The SmarK TV Rant for CSI Miami: Season 3, Episode 1

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The Smark TV Rant for CSI Miami – Season 3, Episode 1

“Lost Son”

Originally aired September 20, 2004

“Don’t make me get down there and measure again.”

– CSI Miami has always been sort of a love/hate thing for me, as I fell in love with the original series a few months back and somehow fell into the habit of watching Miami as well. The specific love/hate aspect is that I love most of the characters and the general setup of it, but I hate David Caruso.

Which is why this episode ended up being not one of my favorites, to say the least.

The Setup

A vacationing couple is driving on a bridge and arguing, when suddenly a boat slams into the concrete support and collapses it! The couple survives, and after a slightly-revamped opening credits sequence, Horatio and the CSI team go to work, immediately finding a dead body with a close-range gunshot wound to the head as the only evidence of what happened.

The Investigation

Identifying the body leads them (Horatio) to the home of a wealthy family, where they discover that our corpse is the husband and the wife is waiting for him to return from a ransom threat. Obviously it was a more serious threat than he thought. In fact, their six-year old son is missing, and nothing gets Horatio all good and pissed off like someone going after a kid. They hit the last place he was seen first — his martial arts class — and Horatio somehow deduces that the instructor was lying about the type of car by magically measuring the depth of the tire tracks left by it. I’m guessing he already knew the dude was lying and was just bluffing him with the POWER OF SCIENCE, because the guy cracks immediately and admits to taking a payoff in exchange for his silence.

Next up, they find the ransom payoff laying at the bottom of the water, in the form of $3 million in jewels, but toothmarks on an emerald tip Horatio off that they’re fakes, and now the mother is a prime suspect. The “CSI Shot” shows fake diamonds being made, by the way. However, when they go to the jewel store to find out who switched the diamonds, a gunfight erupts out of nowhere and Tim Speedle (Rory Cochrane) exits the show via a bullet to the heart, because his gun jammed. What a shitty way to die.

Undeterred by the death of his teammate, Horatio continues hogging the storyline, as a palm print puts an ex-convict into the role of kidnapper, and when they look into his background suddenly the mom is revealed as a stepmom, AND a former girlfriend of the guy, AND an ex-convict herself, and now she’s guilty as hell. Or is she? With time running out, Horatio races to the swamps, tipped off by a muddy footprint, and tries to save the kid from sharks AND alligators. Bad combination.

And of course we finish with the funeral for Speed, tragically cut down after 49 episodes. WHY COULDN’T IT HAVE BEEN CAINE, GOD?

The Good

– At no point does Horatio say “OK, this is what we’re going to do”¦” while either donning or removing his sunglasses. I’m going to start taking notes and keep count of the times he either puts them on or takes them off.

– It was a nice fakeout to pile the evidence onto the mother and then have someone actually be telling the TRUTH in one of these things.

– I like the new opening.

The Not-So-Good

– WAAAAAAAAAY too much Horatio in this one. Calleigh was pretty much invisible, Speed only got on screen long enough to die, and newly-anointed full cast member Sofia Milos got about 4 seconds of face time and then disappeared again. It’s not friggin’ CSI: Caruso, guys.

– The kidnapping story was pretty weak and the subplot with the jewel store felt like it was attached with a rivet gun to find a place for Speedle to get shot. Seriously, what was the point of the fake jewel swerve, other than that?

– Speed’s death was unsatisfying, and then he was made out to be an inept cop who didn’t clean his gun enough. Way to write him out.