![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Before I start banging my head on the keyboard in abject frustration and enumerating the myriad instances of absolute fail in this episode, I'd like to start with the one pleasant surprise of the night:
Lindsay Monroe showed a flash of maturity.
There. I said it, and you bet your ass I'm baffled. Lindsay has never been known for her clear-headedness or an ability to put others before herself. If anything, she's been the poster child for meism, a narcissist of the first water who believes that the sun rises and sets out of her ass and the world hinges on her every angsty bleating. But last night, she demonstrated for the first time an ability and willingness to think outside herself.
And it's about damn time.
Granted, it's possible that her refusal of Danny's impulsive marriage proposal is just more narcissism couched in purported concern for the unborn child, that she's simply dressing up her alarmingly manipulative control issues in more palatable fashion, but I don't think that's the case here. It reared its knobbled, warty little head later with her smug and disingenuous declaration of, "You're not going anywhere; I'm not going anywhere, either," but I believe that conversation with Danny following his rejected proposal is the most honest and sympathetic she's ever been, and the most intelligent. As she says, "Would you rather walk down the aisle or be pushed?" She realizes that shotgun marriages of necessity seldom end well and often cause more emotional damage than they avert. It's an astute observation, and kudos to her for having that foresight.
While her refusal was certainly the right thing to do, I felt horrible for Danny. Yes, it was ill-advised and wrong-headed, but he clearly meant well and was trying to do right by her as he saw it, and it's another rejection atop so many others. He's been rejected or felt rejected his entire life and developed a hellacious inferiority complex as a result, and this latest rejection, no matter how reasonable or how gently given, isn't going to salve any wounds on that front. It's obviously on view during Danny and Lindsay's subsequent conversation when he asks pointedly, "Not the right time, or not the right guy?" He clearly worries that Lindsay finds him inadequate to the tasks of fatherhood and marriage, a fear that was no doubt exacerbated by her snide, "I know how you are" of the previous episode. Danny has a long memory for slights and hurts, and that one's going to draw interest for a long time."
Lindsay's assurance that she's "not going anywhere" rings hollow in light of her previous behavior. She's pushed him away time and again when his neediness has proven inconvenient, and I've no doubt that she'll do so again the nanosecond she needs to get her angst on without the bothersome buzzkill of a support system. It's much easier to angst and be put-upon when you're alone, after all, and I'd bet ten Internet dollars that she'll accuse him of emotional abandonment before the obligatory birthing scene during May sweeps.
Dear Writers,
I see what you did there, trying to defuse concerns about potential dangers to fetal development. My, what a dreadful, awkward, flippant gloss job that was. You should've simply held up a sign that said, "Gaping plothole patch in progress."
And while I understand that Mac would've been a raging hypocrite to censure Danny and Lindsay for dating when he once shtupped his coroner, I do not buy that he'd greet the news with a handshake and a hug. Fraternization between co-workers is discouraged in the department, and as their supervisor, he is duty-bound to transfer one of them out of his department. I didn't see him drawing up any paperwork.
I'm not an idiot. Stop assuming I'll swallow any pablum you spoon out. I'm not thirteen, and I can keep the Astroglide in the drawer and two hands on the keyboard while watching your show.
Dear Mac,
Congratulations on your lobotomy and personality transplant.
The rest of this episode was a plodding, choppy disaster. The case was boring as library paste, and the flash drive didoes were shoehorned into an already overburdened episode. The flash drive chicanery belonged in another episode altogether, not stapled onto a bloated borefest.
And really, I have issues with the subplot. The Men In Black grabbed Mac from a crime scene and interrogated him for an hour in the back of a sekrit gubmint SUV. For an hour mind, though Stella said she couldn't contact him "all night". Notice, also, that when Mac was first grabbed, it was daylight, but by the time they've reached the Isolated Manhattan Parking Garage of Nefarious Government Machinations, it's full dark. The MIB must've been doing their part for the environment by pushing their Gubmobiles to the garage.
So Mac is now involved in a shadowy government conspiracy over the flash drive. Really? Are you kidding me? I liked Mac much better when he was more Grissom and less Horatio Caine. Since when did NY CSI become MI-5? Between Stella and her Greek consulate mystery and this, I feel like I've been roped into watching a fourth-tier X-Files.
And if next week's preview is any indication, it's not going to get any better. You know, since fifty-year-old Mac is so hot that Elle from the secrets website is going to become obsessed with him. Please. Gary Sinise, God love him, is not the only cock in the room.
Dear PTB,
You lie. According to your official Flack bio on CBS.com, Don Flack has been a cop since 1997. It is now 2008. Therefore, he cannot have been both a detective for seven years and on the Bank Robbery Taskforce for four. Yes, that handily adds up to eleven years, but alas, it fails to take into account the required eighteen-month period as a uniformed patrolman that every officer must complete before even being considered for promotion to detective or appointment to a a specialized squad such as Narco. Either Flack has been a cop since 1995, a feat that would be improbable at best if he joined the NYPD right out of high school(which is also impossible unless he was grandfathered in because of familial connections to the department), or your math is faulty.
If Flack joined the academy immediately after high school at eighteen in '96 and joined the force at nineteen or twenty in '97, then he's been on the force a maximum of eleven years and cannot possibly have held all these positions. It's possible that the four years on the bank robbery squad were included in the seven years with the detective bureau, but Flack implied those were separate stints.
If Flack joined the academy directly after high school, then he would've been nineteen in '97 and seventeen in '95, too young to be a cop before '97, and certainly too young to be a detective by that year. Even if Flack didn't join the academy until he'd completed the requisite two years of junior college, he would still be too young to have held both positions, especially since "The Fall" had established that he had been a patrolman with Gavin Moran at one time. Though a patrolman is eligible for promotion to detective after eighteen months, few receive said promotion in fewer than three years. If Flack was lucky and received his shield at eighteen months, that leaves only nine and a half years of time, not eleven. If he received it after three years, that leaves a scant eight years.
In short, hire Charlie Eppes and suck less in the math department, please.
The case was eminently forgettable, though it's novel that the killer eluded justice for the time being. This was a case of too much character and not enough crime, and I don't hold out hope for much improvement on that score. Further, the writers did the episode a disservice by including too much in those forty-four minutes, and I was frustrated and disappointed by all of it.
C-
Lindsay Monroe showed a flash of maturity.
There. I said it, and you bet your ass I'm baffled. Lindsay has never been known for her clear-headedness or an ability to put others before herself. If anything, she's been the poster child for meism, a narcissist of the first water who believes that the sun rises and sets out of her ass and the world hinges on her every angsty bleating. But last night, she demonstrated for the first time an ability and willingness to think outside herself.
And it's about damn time.
Granted, it's possible that her refusal of Danny's impulsive marriage proposal is just more narcissism couched in purported concern for the unborn child, that she's simply dressing up her alarmingly manipulative control issues in more palatable fashion, but I don't think that's the case here. It reared its knobbled, warty little head later with her smug and disingenuous declaration of, "You're not going anywhere; I'm not going anywhere, either," but I believe that conversation with Danny following his rejected proposal is the most honest and sympathetic she's ever been, and the most intelligent. As she says, "Would you rather walk down the aisle or be pushed?" She realizes that shotgun marriages of necessity seldom end well and often cause more emotional damage than they avert. It's an astute observation, and kudos to her for having that foresight.
While her refusal was certainly the right thing to do, I felt horrible for Danny. Yes, it was ill-advised and wrong-headed, but he clearly meant well and was trying to do right by her as he saw it, and it's another rejection atop so many others. He's been rejected or felt rejected his entire life and developed a hellacious inferiority complex as a result, and this latest rejection, no matter how reasonable or how gently given, isn't going to salve any wounds on that front. It's obviously on view during Danny and Lindsay's subsequent conversation when he asks pointedly, "Not the right time, or not the right guy?" He clearly worries that Lindsay finds him inadequate to the tasks of fatherhood and marriage, a fear that was no doubt exacerbated by her snide, "I know how you are" of the previous episode. Danny has a long memory for slights and hurts, and that one's going to draw interest for a long time."
Lindsay's assurance that she's "not going anywhere" rings hollow in light of her previous behavior. She's pushed him away time and again when his neediness has proven inconvenient, and I've no doubt that she'll do so again the nanosecond she needs to get her angst on without the bothersome buzzkill of a support system. It's much easier to angst and be put-upon when you're alone, after all, and I'd bet ten Internet dollars that she'll accuse him of emotional abandonment before the obligatory birthing scene during May sweeps.
Dear Writers,
I see what you did there, trying to defuse concerns about potential dangers to fetal development. My, what a dreadful, awkward, flippant gloss job that was. You should've simply held up a sign that said, "Gaping plothole patch in progress."
And while I understand that Mac would've been a raging hypocrite to censure Danny and Lindsay for dating when he once shtupped his coroner, I do not buy that he'd greet the news with a handshake and a hug. Fraternization between co-workers is discouraged in the department, and as their supervisor, he is duty-bound to transfer one of them out of his department. I didn't see him drawing up any paperwork.
I'm not an idiot. Stop assuming I'll swallow any pablum you spoon out. I'm not thirteen, and I can keep the Astroglide in the drawer and two hands on the keyboard while watching your show.
Dear Mac,
Congratulations on your lobotomy and personality transplant.
The rest of this episode was a plodding, choppy disaster. The case was boring as library paste, and the flash drive didoes were shoehorned into an already overburdened episode. The flash drive chicanery belonged in another episode altogether, not stapled onto a bloated borefest.
And really, I have issues with the subplot. The Men In Black grabbed Mac from a crime scene and interrogated him for an hour in the back of a sekrit gubmint SUV. For an hour mind, though Stella said she couldn't contact him "all night". Notice, also, that when Mac was first grabbed, it was daylight, but by the time they've reached the Isolated Manhattan Parking Garage of Nefarious Government Machinations, it's full dark. The MIB must've been doing their part for the environment by pushing their Gubmobiles to the garage.
So Mac is now involved in a shadowy government conspiracy over the flash drive. Really? Are you kidding me? I liked Mac much better when he was more Grissom and less Horatio Caine. Since when did NY CSI become MI-5? Between Stella and her Greek consulate mystery and this, I feel like I've been roped into watching a fourth-tier X-Files.
And if next week's preview is any indication, it's not going to get any better. You know, since fifty-year-old Mac is so hot that Elle from the secrets website is going to become obsessed with him. Please. Gary Sinise, God love him, is not the only cock in the room.
Dear PTB,
You lie. According to your official Flack bio on CBS.com, Don Flack has been a cop since 1997. It is now 2008. Therefore, he cannot have been both a detective for seven years and on the Bank Robbery Taskforce for four. Yes, that handily adds up to eleven years, but alas, it fails to take into account the required eighteen-month period as a uniformed patrolman that every officer must complete before even being considered for promotion to detective or appointment to a a specialized squad such as Narco. Either Flack has been a cop since 1995, a feat that would be improbable at best if he joined the NYPD right out of high school(which is also impossible unless he was grandfathered in because of familial connections to the department), or your math is faulty.
If Flack joined the academy immediately after high school at eighteen in '96 and joined the force at nineteen or twenty in '97, then he's been on the force a maximum of eleven years and cannot possibly have held all these positions. It's possible that the four years on the bank robbery squad were included in the seven years with the detective bureau, but Flack implied those were separate stints.
If Flack joined the academy directly after high school, then he would've been nineteen in '97 and seventeen in '95, too young to be a cop before '97, and certainly too young to be a detective by that year. Even if Flack didn't join the academy until he'd completed the requisite two years of junior college, he would still be too young to have held both positions, especially since "The Fall" had established that he had been a patrolman with Gavin Moran at one time. Though a patrolman is eligible for promotion to detective after eighteen months, few receive said promotion in fewer than three years. If Flack was lucky and received his shield at eighteen months, that leaves only nine and a half years of time, not eleven. If he received it after three years, that leaves a scant eight years.
In short, hire Charlie Eppes and suck less in the math department, please.
The case was eminently forgettable, though it's novel that the killer eluded justice for the time being. This was a case of too much character and not enough crime, and I don't hold out hope for much improvement on that score. Further, the writers did the episode a disservice by including too much in those forty-four minutes, and I was frustrated and disappointed by all of it.
C-