Grave Danger
"Grave Danger" | |
---|---|
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episodes | |
Episode nos. | Season 5 Episodes 24/25 |
Directed by | Quentin Tarantino |
Story by | Quentin Tarantino |
Teleplay by | Anthony E. Zuiker Carol Mendelsohn Naren Shankar |
Production code | 05024/05025 |
Original air date | May 19, 2005 |
Guest appearances | |
John Saxon (Walter Gordon) Frank Gorshin (himself) Tony Curtis (himself) Lois Chiles (Jillian Stokes) Andrew Prine (Judge Bill "Cisco" Stokes) | |
"Grave Danger" is the two-part
Summary
The separated graveyard-shift team join together after one of their own is kidnapped from a crime scene and held for a million dollar ransom by a mysterious and vengeful assailant. However, it soon appears that the kidnapping may be about more than the ransom.
Plot
This section's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. (July 2021) |
Volume 1
The show opens with
Twenty-five minutes later, police officers and CSIs swarm the scene. Conrad Ecklie, Assistant Director of the Crime Lab, arrives and assures
Back to the present,
A cut scene shows the kidnapper (as yet unidentified) placing an unconscious Nick in a
The scene cuts to the coffin. Nick wakes up and knocks his head on the coffin lid. He checks the magazine of his pistol and cocks it. He listens to the dictaphone tape. A taunting voice speaks:
"Hi, CSI guy.
You wondering why you're here? Because you followed the evidence.
Because that's what CSIs do. So breathe quick, breathe slow, put your gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. Any way you like, you're going to die here...okay?"
Nick panics, twisting to find a way out, hammering on the coffin lid and starts to scream. At the
Brass interviews the delivery man, and obtains the address which the package was picked up from: 625 Viking Circle. He and a SWAT team storm the house, but find only an overweight drunk lying on the couch; the address was picked at random. Back at the lab, Nick's parents, Judge Bill Stokes and his wife Jillian, meet with Grissom, who shows them the webcam link. Meanwhile, Ecklie briefs the staff: the city will not finance the ransom, despite his pleading with his boss, Undersheriff McKeen. [citation needed]
In desperation, Catherine asks her father, casino mogul
Grissom goes alone to Carney Lane; the address is a disused barn. Inside, he sees the corpse of a dog and a white Ford Expedition matching the description of the getaway vehicle. He walks through a door and meets the kidnapper, Walter Gordon (who is not identified by name at this stage). Gordon is skeptical that the money is real and not booby-trapped. He taunts Grissom, reminding him that the police are not supposed to negotiate with terrorists. When he is pressed for Nick's location, he asks:
"What does Nick Stokes mean to you? How do you feel when you see him in that coffin?
Does your soul die every time you push that button?
How do you feel, knowing that there's nothing you can do to get him out of that hell? Helpless? Useless? Impotent? Good. Welcome to my world."
Gordon opens his jacket, revealing a belt of Semtex and a detonator. As Grissom backs away, Gordon flips the switch and blows himself up. The episode ends with a shot of Grissom lying on the floor of the barn, splattered with blood, while Sam Braun's money drifts down through the air towards the ground.
Volume 2
After the prime suspect blows himself up, Grissom and the team must continue to find Nick using the evidence they have managed to put together. Greg and Warrick tap into the Expedition's trip computer to narrow down a search radius, Catherine collects up Sam's money and Sara finds the kidnapper's amputated thumb, but on returning to the lab she cannot match the print.
Inside the coffin, Nick realizes that every time the CSIs click the "Watch" button, the fan supplying him with air switches off as its power supply is diverted to power the lights. He starts to rage at the unseen viewers for switching on the light. In the AV lab, Warrick watches as Nick suddenly becomes still and plugs his ears with chewing gum. As Nick draws his gun and racks the slide, Warrick leaps to his feet, urging Nick not to fire. In the box, Nick turns the gun away from his own head and shoots out the light by his feet. Warrick yells at the screen until Nick snaps one of the spare glow sticks and can be seen moving around inside the coffin. Grissom enters and comments that "at least Nick's keeping it together."
Meanwhile, Mia and Sara are in the
At the crime scene, Warrick loses his temper at Greg due to the lack of progress, and kicks a bucket of liquid at him. When Catherine leaves to talk to Warrick, Greg notices that the liquid is sinking into the ground in some places on the floor, and the team frantically begin to dig. Inside the box, Nick hears cracking noises; thinking it to be a rescue effort, he starts to belt out Lucky Too, the song which he sang in the car at the start of the episode. However, when the CSIs open the box that they found, they find that it is only a prototype, containing a dead dog. Nick looks around inside his coffin and realizes that the cracking noises are the result of his shooting earlier; the box is breaking apart.
Back in the lab, Warrick takes the box apart, confirming that the fan and light were linked. Grissom watches on the monitor as Nick records his goodbyes to his family and friends; he is able to lip read (a skill learned when Grissom was losing his hearing[1]) Nick's words as he apologizes to Grissom for ever disappointing him, possibly a reference to his affair with prostitute Kristy Hopkins.[2] Suddenly, Nick begins to convulse and scream, the team thinks he is starting to go crazy, but Grissom zooms in on the video, and sees ants crawling around and on top of Nick.
Later, Nick forces himself to stay still, and plugs his nose and ears with a torn latex glove. Meanwhile, Grissom manages to get a close screenshot of the ants and identifies them as Solenopsis invicta, a species of fire ant. These are only present in nurseries in Nevada, as the natural soil is unsuited to them, so he cross-references the Expedition's range and the narrowed webcam trace area to narrow the search area to two nurseries. Sara remembers the comment that Kelly made about her work at a garden center, and the CSIs race to the location.
On site, dozens of officers fan out, and Catherine sweeps the ground with an electronic scanner and soon locks onto the webcam transmitter and finds the vent pipe. Inside, Nick is still being ravaged by fire ants.
The scene cuts to the autopsy room; in black and white, we see
Critical analysis
Reception
When first screened in the US, this episode was number one on the
In 2009, TV Guide ranked this episode #47 on its list of the 100 Greatest Episodes.[4]
Comparison
To other Tarantino works
Nick's situation echoes that of
- Gordon: You're telling me there's a million dollars in there? Along with some cute little booby traps? Which is it, a tracer, a
dye pack?- Grissom: Normally you'd be 100 percent right, but this time you're 100 percent wrong.
Visually, the episodes have been referred to as "Tarantino-esque...really attentive to detail"[5] by Gary Dourdan, who plays Warrick. His co-star Marg Helgenberger opined that "his [Tarantino's] filmmaking style lends itself really well to CSI... there's an enormous amount of close-ups, and it's a very visual show".[6]
Some elements of the episode, such as the pile of intestines that lures Nick to the alley, Walter Gordon's suicide and the black-and-white autopsy scene which Nick imagines when he is trapped in the coffin have been likened to the viscera of Kill Bill and other Tarantino films,
To "Crate 'n Burial"
"
Awards
Tarantino was nominated for the 2005 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series.[11]
Arc significance
This episode concludes the breakup of the team, ordered by Supervisor
This episode also introduced viewers to Undersheriff Jeffrey McKeen (Conor O'Farrell).
Home media releases
"Grave Danger" was already included as a double volume episode on the Season 5 DVD, then was offered as its own DVD broken up as a 2-parter just as on the original Season 5 boxset. It is now on Blu-ray/DVD combination in the original, complete film format in which it was originally broadcast minus the memorial dedication to Frank Gorshin who had died the day before the episode premiered on television.
References
- ^ Season 1 episode 20, "Sounds of Silence"
- ^ Season 1 episode 13, "Boom"
- ^ Aurthur, Kate; Lawrence Van Gelder (2005-05-21). "Arts, Briefly; 'CSI' Buries 'Apprentice'". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-10-10.
- ^ "TV Guide's Top 100 Episodes". Rev/Views. Retrieved July 4, 2016.
- ^ Gary Dourdan in the insert for the Grave Danger DVD
- ^ Quoted from the "Grave Danger" DVD insert
- ^ Indie London Archived 2011-09-28 at the Wayback Machine reviews "Grave Danger" and comments on similarities to Kill Bill and Tarantino's style
- ^ Indie London Archived 2008-01-15 at the Wayback Machine reviews "Grave Danger" and comments on Tarantino's "ghoulish" style and "lust for the macabre"
- ^ Everything Tarantino, commentary on "Grave Danger"
- ^ DVD Times discusses "Grave Danger"
- ^ Richmond, Ray (July 26, 2005). "Tarantino looks to add an Emmy to his Oscar". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on March 15, 2012. Retrieved November 15, 2010.
External links
- "Grave Danger" at IMDb
- "Grave Danger" at CSI Files