CSI: NY
Grand Master
Episode Number: 4
Season Num: 1
First Aired: Wednesday
October 27, 2004
Prod Code: 105
Writer: Zachary Reiter
Director: Kevin Bray
Cast and Crew
Star: Hill Harper (Dr. Sheldon Hawkes), Melina
Kanakaredes (Detective Stella Bonasera), Eddie Cahill
(Detective Donald "Don" Flack, Jr.), Gary Sinise
(Detective Mack "Mac" Taylor), Carmine Giovinazzo (Danny
Messer), Vanessa Ferlito (Aiden Burn)
Guest Star: Master P (Kevin Vick), Dorian Missick (MC
Jayden Prince), Billy Aaron Brown (George Thomas), Ricky
Harris (Disco Placid), Olivia Burnette (Madison Haynes),
Chayton Arvin (Samir Persaud), Shi Ne Nielson (Mitchiko
Muzawa), Long Nguyen (Mitsuo Katsui), Matias Masucci (DJ
Francais), Maya Rubin (Monique), Symba Smith (Deborah
Gayle), Ruel (Christopher Marcus/DJ Banner), Jaerin
Washington (Club-Goer)
On the very night that he
wins a D.J. competition, DJ Banner is found dead in an
alleyway outside the club where the contest is being
run, prompting Mac and Flack to investigate not only the
club but also Banner's primary competition, who was
jealous that his girlfriend's voice was part of Banner's
act. Stella and Danny investigate the death of fashion
designer Deborah Gayle, found face-down in the pool at
her apartment by her assistant, who isn't concerned by
her boss's demise. An autopsy reveals that the cause of
death was poisoning by tetrodotoxin, a poison found in
blowfish, which leads Stella and Danny to Fuqua Sushi.
Chris Fullman - Music Recap (Music Recap)
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By Kristine
Huntley
Posted at October 28, 2004 - 5:55 PM GMT
See Also: 'Grand Master' Episode Guide
Synopsis:
Two DJs spin at a hip club in a competition. DJ Francais
spins first, while the crowd cheers. His girlfriend,
Monique, is especially enthusiastic in cheering on her
man. DJ Banner is up next, and his mix features the
voice of Monique, clearly recorded from a phone call.
The crowd goes wild as Monique storms out and DJ
Francais glowers. The emcee, Jayden Prince, tells the
crowd a winner will be announced in half an hour. But
when it comes time to crown Banner the victor, he's no
where to be found. He's lying dead out in the alley next
to the club.
Mac and Aiden arrive at the scene, Aiden noting that she
used to sneak under the velvet rope of the club. Mac
kneels by Banner's body, noting the fatal stab wound in
his neck. "What do you get for second place?" he muses.
While marking the splotches of blood, Mac finds a few
scraps of paper, which he picks up as evidence. The
blood trail indicates Banner crawled towards the club
door. The killer went back in the club through that
door.
Across town, Stella and Danny arrive at the apartment of
Deborah Gayle, a famous fashion designer who was found
dead in her pool by her personal assistant, Madison
Haynes. Stella notes an abrasion on Gayle's head, while
Danny picks up a broken fingernail. Stella sees the
woman's cell phone in the pool.
Madison tells Stella she quit two weeks ago and that
Gayle was a nightmare to work for. Madison said that she
still had a key to Gayle's apartment, which she used to
get in when the designer didn't answer. She found her in
the pool and pulled her out. Though she says she tried
to save Gayle, Madison clearly isn't remorseful about
her death.
Flack talks to Jayden Prince, who tells him that Banner
and he were best friends, and that the two were planning
to make it big together. Mac is following a trail of
bloody shoe prints into the club. Along with Aiden, he
questions DJ Francais, who claims he went to the alley
to smoke. But when Mac examines Francais's shoes with
the prints from the stairs, they're a match. He puts
Francais under arrest.
In the morgue, Dr. Hawkes, who calls Banner the Michael
Jordan of DJing, shows Mac that there were two stab
wounds in Banner's chest in addition to the fatal neck
wound. The lack of blood on Francais bothers Mac; it
would be impossible for the killer to not have gotten
blood on him. Dr. Hawkes points out bruises on Banner's
ankles, from either being dragged, held down or hung by
the ankles. The bruising occured two or three days
before Banner's death.
In the lab, Aiden has found an isolated blood drop on
Banner's shirt. It had to have fallen from above, making
their crime scene bigger. Mac and Aiden go back to the
club, where they focus in on the fire escape. Aiden
finds a cell phone, presumably Banner's. Mac finds
blood. The window the fire escape is outside of leads to
the VIP lounge and restrooms. Mac concludes the stabbing
began on the fire escape.
Dr. Hawkes tells Stella that Gayle died of asphyxiation
due to drowning. The abrasion on her head was minor. She
had foam around her mouth, and Dr. Hawkes found a piece
of red paint in her mouth. The tox screen deepens the
mystery: Danny tells Stella that Gayle ingested
tetrodetoxin, or blowfish poison. The poison paralyzed
her when she was swimming, causing her to sink and
drown.
Aiden analyzes Banner's cell phone. She's found a
puzzling message in his voicemail, filled with sounds
from a DJ table. Danny is working on a cell
phone/personal planner, too: he's taken Gayle's sopping
wet cell phone and stuck it in a toaster oven. Stella
enters the lab to tell Danny that the red paint was nail
polish, and it contained blowfish poison. Danny removes
the cell phone from the toaster and accesses Gayle's
calendar, which has her at dinner at a sushi restaurant,
Fuqua Sushi, the night of her death. The pair head to
the restaurant, where they see customers eating off
naked women, who literally serve as the tables at the
restaurant. Danny and Stella question the chef, who
tells them he screens the blowfish he serves for poison,
so there's no way Gayle could have been poisoned by one
of his blowfish. Danny says they need to examine the
blowfish.
Aiden has called on the services of Disco Placid to
analyze the vinyl sounds on Banner's voicemail. He
educates the CSIs about the different sounds: laser,
scribble, chirp, stab. The sounds end with three stabs,
which Mac interprets as a threat.
The CSIs trace the call to Slick Vick Productions, where
sleazy Kevin Vick tells them he signed Banner to a two
year contract three days before the competition. Mac,
remembering the bruises on Banner's ankles, tells Vick
he suspects the producer hung him over the ledge
literally to force him to sign the contract.
Danny and Stella dissect the blowfish, but they don't
find any tetrodetoxin in them. Stella finds stitches on
the sides of the fish. Meanwhile, Aiden and Mac compare
Banner's signature on the Slick Vick contract to an
older signature. The signatures differ slightly; the
Slick Vick one appears as though it may have been signed
with hesitation, or even with the help of another hand
guiding Banner's.
The restaurant blowfish are a dead end. They were
domesticated fish with the stitches removed so that the
restaurant could charge high end prices for supposedly
"wild" blowfish. Danny and Stella go back to Gayle's
apartment, where Danny finds evidence that Gayle's
computer was accessed after her death. Several files
were e-mailed to Gayle's former personal assistant,
Madison.
In the bedroom of the morgue, Dr. Hawkes has extracted
and cleaned one of Banner's ribs, which has a stab wound
on it in the shape of the weapon used to kill Banner.
Mac takes the rib to a weapons closet, where he tests
the indentation to see which weapon fits in it. He comes
up empty on screwdrivers and scissors, but hits the
jackpot with a construction file.
Mac asks Jayden Prince about the workers who struck the
stage after the performances, and goes through their
tool kits. He finds a bloody file in the kit of George
Thomas. Flack questions Thomas, noting his lengthy rap
sheet. Thomas denies any involvement in the murder.
Aiden snaps a picture of his hands, but though he has
bruising on the edge of his palms, Mac notes that type
of bruising isn't consistent with the murder weapon.
Thomas also has no motive. Mac goes back to the shreds
of paper. He lines them up with the Slick Vick contract.
They're a match.
Danny interrogates Madison, who admits to stealing the
files from Gayle. When Danny asks her how she poisoned
Gayle, Madison maintains that she only stole the fashion
design files. Stella tells him there's no evidence of
poison in any of the household items--toothpaste,
mouthwash, water--in Gayle's apartment. The pair decide
to return to the sushi restaurant and talk to the only
other woman they know for sure Gayle interacted with:
the human table. Mitchiko tells them Gayle was a regular
customer of hers. Danny asks to examine her fingernails,
but he finds nothing amiss in the red polish on her
fingers. Then he asks to see her sock-covered feet. The
messily-applied polish on her feet is a match. Mitchiko
tells the CSIs that she used to be Gayle's personal
assistant but was fired for refusing to sleep with the
designer. When Gayle learned she worked at Fuqua Sushi,
she began to frequent the restaurant and request
Mitchiko, who loathed her. "Here we were looking for the
murderer at the table...," Danny says. "...Only to find
the murderer is the table," Stella finishes.
Mac and Aiden go back to their crime scene, this time to
the office of Jayden Prince. Mac finds an empty
shredder, while Aiden takes note of pink water in the
toilet. When they life the tank cover, they find a
soaked, bloody shirt inside. They bring Prince in. He
claims that Banner would have never signed with Vick;
Banner was going to renew his contract with Jayden. Mac
tells Prince that Banner never got a chance to explain:
Vick forced him to sign the contract. Prince relents and
says he just wanted to protect Banner from the Kevin
Vicks from the world. Mac informs him that by doing so,
he became one.
Analysis:
DJs and blowfish poison--there's no denying that CSI:
NY's two cases run the spectrum this time around. The
cases work well together, both in holding the viewer's
interest and in showing the diversity of New York. I'm
not sure either of these cases (especially the former)
are necessarily exclusive to New York, but the writers
made them interesting enough that I didn't dwell on it.
There are some significant loose ends in the case of DJ
Banner that weren't rapped up. DJ Francais was out in
the alley smoking and his bloody shoe prints seem to
prove it, but after his arrest we never hear about him
again. He couldn't have missed Banner's body in the
alley, could he? And what about those bloody shoe
prints? Mac had to use the crime light on them, so
presumably someone had tried to wash the blood away, but
it wouldn't make sense for Prince to have done so. Did
Francais? If so, when? DJ Francais is dropped like a hot
potato, but a little resolution or explanation would
have been nice.
How Prince managed to think ahead enough to sneak into
George Thomas's toolbox, steal the construction file,
stab and kill Banner, and then put the file back in the
box without anyone noticing is also not explained, but
it's slightly more forgivable. Still, the writers might
have put in an explanation for Francais's bloody shoes
instead of throwing another red herring in the form of
George Thomas at us.
The other case is much smoother, though there's less
time devoted to it. For those interested in reading more
about those human sushi tables, Cynthia Gralla's novel
The Floating World chronicles the plight of a young
American woman in Tokyo who encounters the phenomenon.
Whether the restaurants have made it over to the U.S. I
won't pretend to know, but if they have, New York would
certainly be the city I'd expect them to pop up in
first.
Given what Madison and Mitchiko tells us about Deborah
Gayle, it's hard to sympathize with the twisted fashion
designer, freeing the audience to be merely intrigued by
the outlandish, delightfully twisted case. Unlike the
sad story of Prince and Banner, the blowfish poisoning
case is pure slick CSI. The two work well together, with
the Gayle case delivering the closing jabs and the
Banner case ultimately providing the heart of the
episode.
Aiden and Flack both shine in this episode. Aiden comes
off as both tough and knowledgeable. Vanessa Ferlito is
a skilled actress: last season, she convinced as a
wealthy drug dealer's girlfriend on 24, and here she's
utterly believable as a tough New York cop. She more
than holds her own when sleazy Kevin Vick suggests she
consider "giving up the blue for black," without any
real backup from Mac. Aiden also shows initiative and
savvy by bringing in DJ Placid. She even delivers a
chuckle when she tells Mac, "I'm on the toilet! Come in
here." Gary Sinise delivers here, too--his momentary
look of puzzlement is just enough to give the audience
time to react before he interprets what Aiden is saying
and goes off to see what she's found in the toilet.
Eddie Cahill as sarcastic detective Don Flack gets the
best lines, hands down. His delivery is perfect. He
tells Thomas that he could keep reading his rap sheet,
but he's "already read War and Peace," providing the
night's funniest moment and also spicing up the show
considerably.
If CSI: NY needs anything at the moment, it's to lighten
up just a tad. Starting the season with several heavy
episodes (a sadistic serial killer, a brutal rape, a
decade-old tragedy) made an impression, but it's too
easy to bring your audience down with one dark story
after another. Utilizing a character like Flack can only
help the show achieve more comic relief moments while
still keeping with the tone of the show. After all,
Flack's deadpan sarcasm is pure New York.
Next week: The CSIs next case takes them under the city.
Music Info :
CSI: New York -- "Grand
Master"
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One of the greatest musical feats is to introduce a new
and unique theme in an episode and hear it come through
via different pieces that stand apart on their own. Bill
Brown did a wonderful job with this episode, as there
was a common theme throughout the soundtrack. A few of
the standout pieces were:
Kitchen Search/Corridor Walkthrough: The strongest part
of the episode's theme came out in these two segments,
featuring a heavy string session that had a similar
sound to the Daylight soundtrack, you know, the movie
where Stallone saves a bunch of poor unfortunate souls
stuck in an enclosed and collapsed tunnel. The driving
string session provides a moving theme for these two
scenes, and adds a sense of seriousness to a rather
standard way of CSI life.
Blowfish Blend: There is a driving beat here accompanied
by a piano that keeps this process-based scene moving
forward, which can tend to become boring if not executed
correctly. Bill does execute this correctly, and the
music is driving. The beat matches the overall tempo of
the filming, and keeps your interest as the music builds
in upon itself.
Fire Escape Investigation: I did find a very strong
influence on this piece from Hans Zimmer's opening theme
to Mission: Impossible 2 (which is among one of my
favorite soundtracks of all time), as well as Craig
Armstrong's Inhaler (used in 2003's World Series
broadcast on Fox). The similarities are striking, but
there is a good blend between the two textures to make
this song unique in itself.
In the final sequence where Mac leaves the murderer to
see his reflection, the reoccurring theme introduced
during the Kitchen Search is very lightly brought back,
with hints of the string accents.
Overall, this episode's musical content was strong,
though in certain instances, it's hard to tell where the
composer ends and the studio editor begins with their
own potential-hack jobs of editing.
One thing that has amazed me about CSI: New York from
the start is how they blend in the opening theme with a
episode-unique transition from the prologue almost
seamlessly. It isn't the same in each episode, and it's
remarkable how well it blends together. I have a hard
time trying to figure out exactly how they do it, only
recognizing the cymbal crash to begin Baba O' Reilly.
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