21.9.09

CSI Miami Episode 722

It’s the Bachelor on CSI Miami! Dietrich Bader is playing the host, and the episode begins with opening section of the final episode. I’m sure this is hilarious satire if you’re familiar with the Bachelor, but I’ve never seen an episode, so it’s a little lost on me. The episode takes a turn for the shocking when, after the fakeout/dismissal of one of the contestants, they check the limo to meet the other only to find her dead!

Way to break the hell out of that fake TV show thing, guys – everything up until the body is discovered is presented as part of the show, including the chintzy titles-

But the second the body is found, suddenly there’s five cameras filming everything at different angles. Also, if they found a corpse while shooting the footage, why did they edit it together like a regular episode of the show? It’s not like this was live…

You know, this season has largely been light on Horatio putting on his sunglasses and saying a thing (I suspect because Caruso found out the internet was making fun of him for it), so I’m including the line here, as well as the buildup to it. The line, because it makes absolutely no sense, even using the incredibly low bar of Horatio’s comments, and I found Bader’s opening line really, really funny.



It seems that the victim was beaten to death with a club, but somehow the videocamera didn’t catch the murder. The limo driver was also out sneaking a smoke while the murder took place, so he didn’t see anything during the half-hour window. What created that half-hour window? The bachelor had disappeared mysteriously! He claims he was just nervous before the proposal, but is it true?

Horatio and the CSI whose name I’ve never managed to learn go to interview the runner-up, and chat with another random contestant on the way.

Why does this character have lines? She doesn’t say anything useful and they don’t bother accusing her of murder. She seems too tangential to be the killer. Was the actress someone’s girlfriend? I’m guessing this is another case of the ‘person they don’t accuse’ rule. Only time will tell. About twenty-five minutes of time. We’re 14 minutes in and they generally reveal the kill 4-5 minutes before the end of the show.

Runner-up explains that she’s not suspicious, and had perfectly good reasons for ducking out of frame right before the murder. She claims she was crying, and she didn’t want to look weak on camera. Also, she’s got a lightning-bolt knife scar, which suggests that she used to be part of an Aryan pride group.

Or maybe the shape is a coincidence.

Horatio is amazingly nice to the woman, which is boring to watch, and gave me time to reflect on her possible motive, as stated by the rest of the team. They seemed to be under the impression that by killing the competition, she could think that she would win the man and the money – but I’m relatively sure that’s not how reality television works. It’s not like a race where if the guy in first has a heart attack and you cross the finish line, that counts – either she was going to win, or she wasn’t. The other contestant’s death doesn’t affect that one way or the other. It’s not like the reality TV producers are going to say ‘well, he picked the other girl, but she’s dead now… just give the chick he dumped the million dollars.’ If this chick does have a motive, they’ll need to dig a little deeper.

Back at the street where the murder happened the team discovers a piece of crushed machinery on the ground, one that mist have been destroyed by the limo as it pulled out. Bader confirms that it was a wireless camera interrupter, that he’d used on the show when he needed a private moment away from the cameras. By which me means having sex with the contestants in the limo. He claims he wasn’t the one who had sex with the victim though – and the DNA proves him honest. She’d had sex with the bachelor in the limo before the murder!

The bachelor does have a tip, though. Someone trashed all of the victim’s clothes! It’s quickly confirmed that it was the random contestant they met earlier, who gets out of the scene without being accused of murder again. While poring over the tapes looking for evidence of a fight they stumble across weird footage… a creepy bald guy looking in through the window at night! He claims that he’s just a regular old peeping tom, and not a murderer. Baldy is popped for trespassing, and then they move on.

After finding evidence of random contestant fighting with victim they finally get around to accusing her of murder. They don’t have any evidence, so they have to let her go. She does point them to runner up, though, but she’s fled her room, and the murder weapon is on the floor! But is she the killer, or is it a frame!

There’s 11 minutes left in the show, so it’s a frame.

They call random contestant back in for more questioning, and find out that she tried to rig the show with the bachelor by offering him most of the money. A plan that doesn’t seem to have worked, since he didn’t pick her from the lineup. Which was her motive, it seems. That’s right, random girl they didn’t accuse right away was the killer, just as I predicted.

I’d feel proud of myself for solving the mystery if this show had anything remotely mysterious about it.

Also, I'm not sure why the bachelor didn't mention this whole thing earlier. Having screwed one of the other contestants over for a quarter of a million dollars gives her a hell of a motive, and now that his fiancee is dead and the show is shot, it's not like he's got any reason not to tell them. He didn't commit a crime by attempting to rig the show, so he's got no motive to keep his mouth shut. Since the character was forgotten about the moment he was cleared as a suspect, I guess we'll never know.

As the show winds down we finally get a reveal on runner-up’s white power scar. It seems that, as a child, she was slashed in the face by Baldy, and now he’s returned for revenge, kidnapping her from the hotel. In a fortunate, yet scummy, thing to do, the producers plant GPS phones on all the contestants, so the team is able to immediately track Baldy down to the marina, and rescue runner-up.

Sadly, the show ends without Baldy having been summarily executed.

THE END

Now, how about a few false accusations!

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