Catherine receives a call regarding a DB found in LA, accompanied by Ray, they find Haskell has kidnapped Gloria. Leaving behind more clues for them to follow, will Ray save her in time? Catherine meets Ecklie's daughter.
Haskell is in the process of enjoying his baked Brie dessert, that looked revolting, akin to blood when he cut into it. Gloria (Tracee Ellis-Rose) and Phil (Dean Norris) invite Haskell and Tina (Amanda Wyss) over and just completely trust two strangers. Haskell drugs their drinks and catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Ray (Laurence Fishburne) has nightmares. Tina admires Gloria's ring. Haskell asks how Gloria met Ray and attacks Phil. Ray showers, as does Haskell, who washes the blood away. We're meant to draw conclusions here in the sense this is something Ray will do when he goes in pursuit of Haskell. Catherine (Marg Helgenberger) calls Ray about a DB found in LA.
SID called them in and Brody Morgan (Elisabeth Harnois) wanted them here. Catherine asks her if she eats at her CS. TOD is 48-72 hours. He has sharp force wounds. Ray explains that Phil was Haskell's eleventh Vic, even though he didn't stab him 12 times. This is Vic number 12. Flashes to Ray meeting Haskell for the first time in the season 9 episode. There's a blood pool at the condo and it's a gory sight. Ray immediately opens the parcel and finds a postcard of the Willoughby Observatory, with a message "You never forget your first time" written on the back, as well as Gloria's ring. Greg (Eric Szmanda) has access to the surveillance footage of Gloria's garage and sees them coming home and Tina and Haskell leaving in their car. They realize Haskell looks the same and Catherine admits she was wrong about him having surgery to his face. Det Sosa (Danny Nucci) admits he was wrong about them wasting their time in LA. Catherine assures Ray they'll find her. Ray: "three days and three nights of heaven on earth and then just heaven." Those were Haskell's words. It's been 72 hours already so Ray believes Gloria is dead. He can't do this and Catherine lets him return to Vegas. Was that really what he wanted to do, did he just say that so he could search for Haskell on his own, or did he have a change of heart on the way to the airport.
Catherine calls in Sara (Jorga Fox). Ray has a flashback to Haskell's first kill. "You never forget your first" echoes throughout this episode. Ray has officer Blake (Michael King) drive him to the airport, but Ray has him stop at the bar, for a drink. Think Ray changed his mind on his way to the airport which is why he uses the excuse of a drink to give Blake the slip. Ray calls the only person he can talk to..."understand when I've done what I've had to do...only person I have ever loved is dead. Only one thing left for me to do. Goodbye Al." Meaning go in pursuit of Haskell, and, or kill him.
Sara says they were drugged. Catherine feels she knows Brody from somewhere. The blood on the walls looks like high velocity spatter to Brody but she realizes their CS has been contaminated by flies, didn't Sara hear them buzzing. Sara explains this is Haskell's MO: to kill the man and take the woman alive. There's blood and tissue on the knife. Phil was hit, strangled. Brody's use of artistic language to describe the CS, "blood was the paint, body's the brush" and Haskell painted a Picasso. Haskell wanted Ray to feel the horror. Brody says Haskell wanted to get inside Ray's head, which we already know, he's been in his head for a while now.
Sosa tells Catherine Ray never got to the airport and cue Ray arming himself with a weapon and a laptop. Ray looks at another postcard of the Observatory. Catherine calls Nick (George Eads) "sounds like he's in a dark place." Yes he is and not just inside his head, but also where he'll end up in the house at the end of the episode. Haskell met Gloria and Phil at a benefit concert. Catherine needs to know about the lore/history surrounding the Observatory, but Brody's only into science. Sara reminds her they already have someone into both, i.e. Greggie. Willoughby J Willoughby was into money laundering, where he made his profits and he shot his wife in the head. Catherine now gets the joke with the postcard and the ring and tells them Haskell wanted Ray to play. Telling Greg to "work your magic." Ray is also working his magic and follows Tina to a hotel.
Nick tells Sosa there are some CSIs left in Vegas. They find Tina dead; shot once in the head and once in the leg, as well as being beaten. Tickets are scattered about with the same message: "You never forget your first." Brody e-mails Nick a copy of the ticket. Catherine recalls she's Ecklie's (Marc Vann) daughter. She took her step-father's name. Brody processed the hotel room and finds DNA belonging to an unknown African-American. Catherine still posits Ray isn't armed and that providing DNA isn't compulsory. Sara also defends Ray as not being a murderer. Nick finds Ray and waits for him in his room. He pinged his cell to track him down. Nick: "I'm part hound dog." He's here to help and he knows Ray didn't kill Tina. Cos Ray wouldn't just suddenly change his character completely and become who he was fighting against becoming all those years and do something out of the ordinary. It's obvious Haskell would have killed Tina, you know, it's her own fault, not like she didn't know that was coming after everything he's done and who he is.
Ray tells him the blood on the ticket was Gloria's. Haskell wanted Ray to find her. Nick tells him Haskell is turning Ray into a fugitive and is leaving them clues. He's been doing that since the last episode. Nick calls the lab and Hodges (Wallace Langham) wants to know if he's found Ray. As his Dirty Harry "antic can reflect badly" on the team. Greg identifies the tickets to Santa Monica Pier, prompting Ray to recall his first date with Gloria in Baltimore was at the carousel. Haskell turns up and says this is their first, unchaperoned date, but Ray's brought Nick and Haskell escapes. Nick is arrested for flaunting his gun in public, ha. Nick: "I'm not getting on my knees." Before his escape Haskell warns Ray if he shoots him then he'll kill Gloria too. But Ray located Gloria without Haskell leading him there.
Ray tells Sosa he doesn't know why Haskell didn't shoot him, but he took the gun from a mugger. Catherine sends Ray home and very much plays the boss here, putting her foot down. Telling Nick she sent him to find him, not "cowboy up on some vigilante mission." She can understand Ray doing that but not Nicky. Who still insists they'll get Haskell. Sara analyzes the beach sand from Gloria's condo, probably sand from construction, such as sand blasting. Brody: "rings of a tree give up its history" and so will the layers of the paint chips.
Doc Robbins (Robert David Hall) picks Ray up at the airport, he'd have been here even if Catherine didn't tell him to come. He believes Haskell wanted to hurt Ray not kill him. Ray uses Hodges' passkey to access the computer at work, or he threatens to go "all Dirty Harry" on him. Greg knows about Willoughby and tells him he donated land to LA and was a bigamist, shooting his first wife, who survived, witnessed by his second wife and his seven year old son, Arvin. His first wife was in a psychiatric hospital in LA and his son lived with his uncle. His wife's maiden name was Thorpe and was from Nessus, Nevada. That's why last week's episode was set there, most of it anyway. That's where Gloria is. Ray goes through the Nessus school yearbooks and finds Warren Thorpe in one from 1976. Haskell is Thorpe's son and he kills him. Catherine and Nick don't find anything at the hospital, but a note, "Made you look." Ray finds Gloria still alive at the house and Haskell holds a gun to him. So Ray will end up shooting him in self-defence and Gloria may be too traumatized to say anything.
Oh well, guess all those clues from last week were for the benefit of viewers, never mind, aside from farmer Thorpe (Raymond J Barry) who else would refer to his son as "squirrely-looking." - Only a father, I'd have gone for weasel. That was the part about the bandages when I said Haskell wasn't fully bandaged and Thorpe gave an accurate description of Haskell, which if everyone had been paying attention would have shown he didn't have surgery done. There had to have been some sort of connection to the farm and this wasn't Tina, as Thorpe appeared to have misled them. Didn't Thorpe recognize his own son until he killed him.
The call Ray made to Doc could just as well have been to Heather (Melinda Clarke) since he confided in her, but it was a nice change to see it was someone much closer to home, as they have developed a close friendship with Doc, who plays the call for Nick, with whom Ray also shares a special friendship and good to see Ray asking Nick if he's "got his back." He didn't really have to ask as Nick would be there for him, he found him after all, just as Nick would be there for any other CSI too.
Brody is added as a permanent character in season 12, which is good to see, at least she's someone watchable and not smug. No need to say who I mean, from CSI:NY show! She's an expert too on insects it seems and happens to be estranged from her father, Ecklie, in the same way as Brass's (Paul Guilfoyle) daughter, Ellie.
Funny moment when the team, almost all of them, arrived in LA, pointed out by Sosa. Didn't have to venture far as the show is mostly filmed there. Willoughby J Willoughby killed his first wife, well attempted to and it's not revealed until later he had a second wife and a child. This must have been an allusion to Haskell killing Tina, shooting her in the head. Although she wasn't his first wife, or any sort of wife. Of course Ray wouldn't have killed Tina, he'd be giving in to the darkness inside of him and he's not a killer - he's a doctor, one reason why he told this to Heather in Unleashed, he wanted to save lives, not take them.
There are numerous flashbacks to past episodes to keep the Haskell story in perspective and to remind us this vile man is nothing but a killer and that he was named the Dick and Jane killer on the basis of this and met with Ray back in season 9, 19 Down for this specific reason. Reference also to the number of stab wounds which mirrors the order in which Haskell's Vics were killed. Phil being number 12 and Ray being the eleventh in the episode Meat Jekyll. Greg getting involved in research for Willoughby, that's his forte (and maybe I shouldn't say this, but no mention of his book either.)
Haskell leaving the bodies at the farm (it wasn't a body farm, bad pun) was another clue for Ray, that we also missed, he was telling Ray who he really was and where and how it all started, with his grandfather, Willoughby. Willoughby J Willoughby was based on Griffith J Griffith, a Welsh-American industrialist, who donated land to LA - known as Griffith Park and left money in his will to build the Griffith Observatory in 1935 and the Greek Theatre, also located in the park. He shot his wife in 1903 in the Hotel Arcadia and served two years in prison. She survived, but was disfigured.
In CSI episode Eleven Angry Jurors, Nick uses tree rings to solve a crime and here Brody mentions tree rings too. Paint chips to tell the history of a building have been used in many CSI episodes and most recently in the season 7 CSI:NY episode The Untouchable.
Danny Nucci was in the CSI:NY episode Vacation Getaway. Michael King playing another police officer here after his stint in CSI:NY episode 3.8 Consequences, where he played a corrupt officer, Det Dean Truby, part of Flack's (Eddie Cahill) team.
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