Ray (Laurence Fishburne) still having to battle his demons with Haskell (Bill Irwin) being on the loose. News reports of Haskell's escape and Ray doesn't want Brass (Paul Guilfoyle) turning off the TV due to him. Brass can't report there have been any sightings of him. Ray explains Haskell isn't any ordinary criminal and so the search for him, that should be manhunt, should also be different. Ray: "Until he makes a mistake, we just satisfy ourselves picking up bodies." Well, like it or not, it's what they do; unfortunately.
A man presumed a DB is picked up and brought to autopsy. Before David (David Berman) can cut him open, he gets up and walks out of the morgue. David faints. Lucky for the DB, David got a call otherwise he'd be cut open; but he turns out to be not so luck after all. CSI delving into zombies for the twenty-first century. No wonder the scene was shown from the 'DB's' point of view, as he wasn't really dead. David only took photos and made an incision to determine the liver temp. David's line of having "a customer waiting" was funny since he's not expecting his customer to walk out of there. Like he's got a conveyor belt of DBs to handle.
Brass asks if the DB just left and David replies he had to "defend my domain." So who found him passed out, or did he recover and get help. Brass: "suspect has left the building." Prompting Catherine (Marg Helgenberger) to add the funny line: "Dead man walking.2 The EMT declared him dead and Catherine surmises dead men don't sweat. Ray replies, as often as they get up and walk away. Ray looks at an old notebook, which refers to 'Stonewall' and is full of data. There's different writing on the last pages. Greg (Eric Szmanda) looks over the surveillance footage of the 'DB' and comments they're looking for the Anti-Christ to make an appearance. To Ray, Haskell being on the loose is enough to fill that void.
Sara (Jorga Fox) is called out to another CS with Officer Mitchell (Larry Mitchell) but he too turns up missing. There's a blood pool on the ground and Sara thinks he could have hit his head on the gutter. There's surveillance footage of him walking away too. Brass appears to be holding Officer Mitchell responsible for the disappearance of this body and asks how he would explain that. Officer Mitchell: "Zombie epidemic." Police officers mimic zombies behind him. Nick (George Eads) checks the first 'DB' using the facial recognition software of the DMV and comments half the people who work there are the walking dead anyway. Henry (Jon Wellner) brings in some results Hodges (Wallace Langham) was meant to have analyzed and relays his message that they should refer to CODIS as 'ZODIS', Zombie DNA Index system. Hodges determined the blood was consistent with normal human blood. Nick jokingly says that brain hungry zombies can say the same thing about Hodges: "minimal sample." Adds Henry: "fairly useless." Hey Hodges wasn't there to hear that! No fair making jokes behind his back, ha. Pity he wasn't in this episode as this would have been right up his street.
Greg researches the notebook entries and finds a Defence Department programme from the 1970's being conducted at the university, entitled 'Stonewall'. Relating to ESP, out of body experiments, which Ray denotes as science fiction. Dr Aden (Howard Hesseman) was the doctor involved, a psychoanalyst, who fell down the "rabbit hole of psychedelic drugs." Ray works with Sara this time round and not Nick. Dr Aden doesn't recognize the first 'DB' and refers to reanimation, it's not easy bringing back the dead. Aden asks Sara; "What's your clearance?" To which she replies, "About 5' 9." Hey a funny line from Sara, he wasn't referring to her height but whether she's been cleared to talk about the research! He didn't ask Ray this question for some reason. He says he has the "Ithaca of mystery" in his sights. Sara never saw The Dead perform in San Francisco, she was too busy with the dead everywhere else.
Catherine talks with Ecklie (Marc Vann) over the phone and suggests they come up with a new name for this, "DAWOL" which was a joke. Nick matches a DMV facial recognition of the first 'DB' to Max (Keegan Allen) a psychology grad student. Aden discovers someone's been using his office. His research subject was death. So of course there's more going on than he's letting on and he would have had to have been involved in these experiments since he wouldn't just give up on them; when he had such an active role in the 1970's. Ray feels they were going on hallucinogenic trips and weren't zombies. A junkie (Joe Hursley) is arrested with Max's credit card and a "phone thing." Which Archie (Archie Kao) identifies as a camcorder. Footage from this shows three of them were experimenting, one was a woman and the second 'DB' , Kurt (Christoph Sanders) from the alley is also on there. Max didn't tell them what pills they were taking. He calls her Alice (Camille Chen). Aden has poisonous fish in the tank and they're still being fed. Another clue connecting Aden. Aden locates his sensory deprivation tank and Kurt is dead inside. Ray: he got "de-animated."
Sara's mother took her to see the movie Altered States (1980) and Ray went with some good friends of his. Ray: "I know I only talk like a square." Sara adds, in the movie, William Hurt was in the tank, naked. Maybe the tank wasn't Kurt's idea. Doc Robbins (Robert David Hall) finds some bruising on Kurt's back so he took some infra red photos, revealing a handprint. Meaning he was held down in the tank. COD was drowning. Henry comments chaining them down should help ensure they didn't get up, but cutting them will also do this. He found traces of Tetrodotoxin in his system; found in sea creatures. That was obvious from the fish, even though the poison itself wasn't obtained from them. Doc Robbins posits this poison would cause paralysis and they would be mistaken for being dead. There was also LSD and cannabis in his system. Doc refers to "the body was frozen, mind was ablaze. I've been there." Doc tells the EMT in no uncertain terms that she had the EKG calibrated to the wrong setting; that's why she didn't pick up their heartbeats. Meaning if she had done her job right, then Kurt would be alive now and so would Max.
Nick notices saltwater footprints leading away from the tank, so Max came back first and finds blue fibres from his shirt. He was decompressing in the tank, they fight and he drowned Kurt. Nick finds Kurt's camera. Aden tells Ray designer drugs don't produce the same results in everyone and Ray shows him footage from the camcorder. Aden believes Max didn't tell the others the effects of the pills. Nick and Sara just deduced that already; that Max killed Kurt. Ray says Max was working like Aden.
Greg finds Kurt's e-mails to Max and Alice. Catherine must find her. Alice's brother saw her three days ago. Sara notices a Shinto shrine dedicated to her mother in her room and photos of her grave on her computer. Aden's notebook is also in her room and she appears to be travelling in search of someone. Catherine thinks they'll find her at the grave, but they find Max instead who runs when he sees them and is run over - knew that was coming. Officer Mitchell decides to handcuff him anyway, just incase. Like Henry saying they should chain Kurt down! Catherine analyzes the ink from the notebook in Alice's room. It was manufactured from 2008-present and the writing matches Aden's. Nick discovers Aden and Alice e-mailed each other. Alice was the one who found the others for their experiments. From Kurt's video, Archie finds Kurt picked up Alice's signal and they see Aden's car on campus.
At Aden's house, Ray finds recent video tapes with Alice. Sara finds the Tetrodotoxin pills he supplied them. Ray notices the camcorder and finds a tape inside with Aden taking the pill himself, he's found outside. He deprived his brain of oxygen for too long, he's inside, but he won't be coming out. Sara mentions Alice in the rabbit hole, Alice and the rabbit hole are often used as references to psychedelic drug culture and Greg mentioned the rabbit hole earlier on too. Probably no coincidence for the purposes of this episode that she was called Alice. Nick finds Alice at Aden's office and she's found what she was looking for, her mother, who told her to go back.
Ray concludes they were inducing chemical dreams. To Doc Robbins, all visions can be explained by neuroscience. He sees life as part of death and it's meant to be a mystery. "I see people on the last worst day of their lives." He believes they go on to a better place. Doc was taught that in Sunday school, before he went to medical school. Ray believes that people who bring suffering and pain in the world, "should have it repaid to them, either in this world or the next."
Doc warns Ray to be careful as "evil has a way of making friends with the good and dragging them into darkness." That is true, since Ray will go on in his quest to bring Haskell to justice and enter into a spiral of darkness, which won't be so easy for him to leave behind. He already has begun this descent. It's a case of evil preying on good. Would their conversation have been so philosophical if Haskell wasn't on the loose. also an allusion back to Greg's comment and reference to the anti-Christ earlier on. This conversation was one you'd expect Gil (William Petersen) to be having about science and evil and religious beliefs. In Alter Boys, Gil said, "I believe in God. In science..."
Doc Robbins mentions here, meeting people on the last worst day of their lives now applied to those who have passed on. Usually the phrase is the CSIs "meet people on the worst day of their lives" as it refers to the Vics and their families. Just said by Jo (Sela Ward) in episode 7.15 Vigilante of CSI:NY. Ahh Tetrodotoxin takes me back all the way to season 1 of CSI:NY and the episode, Grand Master, haven't heard that poison in a long time.
I would've thought Ray would be motivated to conduct the hunt for Haskell, his own private search since he knows him better than anyone else, so any input he could give would be helpful in locating him; just a thought as he's so involved and so angry at the same time with the thought of Haskell running amok, potentially.
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