Drops Out

"Drops Out"

"Drops Out" is the fourteenth episode in the eighth season of the American crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation which is set in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States.

Plot

Greg Sanders and Gil Grissom find two bodies in two apartments directly above each other which belong to Drops. They find the DNA of Dana Espinoza, daughter of one of the victims, and she is connected with Drops. Catherine and Archie look through her phone records and call someone named "Val" only to find Warrick Brown on the other end. It turns out that Warrick was at the crime scene where Val was found dead in her car. Jim Brass and Nick Stokes question Drops (who was in prison) and find out that Dana was most probably "armed and dangerous". Drops offers his help and is temporarily freed to help the CSIs locate and contact the suspects. He leads them to where Bruce, one of his associates, lives. However, Brass finds another dead body with 9mm cartridge casings, like the ones found in Drops' apartments. Time is running out on the CSIs and they must find the killer before more innocent people fall victim.

Recap

Tonight's episode of CSI opens with a dramatic shooting in a dark room, a platinum blonde the victim. Gil (William Petersen) and Nick (George Eads) are the first ones at the scene the next day. The vic has two entry wounds, two exit wounds, both through-and-throughs. There are seven empty bullet casings on the floor. The CSIs suspect that she might have interrupted an armed burglary because the drawers have been rifled through. Gil sees a strange, circular blood drop on the floor, far from the victim that dropped to the floor through a whole in the ceiling. Nick orders the rest of the CSI team check the apartment above this one, as Gil looks through this crazy periscope thing. He sees a second victim in the apartment above.

Upstairs, an old woman, Maria Espinoza, lies dead in a pool of blood. A bullet from the downstairs apartment flew up threw the ceiling and got her in the head. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Greg is downstairs, collecting all of the bullet casings and finds with his special glasses that there is a urine-like substance everywhere.

Back at the CSI lab, Catherine (Marg Helgenberger) examines the blonde who, we now see, has a trampstamp, or more like "tramp belt" of dollar signs tattooed on her. Catherine does a little test and figures out that the blonde had a revolver in her hand when she died.

Brass (Paul Guilfoyle) calls them and reports that Drops (Method Man), the nightclub promoter who is now in jail, owns both the upstairs and downstairs apartments.

At the prison, Drops is playing chess with and getting schooled by some nerdy Cornell students. Brass pays a visit to ask about the platinum blonde victim. Turns out that her name is Jessica James, or JJ, and she was on his payroll to help create "atmosphere" in his clubs. Brass shows him a picture of Mrs. Espinoza, and Drops is saddened to see that she died because she took care of him when he was young. He leased the apartment for her when she lost her own home.

At the lab, Al takes JJ's husband Walter James to the morgue to identify JJ's body, carrying his infant son all the while. I hope that won't stunt the little kid's development.

Nick and Catherine are stuck trying to replicate how Mrs. Espinoza came to be in the cross-fire (grumbling about Gil's ego all the while). Catherine notices the bullet in Mrs. Espinoza's ceiling. They take this to Gil, who now changes his theory. But there's new evidence: results from the lab shows that urine found next to JJ's body belongs to Mrs. Espinoza's daughter, Dana. Nick goes back to Drops in prison who admits that Dana is pregnant with his child, and due any day now. Dana has a record and is notoriously difficult to track down, so Drops offers to help find her if they let him out of the slammer for 48 hours. They agree, as long as he wears an ankle monitor on at all times.

Catherine and Archie check Dana's cell phone records and find someone named Valinda Carlyle. Catherine calls the number and is surprised to hear Warrick (Gary Dourdan) answer the phone. Obviously, this is bad news for Valinda – Warrick is answering her phone because she's dead.

Drops thinks that Dana may have gone to one of his financial advisers, Zig Zag, for help. But uh oh, he's dead too, from a single bullet to the eye. Drops' next guess is his sister Sherry. Drops insists that he has to talk to Sherry alone, without the badges around. Nick stands by training to remain inconspicuous, but Sherry is hip to the fact that he's a cop. Before he goes, Sherry gives him a bag of the lunch special, which immediately prompts Nick and Brass to pull out their guns, but the bag turns out to contain only chicken gizzards. Drops has one last place he wants to check out, one of his clubs.

Meanwhile, Warrick is investigating Valinda's car containing JJ's purse. The navigation system has the address of the crime scene saved in its memory. Valinda was shot while sitting in the car. Based on some clues, the shot came from the back seat, meaning that there was someone other than Valinda and Dana in the car.

Nick and Brass take Drops to the club, where a little person in a tight latex suit is writhing and singing onstage. (She's Mini Brittany – what the people want, Drops' club manager says.) They look at the surveillance footage and see that Walter James was at the club with Dana, presumably leading her out at gunpoint. Drops' manager brings everyone something to eat. In Drops' sandwich, he hides a GPS jammer that will jumble the signal sent by his ankle monitor. Drops turns on the device, and then smoothly disappears from the room. Brass and Nick notice after a moment and run after him, but to no avail. After a short foot chase, Drops jumps into a waiting car and zips away. Nick comes back to arrest Drops' second-hand man. What happened was that Drops secretly gave Sherry instructions to tell the second-hand man to get a GPS jammer in order to help him escape from the CSI team.

Drops goes back to the apartment where JJ was killed. A very pregnant Dana is there too, but unfortunately, Walter has them both at gunpoint, a gun in each hand. Walter wants Drops' money, which he thinks is rightfully his, but he also wants some pay back. He makes Drops reenact Sophie's Choice: either Dana dies, or their unborn child dies. Backed into a corner, Drops unjams his GPS tracker. The CSI team immediately gets his coordinates and books it to the apartment to stop Walter from killing them. Unfortunately, in the scuffle, Walter manages to shoot both Drops and Dana, but not fatally. Dana's bullet causes her to go into labor at the scene, however.

Drops wakes up in the hospital, next to Dana and their newborn son. He asks her if he can hold their boy, but she won't let him anywhere near the child, and since plays exposition fairy by explaining all the details of the events: Dana heard from the downstairs apartment that someone was trying to kill her mother, so she grabbed the gun and killed JJ. Walter wants Drops' money, so he asked Dana for it, but she didn't have any because Drops had told her that he didn't have any money left. Also, Walter killed Zig Zag and Valinda.

Drops is taken back to the prison hospital, but he's relieved to know that Dana will be probably not have to do any time since she was acting in self-defense. Also, the money that he was hiding is technically Mrs. Espinoza's, so now it belongs to Dana and her child. Trying to see the bright side of things, Drops is glad that at least his child will be taken care of, even if he won't be there to raise him.

Continuity

The character Drops, played by Method Man, appeared in the episodes "Poppin' Tags" and "Big Shots".

Cast

Anya Monzikova, best known as the model holding case #10 on the TV game show Deal or No Deal, guest stars as club promoter Jessica James.

External links

• CBS Episode Recap and Episode Video