CSI: Cockroaches (Episode 809)

I learned two things while watching this episode:

1. Special guest director William Friedkin may be considered a brilliant director, and I do not deny that I own a copy of To Live and Die in LA so that I can ogle William Petersen's junk whenever I want, but his style was all wrong for this show. The 80s are over, dude. Move on.
2. I now firmly believe the reason why Warrick hardly gets any significant screentime is because Gary Dourdan is kind of a sucky actor.

The episode opens with a chase scene, which is just like the legendary one in The French Connection, except for how it's not like it at all, and it sucks. Cops chase a garbage truck and a body flies out of the back, then when the truck gets blocked the driver hops out and runs away, but he's plowed down by a car.

The team assembles, except Warrick, who's late and not answering his phone, according to Catherine. She's the most conservatively dressed we've ever seen her and has straight, sensible hair. Normally I would approve of Catherine looking more professional on the job, but I think this episode would be much improved by her cleavage and babe hair. Grissom hands out assignments - Greg's on the trail of debris that came from the truck, Catherine's on the garbageman's body, and Grissom's taking the other body and the truck until Warrick arrives. And here he comes, arguing on the phone with Tina. We learn in a really clunky bit of exposition that Tina got herself knocked up by another man. Warrick pops a pill before getting out of the car, where Grissom reprimands him for being late and tells him his punishment is that he gets the fun job of processing the garbage truck.

Morgue. Doc Robbins tells Catherine the the truck victim was crushed in the compacter after he died, but the COD was suffocation. Up in the print lab, Nicky's managed to trace the garbageman's cell phone and has identified him as Brody Biggs, an ex-cop who quit the force in 1980 and spent the next 20 years working as a mechanic. The other victim is Jason Crewes, who worked at a few casinos over the last several years.

Catherine and Nicky go to Crewes' house and discover that he was high up in the club world and had a lot of celebrity friends. They also find evidence in the bedroom that Crewes was suffocated in his bed with one of his pillows. Brass talks to Crewes' grieving mother, who looks at Biggs' picture and doesn't recognize him. When Brass tells her he was a mechanic she says her son drove limos before getting into the club scene, so perhaps Biggs worked for him. For some reason, Beth Broderick has decided to put on some kind of, I don't know, cartoon version of what she thinks a mob moll (spoiler!) would sound like, only she keeps slipping in and out of it.

Warrick is dutifully going through the trash in the truck and Grissom is nice enough to help him out. Everything they're finding is from the 1980s and Grissom, noticing that a label has covered up some old paint underneath, thinks maybe the truck hasn't been used for years and was disguised as a modern garbage truck so Biggs could transport Crewes' body to the landfill undetected. Warrick apologizes for being late and Grissom asks him what's going on. Warrick whines about his divorce, then claims that Sara's leaving has made him feel disconnected from the team. Grissom recognizes that for the bullshit it is and tells him to not screw up his job. Still following the trash, Greg finds a gun that Biggs tossed out of the truck. He shows it to Grissom and Warrick and points out the bullets, which are favored by hitmen. Since Biggs found Crewes asleep, why make a mess with the gun? Grissom agrees it looks like Biggs was a hitman but they still need to find who hired him.

The truck has been traced to a defunct company that was owned by deceased mob boss Anthony Pezzulo. Greg, reminding us that he's writing a book about Vegas history, says Pezzulo was whacked back in the 80s. Later, Archie tells Warrick that Pezzulo's wife sold the garbage company after her husband died, then she disappeared. All he found was an old photo and when Warrick looks at it, he sees it's Jason Crewes' mother. Later, Brass talks to Mama Crewes, who says she and Jason went into witness protection, and Jason never knew his father was a mobster. Brass shows her an older photo of Biggs and this time she recognizes him, calling him "BB." She refuses to believe Biggs killed her son, since he and her husband were friends. Brass tells her the evidence is overwhelming and asks who got the trucks after she sold the company. She says they went to Lou Gedda, the owner of a strip club. She doesn't want to believe Gedda was involved, since he was also on Pezzulo's crew, but Brass obliquely reminds her that they're talking about mobsters here.

At Gedda's strip club, Brass and Warrick go talk to Gedda in his office, but not before Warrick has some eyesex with one of the strippers. She's played by Rebeeca Budig, who I know best as the original Greenlea on All My Children, back when I used to watch it. Now I just stick to General Hospital. You know what would make this episode watchable? Spinelli! Hell, even The Holy Hitman Jason "St. Jasus" Morgan would be welcome at this point. Anyway, Gedda is a gross, hairy, fat, naked old man getting a massage and when he rolls over, his towels rides up in such an alarming fashion that I fear this has suddenly become an HBO show, and I wish for blindness. Before they start questioning Gedda, Warrick looks suspiciously at a barber's chair in the office. Gedda thinks they're here about prostitution and claims he fires dancers who hook on the side, but Brass asks him about Biggs and Crewes. Gedda says Biggs worked for him as a mechanic, and claims that he liked Crewes, who brought celebrities to his club. He says he last saw Crewes a week ago. When Brass asks him if he's missing a garbage truck, Gedda clams up and refuses to answer any more questions without his lawyer.

Warrick goes through Crewes' computer and tracks down Raykirk, a friend who's listed in Crewes' calendar as going to the strip club with him. Raykirk says Crewes took him and some buddies to the club and they were charged $10,000 for what should have been a $4000 bill. Raykirk refused to pay so Gedda had his bouncers take him to the office, where Raykirk was smacked around, strapped to the barber's chair, and given the option of being cut on the throat or the junk. Since he wanted to live, Raykirk chose to have his package sliced. He tells Warrick that Crewes called Gedda afterwards and told him he was never going to bring clients to the club again. He leaves, but not before saying if Gedda is prosecuted, he won't be a witness.

Greg test-fires the gun and comes back with a match to an unsolved murder in 1993, where the victim's car was found at the strip club, the last place he was seen alive. Warrick tells Grissom that a lot of crimes are reported at the club, but the victims won't press charges, the witnesses won't testify, and the cops don't seem to want to pursue it. Warrick thinks Gedda has cops on his payroll. He returns to the club during the day and sees a man washing out the back of a van. Instead of talking to him, he goes to talk to a homeless man who regularly loiters about. The homeless man tells Warrick that he often sees people getting beaten up by the club's bouncers, and the real troublemakers get hauled off. Warrick returns to the van, where the guy washing it has left. He finds a large firepit that looks like it's cooking a whole lot of barbecue embedded in the ground. Before he can investigate further, Gedda busts him and kicks him off his property, since Warrick doesn't have a warrant.

Back at the lab, Warrick finds bruising on Crewes' arms that he thinks may have come from being strapped to Gedda's barber chair. As he's going through the evidence, Nicky sees him popping a pill, and he comes in to confront him about using uppers and downers. Now, George Eads is usually a skilled actor and would be able to play this scene as Nicky being hotly stern, hotly worried, and hotly compassionate. But somehow the sheer badness of this episode has caused him to lose his mojo, so he just comes off like a whiny teenager. He does, however, get close enough to Warrick that it looks like they're going to start making out, but they don't so there's nothing to recommend this scene. In any case, Warrick pretends to take Nicky's confrontation to heart and Nicky buys it, because he's been hit by the stupid stick in this episode.

Warrick tries to get a warrant for Gedda's club but Brass tells him the judge wouldn't sign off on it. He advises Warrick to talk to Captain Underpants and Warrick does, if you consider "talking" to be "loudly berating, demanding, and insulting." Grissom intervenes and before Captain Underpants can fire Warrick, he tells Warrick to take the night off.

Instead of going home, Warrick lurks in his car outside Gedda's club. He sees Greenlea hauling a very large duffel bag to her car and he freaks out. Yeah, like Gedda would get a tiny stripper to dispose of the bodies. She's startled by his sudden appearance but shows him the contents of the bag, which is filled with all of her stripper wear. Girl goes through a lot of costume changes. Warrick decides to go park his ass inside the club, where he orders three bottles of expensive champagne and a lapdance from Greenlea. He's having a fine old time until Grissom arrives and tells him to get the actual fuck out. Warrick seemed to think he could trick Gedda into putting him on his cop payroll which will allow him to get his warrant (I think? I was barely paying attention at this point), and he might be right since his bill comes and the champagne is on the house, but Grissom tells him he has to pay since they can't accept gifts. He packs Warrick into a cab and tells him to go home and sleep it off.

Of course, Warrick just rides around the block a few times then returns to the club. He's going to get back in his own car but he sees Greenlea leaving and he hops back in the cab, telling the driver to follow the stripper. During the ride, Warrick dozes off in a drug-and-booze-induced haze and sees flashes of the crime scene. He follows Greenlea to a cocktail bar and they commence with the flirting. Eventually they make it to a hotel room and have sex, which Warrick only half-experiences because he's drugged out of his mind. At one point he imagines her holding a knife instead of a strip of condoms, which is probably something Freud would have a field day with. The scene is supposed to be all trippy and hallucinatory and "artistically" edgy but mostly I was deeply embarrassed for Gary Dourdan and Rebecca Budig. At the end, there's a quick flash of a bloody and dead Greenlea, then Warrick wakes up alone in the hotel room. He leaves, still too high to notice the large spray of arterial blood on the wall behind the bed. He returns to the club to retrieve his car and it takes him a few long moments before he sees the flashing lights and tape of a crime scene. He tries to duck under it but Grissom hurries over and tells him he has to stay on the other side this time. Why? Because Greenlea's corpse is hanging out of Warrick's car. Warrick screams, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" a few times like he's Luke Skywalker just learning that Darth Vader is his dad.

Search your heart, Warrick. You know it to be true that this episode was crap. Let's just hope that the conclusion is even a little bit better.