CSI: Miami
CBS Oct 17 10:00pm
Series/Drama, 60 Mins.
"Three-Way" Episode Number: 405
Synopsis: "Three suburban housewives on a
girls' weekend in Miami are the prime suspects
when the hotel's handsome pool boy is found
murdered. When Horatio is tipped off that his
team is facing a surprise efficiency review, he
must trust Calleigh, Delko and Ryan to work
together to find the killer. However, when they
independently follow the evidence, each
discovers that their analysis points to a
different killer."
Original Airdate: October 17, 2005
Written By: Marc Guggenheim & Ildy Modrovich
Directed By: Jonathan Glassner
Guest Stars:
Rex Linn as Det. Frank Tripp
Eva LaRue as Natalia Boa Vista
Vincent Rivera as Armando Diaz
Corey Stoll as Craig Seaborn
Amy Laughlin as Erica Sikes
Grainger Hines as Chief James Burton
Rachel Crawford as Beth Jacobson
Lisa Thornhill as Felicia Hardy
Christina Chambers as Yvette Travers
Laimarie Serrano as Blanca Rodriguez
Greg Dohanic as Foster
Boti Bliss as Valera
Patrick Fischler as Vince Nolan
Jon Hamm as Dr. Brent Kessler
Cassandra Creech as Officer Jordon
Colette Kilroy as Debra Brawley
Jack Yang as Shawn Kimsey
Linden Ashby as Steven Hardy 'Three-Way'
Episode
By Kristine Huntley
Posted at October 20, 2005 - 9:29 PM GMT
Synopsis:
The body of pool boy Armando Diaz is discovered outside
the Hotel Graciana. The manager, Craig Seaborn,
identifies him and is surprised when Horatio shows him
the keycard to the penthouse suite, which Armando had on
his body. While Alexx goes over the body, Horatio is
called away by the chief, who tells Horatio that there
are concerns about his team. Ryan is looked at as a news
leak, Delko has money problems and Calleigh left a job
in ballistics that she was qualified for, leaving the
lab in the lurch. Horatio is skeptical and suspects
someone is gunning for his team, but the chief suggests
Horatio let his team run this current case on their own.
Calleigh is irritated that Delko didn’t restock the
back-up kit, so she borrows some things from his kit.
Tripp has gathered together the three women renting the
penthouse suite—Beth Jacobson, Felicia Hardy and Yvette
Travers. The three young women had come to the hotel for
a wives weekend, to get away and have some fun in the
sun. The CSIs split up the crime scene. Calleigh heads
into the bathroom where she sees blood splatter on the
ceiling. The floor has been cleaned, so Calleigh tracks
down the maid and sure enough, finds bloody towels and a
towel rod wrapped up in the hamper. Calleigh also finds
a hair on the towel, which Valera points out the hair is
from an African American, leading Calleigh to Beth
Jacobson. Beth admits she and Armando had been about to
have sex, but he wasn’t able to perform. When she
confronted him about it, he got violent and she hit him
with the shower rod to protect herself. Calleigh thinks
she has the case in the bag, but Delko has a different
theory.
After Ryan notices rolling papers in his kit, a
frustrated Delko goes off to one of the bedrooms and
finds used condoms and blood on the headboard. The room
was Felicia Hardy’s, and when Delko tracks her down
outside the hotel, her husband Steve is already with
her, ready to take her home. But when the DNA on the
condom matches Felicia and the victims, Delko has her
brought in. Felicia came across Armando in their suite,
and he seemed very excited to see her. They had sex
three times, and on the last round Armando hit his head
on the frame of the bed and fell to the side. Felicia
assumed he was just sleeping. Case closed? Ryan has come
to a different conclusion.
After Ryan and Delko exchange words in the elevator,
Ryan follows a trail of gravitational blood spatter to
the back stairwell, where he finds blood on one of the
railings and a contact lens. On his way into the labs,
Ryan runs into newswoman Erica Sikes, who demands money
for the recording device Ryan took from her to use on an
earlier case. After he gives her part of it, he goes to
the lab to analyze a bloody shoe print found in the
stairwell. The logo on the tread, Prada, leads him back
to Craig Seaborn, the hotel manager. Seaborn says he was
called to the suite to dispose of a body, but when he
got to the suite, there was no body. He found Armando in
the stairwell, but when he moved him to his car, he was
shocked to discover the man was still alive. Armando
gave him a ring he had to let him go, which Ryan
confiscates. It’s a wedding ring, with Yvette’s name
inscribed in it. Ryan questions Yvette, who admits to
hooking up with Armando earlier that day. He stole her
ring and when she ran into him later in the stairwell
she confronted him about it. They argued and he ended up
falling. She went to retrieve her ring but fled when she
heard Craig coming. She denies calling him.
So now the CSIs must ferret out who killed Armando. But
when Horatio says Alexx discovered in the autopsy that
his neck was snapped, and not from the fall down the
stairs. Given that their three suspects are women, the
CSIs have to go back to the drawing board. They take
samples from Armando’s shirt and hair and find lint and
laundry detergent, which Delko recalls also noticing on
Felicia’s luggage. They take a trip to the hotel laundry
room and find a bloody print, which they match to Steve,
Felicia’s husband. Felicia is shocked by the
accusation—she and her husband haven’t been close in
months. Why would he be following her in Miami? But then
she puts it together—he was following one of her
friends, Yvette, with whom he’d been having an affair.
As the CSIs look on, Steve Hardy is lead away and the
three former friends part ways.
Analysis:
"Three-Way" is a clever concept episode that doesn't
quite have the story to match the idea behind it, and
yet it's inventive, clever and different enough that one
is tempted to overlook the faults and focus on its
strengths. The idea of three CSIs coming to different
conclusions about the same case is an intriguing
premise, but the problem inherent in the story is that
each of the three CSIs must overlook other evidence in
order to come to their conclusions. How could the
examination of one room, ignoring the others, lead to
conclusive proof? Wouldn't the CSIs have sat down to
confer at some point about their initial analyses of the
individual rooms? Would Delko really believe that a
healthy young man hit his head hard enough during
intercourse to die from the blood loss?
There are two touchstones in the recounting: one where
the CSIs are in the elevator and then later on when
Calleigh and Delko observe Ryan handing Erica Sikes
money. In the case of the latter, what Calleigh and Ryan
observe--the tail end of the conversation in which Ryan
gives Erica money for the recording device the CSIs
busted in "From the Grave" --is something a lot more
innocuous than either Calleigh or Delko assumes.
Calleigh looks on with concern, while Delko goes much
further by assuming that Ryan is paying Erica off to get
more airtime. (Which doesn't make a lot of
sense--wouldn't it be the other way around?) Ryan's
words from earlier, when he encourages Delko not to jump
to conclusions about others, clearly had no impact.
Though given that they were delivered right after Ryan
commented on the rolling papers in Delko's kit, it's
somewhat understandable. Presumably this is going to
kick off the subplot in which Eric uses pot, but would
he really be stupid enough to keep the rolling papers in
his crime scene kit?
Of the three CSIs, Calleigh far and away fares the best
in the episode. From her point-of-view (the first
presented) it's easy to see how it looks like an
open-and-shut case. The premise Delko buys is a lot less
believable--the guy hits his head on the bed during sex
hard enough for it to kill him? That seems kind of
far-fetched to me. Ryan doesn't really seem to jump to
any conclusions--it seems clear that he's got only
pieces of the story.
I don't know if I've ever seen a victim take so much
abuse in the space of a single CSI show episode. Armando
gets hit in the head three times with a towel rod, then
goes on to have sex three times, hits his head on the
bed-frame, falls down a flight of stairs and still
survives. By the stair part, I was chuckling. The poor
guy was a regular human pinata.
Whenever I'm able to spot the killer right away, I
always wonder whether it's the writing or whether I've
seen too many episodes of the CSI shows. But I was able
to guess that Steve was the killer the minute I saw him
standing next to Felicia. The husband who just happens
to be in town already to pick his wife up before the
body is even cold? It was no surprise to learn he hadn't
just arrived, though the CSIs noticing rain spatter on
his car window was one of the thinnest pieces of
evidence I've ever seen. Is Miami the only place in the
entire area that had a sun-shower that day? And what if
the guy hasn't had his car washed in a while and the
spatter is actually from a shower that happened a week
ago? That was too great a leap.
Horatio is noticeably absent for most of the episode,
except to have a worrying conversation with the police
chief and to chide the team for neglecting to attend the
post with Alexx. That Horatio's team is being
scrutinized is nothing new, though where was Stetler and
why did he leave the police chief to do his work? He
usually loves to watch over the CSI team himself.
Regardless, two out of the three problem areas ring
true. I'm not surprised that Calleigh's resignation from
ballistics is creating waves among the higher-ups.
Calleigh was obviously talented at what she did, and her
replacement, Jim, is clearly not (or at least, he's slow
and possibly lazy). I don't imagine rushed transfers
like Calleigh's are smiled upon, though I don't know if
it's enough to question her competency.
Ryan's leaks to the news are more worrying. Though to be
fair to poor Ryan, it seems like since his one misstep
in "10-7", Erica has been all but stalking him, hoping
to get more dirt out of him. Still, once you've been
tarred with the brush of being a snitch, it's hard to
recover from that. Despite Natalia Boa Vista's dismissal
of Ryan's leaks, it's a serious matter, especially if it
hampers an investigation. Still, it's clear that Delko
isn't going to be giving Ryan the benefit of the doubt
anytime soon.
I am assuming Delko is the team member with money
problems (process of elimination), but since when? This
is the first we've heard of Delko's alleged money
problems. Wouldn't it have made more sense to reference
the incident the season before when he lost his badge
while having sex with a stranger against the wall of a
building? Eric is also apparently dumb enough to not
only smoke marijuana (a drug which stays in the user's
system for a significant period of time) but also to
keep the rolling papers in his kit. I assume Delko is
still suffering from losing his best friend last season,
but is he looking to be caught or are we actually
supposed to think he's dumb enough to do some of the
things he's done recently?
Kristine Huntley is a freelance writer and
reviewer
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