I must admit to being a bit of a fan of CSI. I don’t watch it religiously but I enjoy it when I catch it. Now, I think the spin off series CSI: New York is okay and I am not a fan of CSI: Miami (two words – Horatio Caine). However neither are a patch on the original series. Again I have two words, Gil Grissom. Not only is William Peterson a fine actor but the character is absolutely fantastic.
As I am often want to repeat, vampires get everywhere and yes they made an appearance in CSI – in series 4, episode 13 to be precise, an episode directed by Danny Cannon and first aired in 2004. CSI being what it is though, we know that we are not going to be dealing with supernatural vampires but instead plunge into the vampyre scene.
It is fairly standard that there are at least two storylines ongoing in a CSI episode. In this case there was one concerning a casino heist and Japanese antiquities. The secondary story concerned our vampyres and the CSIs investigating were Warrick Brown (Gary Dourdan) and Catherine Willows (Marg Helgenberger). This, of course, meant no Grissom in the vampyre storyline – which, for me, was slightly disappointing.
It is less the fact that we are dealing with vampyres (especially as our criminal believes himself to be the real deal it seems) and more the fact that this was a secondary story that has led to this being dealt with under ‘Honourable Mentions’.
Catherine and Warrick are called to an abandoned building as a body, belonging we discover to Angela Somerville (Sam Doumit), has been found. A neighbour heard a scream and called the police. The building was previously the scene of a couple of suicides. In the building is medical examiner David Phillips (David Berman) who has spotted a couple of wounds on the victims neck puncturing the jugular vein.
He points out to the CSIs that the space between the wounds is consistent with the space between human eye-teeth. When Catherine points out that they aren’t human teeth marks he counters with the idea of fangs and opens the victim’s mouth and reveals the fangs inside. The victim was bled out and hasn’t been moved but there is no blood splatter. Catherine doesn’t know – she admits – much about vampires but she does know that bites equal spit equals DNA. Also in the house is ritual grafitti.
Back in the morgue Dr Robbins (Robert David Hall) has discovered that the fangs are clip-on caps and that Angela had cut marks in her shoulders. A visit to her parents reveals that she had got into the Goth scene and vampyres. Her parents had tried to ride out the phase but had insisted on an HIV test. The room contains a shrine with the picture of an unknown man and a statue of an incubus. Now, lore wise, this was either interesting or confusing. We are told that incubi would seduce girls in their sleep (myth accurate) and drink their blood. I haven’t really seen any reference to incubi and blood drinking before.
Having questioned Angela’s court (a coven of vampyres, in this case being three young Goth girls) and discovered that Angela’s tox-screen showed ingestion of absinth, Warrick and Catherine end up going to an underground Blood Bar. Sharp eared viewers will have noticed Marilyn Manson playing and later Bahaus’ classic Bela Lugosi is Dead. In the bar they meet Lazarus Kane (James Haven), the man from the shrine. Angela was his donor and he has an ampoule with her blood. More lab tests show that his DNA is not the same as that on the bite but a compound is in the blood ampoule consistent with one added to blood taken for HIV tests.
To the testing centre where they meet Bobby Jones (Joel Bissonnette) who just so happens to have a tub of Angela’s blood in his fridge. ‘He done it governor’. He had stalked Angela, convinced he was looking over her; attacked her, convinced she invited him to; collected her blood in a jar and is convinced her spirit lives within him still. He is also convinced that he was born with his fangs. He’s as nutty as a fruitcake to be honest.
However, as a secondary storyline the case is simple and Bobby’s delusions are not that deeply looked into. Nether-the-less we have a vampire storyline in CSI. Props to the little moment where (at this point of the series) lab technician Greg (Eric Szmanda) passes a stake and a cross to Warrick and Catherine but it was, in my opinion, a miss to not have Grissom involved in this case.
The imdb page is here.
As I am often want to repeat, vampires get everywhere and yes they made an appearance in CSI – in series 4, episode 13 to be precise, an episode directed by Danny Cannon and first aired in 2004. CSI being what it is though, we know that we are not going to be dealing with supernatural vampires but instead plunge into the vampyre scene.
It is less the fact that we are dealing with vampyres (especially as our criminal believes himself to be the real deal it seems) and more the fact that this was a secondary story that has led to this being dealt with under ‘Honourable Mentions’.
However, as a secondary storyline the case is simple and Bobby’s delusions are not that deeply looked into. Nether-the-less we have a vampire storyline in CSI. Props to the little moment where (at this point of the series) lab technician Greg (Eric Szmanda) passes a stake and a cross to Warrick and Catherine but it was, in my opinion, a miss to not have Grissom involved in this case.
The imdb page is here.
No comments:
Post a Comment