Death in the Family

CSI: NY episode 525, “Pay Up”

Original airdate: May 14, 2009

I found only one thing in this episode truly surprising: Eddie Cahill’s intense performance as the grief-stricken Flack. Having just lost his friend and lover, Detective Angell (Emmanuelle Vaugier), Flack radiates a deep-set grief without appearing melodramatic or cliché. I liked Sid’s (Robert Joy) meaningful and touching attempt to console him. He says, “How weak and fruitless must be any word of mine,” which come straight out of a letter Abraham Lincoln wrote to a grieving mother who had just lost her five sons on the field of battle. (See my Quote of the Day for the full text.) It is truly characteristic of the well-educated coroner to quote something so sad and so poetic at a time like this. Honestly, I can’t recall a single scene Joy shares with Cahill prior to this, but their work together here is excellent. That said, I wished there had been a scene with Mac (Gary Sinise) and Flack together, since, of all the team, Mac is intimately familiar with his pain, having lost his wife Claire on September 11, 2001. 

Despite the excellent performances by the actors, however, I found rather large plot holes and confusions:

1. Where is Flack’s and Angell’s lieutenant in all this? As has been previously demonstrated, the entire department knows their relationship, and Flack’s boss lets him stay on duty when he’s clearly grief-stricken and a bit unstable?
2. I get that the bad guys are escaped military bad guys, but where did they get the money necessary to facilitate their actions in this episode? Presumably, they didn’t stiff the guy who outfitted their Hummer, or he wouldn’t have been so blasé. And, as was pointed out in the episode, there had to have been many, many easier targets than Connor Dunbrook (Thad Luckinbill), ones that wouldn’t set the NYPD ablaze. Finally, there is no indication as to the whys and wherefores of their apparent evilness. They are left as strawmen, albeit ones with armored cars and automatic weapons.
3. When the cops storm the warehouse… they let CSIs go in with them?! Seriously, they’re criminalists, not SWAT! I know they’re our main characters, but this is treading dangerously close to CSI: Miami waters.

Did Flack execute the last remaining badguy? I think so. Should he be punished? Certainly. Will he be punished? Almost certainly not. Should he have been in that situation in the first place? Absolutely, emphatically, not.