mac isn't there.
That scene between Danny and Lindsay was so forced and not a hint of attraction or chemistry between them. If it had been Danny with someone else, or even say, Flack with Angell, (Emmanuelle Vaugier) or someone else, that demo scene on the table, would've been so damn hot, alas it was anything but sexy; a damp squib! and didn't turn out quite as was expected when written on paper!
In the season 3 episode Consequences (one of my faves) mention was made of moon rock and here Adam thinks he found Martian soil.
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