When one ongoing storyline was getting closer to being solved, a new related narrative popped up.
It was as simple as “the lawyer did it” on CSI: Vegas Season 1 Episode 6.
Having Anson Wixx, the attorney who has filed a class-action suit against the Crime Lab on behalf of thousands of “wrongly-convicted” prisoners, as the mastermind seemed too obvious.
But then, a straight line is the shortest distance between two points.
So, yeah, obvious could work.
Once Kline became another victim attached to the effort to ruin the lab’s reputation, Maxine decided to bring Nora into the loop rather than working around her.
Nora took Gil and Sara’s lying to her to get their hands on her files reasonably well, all things considered. She was also smart enough to see the case against Hodges unraveling and that there was someone out there framing him.
Nora also saw no point in letting all those felons back on the streets based on fabricated technicalities. Still, she required proof rather than a handful of loosely connected theories, which was only fair.
That should have been a kum ba yah moment, but, of course, things are never that simple in procedural land.
Gil discovered that luminol had been used to clean up the crime scene at Kline’s house, and he and Sara recognized that that type of luminol was the Crime Lab’s homebrew.
This meant instead of people heading out to prove some of those theories mentioned above, everyone was locked inside the lab, supposedly with the killer.
Naturally, circumstances indicted Chris, the least likely of all the CSIs to be a criminal mastermind.
No, Chris just had the bad luck to have his luminol stolen and to be experimenting with grenades similar to the one used to blow up Kline.
Fortunately, Chris, whose defense was basically “I’m a victim of circumstance,” was quickly forgiven as the lab established a new target.
OGs Gil and Sara were able to revisit the crime scene where Chris lost his luminol, a murder victim’s car, and found the dandruff DNA necessary to identify Waxx. Now wasn’t that convenient?
Now they just need to tie Waxx much more closer to the conspiracy while Nora quietly runs interference for them.
A new problem popped up in the person of a jailed serial killer recruiting copycats by mail, in a subplot that should have been on that Criminal Minds revival that got scrapped. The reason that works is that Jeremiah Dalt is one of the thousands Waxx is hoping to free.
The first of those murder bombs went off at Funhouse, a clown-themed motel. (A clown-themed motel? Sh-It, that’s creepy!) Of course, the two murder victims were re-dressed after death to resemble clowns.
Folsom and Allie, who soon found themselves adrift from the modern conveniences of the locked-down Crime Lab, had no shortage of suspects who were red herrings.
There was the victim’s boyfriend, soon revealed to be a victim himself. There was the creepy couple who liked to watch. There was the harrowing ice-cream truck, whose driver was most likely just a drug dealer. There was the ex-con turned housekeeper, who gave Allie all kinds of crap for his wrongful incarceration.
In the end, it was none of those, but it’s nice to have options.
Folsom and Allie had to work old school since they were locked out, rigging up a way to find fingerprints on the origami flowers attached to the victims.
Dalt led them around by the nose, supplying paper with his fingerprints for those flowers. He didn’t seem at all surprised when they showed up at his prison.
He correctly pegged Folsom and Allie as a couple, something obvious to viewers but not to the two CSIs themselves. As long as they keep meeting up at crime scenes, though, any romantic relationship is going to be held on a very slow boil.
Dalt had been just a ranting nutjob that the guards tolerated, and the general public ignored. But now that it appears that Waxx’s class-action suit will free him, all of the sudden, his threatening letters have weight to them.
If that seemingly harmless motel owner Finch could be coerced into becoming a murderer for fear of what Dalt would do, how much easier would it be to convert someone who already holds grudges against people?
Finch still had another six of those origami flowers left for future use. So how many more of those flowers are out there, in how many sets of hands?
It’s little wonder that Dalt was predicting monumental trouble was on the way with which the police and Crime Lab would have to deal.
It will be intriguing to see how this shakes out. The Crime Lab has to prove what Waxx is doing without the threat of Nora getting into their business.
If they manage to do that, then Dalt never leaves prison, and his threats to his potential copycats don’t carry that much weight.
If they don’t, things could get messy very quickly.
Will this setup leave time for a case of the week as well?
This case has got to come to a head sooner rather than later. Or probably there will be a cliffhanger to last through a holiday hiatus.
To revisit the conspiracy so far, watch CSI: Vegas online.
Did you suspect the lawyer?
Are you excited about a serial-killer subplot?
Are Folsom and Allie a couple?
Comment below.
Dale McGarrigle is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.