Danny Messer

Template:TV-in-universe Template:CSI character Daniel 'Danny' Messer is a fictional character on the TV series CSI: NY. He is portrayed by actor Carmine Giovinazzo.

Background

Danny grew up on Staten Island, in a family "under surveillance" (as hinted at in the episode "Tanglewood"). As a result, he formed his own set of hybrid ethics, caught between the world of lawbreakers and lawmakers. Though very little is known about the Messer family, Danny openly admits that he has had a very rocky relationship with his older brother, Louie, since a fateful night in 1991. After promising to take Danny to Atlantic City with some of his friends, they stopped off at Giants stadium where he and two others began to severely beat a drug dealer, telling him it was an initiation into the Tanglewood Boys gang. When Danny protested, Louie called him a disgrace and told him to leave (episode 220, "Run Silent, Run Deep"). Despite the strained relationship that resulted, Danny would later come to lend money to Louie on more than one occasion. (episode 211, "Trapped").

While Danny and his older brother grew apart in their teenage years, it can be said that they were close as children, since Danny fondly recalls rowing in the bay with his brother in their grandfathers boat to dive for bottles, (episode 402, "The Deep") But this memory too, fond as it is to Danny, remarks on his relationship with his mother as he goes on to say that on one occasion their boat drifted into the harbor, and they were taken home by the coast guard much to the dismay of their mother who, in turn, didn't speak much to her youngest son for a week thereafter.

After graduating first in his class at the NYPD police academy, (episode 122, "The Closer") CSI team leader Mac Taylor personally selected Danny for his team, an honor and a responsibility that he attempts to live up to each day.

As the resident playboy, Danny is seen as having commitment issues and does not subscribe to common ideals of marriage and love; once telling Mac to not even make jokes about it (episode 115, "Til Death Do We Part"). However, he has since only shown one sign of growing out of his commitment-phobic ways (i.e.; joking about marrying Lindsay Monroe after she displayed a knowledge of football (episode 219, "Supermen")).

Outside the Lab

Danny is apparently in his early 30's; reference has been made about his 30th birthday (episode 208, "Bad Beat"). Danny attended college and played minor league baseball until he got into a fight and broke his wrist. He is a very good handball player, once using his skills to acquire evidence (episode 216, "Cool Hunter"). He suffers mildly from bathophobia, ( fear of depths) though he refuses to admit it, becoming nervous and irritable when underground great distances, (episode 105, "A Man a Mile") as well as possibly from claustrophobia since his experience being trapped in a panic room. (episode 211, "Trapped"). He frequently makes film references, which suggests he is a movie buff.

On the Job

Danny has displayed a tendency to follow his intuition when solving a case, rather than relying on the evidence, for which Mac has reprimanded him (episode 105, "A Man a Mile"). Danny is a very suspicious person; though he gets along well with the rest of the CSI team, Detective Don Flack is one of the few people he truly confides in.

Almost a year after a case that involved the Tanglewood Boys gang (episode 113, "Tanglewood"), Danny is implicated in a 15-year-old cold murder case. Louie is severely beaten by the gang and left in a coma after attempting to prove Danny's innocence. With Mac's help, Danny eventually clears his name, thanks to a taped confession from the real killer (episode 220, "Run Silent, Run Deep"). Louie's condition is still unknown, though it is widely presumed that he is still comatose.

Danny is particularly sensitive when it comes to suspects who act out on the loss of a loved one. In episode 304, "Hung Out To Dry," Danny tells murder suspect Shane Casey that he understands Shane's desire to clear his brother, Ian's, name, but does not agree with Shane's methods. Danny's words come back to haunt him later when, during the events of "Raising Shane" (episode 311), Shane tries to exploit Danny's sympathy for his situation, as well as Danny's concern for Louie, to get Danny at gunpoint to process the since-abandoned crime scene to obtain evidence that would find Ian innocence. To Shane's despair, the CSI brings evidence with him that proves Ian's guilt, and the police take Shane into custody without incident.

During "On The Job" (episode 121), Danny's relationship with Mac becomes strained when, during a critical case, Danny fires his weapon blindly, which supposedly leads to the death of a police officer. Ultimately, it is determined that someone else actually fired the fatal shot. Nevertheless, Danny is taken off the promotional grid after talking to Internal Affairs when specifically told to wait. The mistrust fades by the end of Season 2, when Mac talks to him outside the hospital after the events that leave Danny's brother Louie comatose (episode 220, "Run Silent, Run Deep"). Danny is annoyed when he discovers he is evidently the last to learn about the romantic relationship between Mac and medical examiner Peyton Driscoll, especially that "even Flack" knew about it before he did (episode 316, "Heart of Glass").

Danny takes it upon himself to trade shifts with Lindsay Monroe in episode 324, "Snow Day," taking her place to assist lab tech Adam Ross at a warehouse crime scene. When he arrives, he is taken hostage and held, along with Adam, by Irish mobsters who hope to use the situation to distract the NYPD while others of their clan break into the lab to retrieve a huge cocaine seizure from previously in the day. Danny is badly beaten during his captivity (taking a total of 4 blows to the head, one to the spine and having his left hand broken), but, with Adam's help, manages to take down their captors in time to be rescued by the officers gathered outside.

Relationships

Danny is generally seen as a bit of a playboy. Seemingly aware of his good looks and charm his serial womanizing is alluded to in episodes such as Season 1 episode 13 when Aiden assumes Danny has visited a so called rub-and-tug kind of massage parlor he replies "You kidding me? I got girlfriends for that, why would I pay?" Earlier in season 1 episode 4, Stella catches Danny leering suggestively at the waitresses in a trendy Japanese restaurant in which food is served off the bodies of nude serving women. When Stella comments about the sanitation of this kind of dining Danny replies "Who cares if it's sanitary? I wanna see the menu."

Aiden Burn

In Season 1, Danny and fellow CSI Aiden Burn were shown to have a very close relationship as friends who routinely flirt with one another. In season 1 episode 19; Danny and Aiden work a case during which he catches Aiden behaving flirtatiously towards officer Lily, the first office on the scene. After putting an abrupt stop to their flirtation they return to work and later he teases her about this indicating his possible jealousy. In the late Season 2 episode "Heroes" (episode 223), Aiden, who had been fired from the crime lab earlier in the season, is found brutally murdered. Danny is, by far, the most shaken member of the team and lashes out at a man brought in for questioning for Aiden's death. When he begs Mac to let him interrogate the man, Mac refuses, knowing Danny is likely to become violent out of grief. After catching Aiden's killer, a rapist named D.J. Pratt, who Aiden had been intent on bringing to justice, Danny and the rest of the team meet at a local pub and toast their lost friend and colleague while reminiscing about her, content that they have fulfilled a promise to put Pratt behind bars for his crimes.

Don Flack

Danny maintains a strong friendship with Donald Flack, Jr., better known as Don Flack. The passionate and quick tempered CSI confides in and commiserates with the more level-headed detective when facing turmoil, such as when Danny is suspecting of accidentally killing an undercover officer, and later when Mac is under fire for the death of Clay Dobson (episodes 121, "On the Job;" 323, "...Comes Around"). It is also assumed that Danny and Flack spend some of their downtime together as friends, in the very first episode Season 1, episode 1 Danny is exiting an interrogation room and casually says to Don "Hoops on Saturday, Flack. Don't forget."

Cindy

Danny had a girlfriend named Cindy, who once called him at work, ("Trapped", 211) but it is assumed that she is just one of a number of come-and-go women in his life.

Lindsay Monroe

Danny is initially less-than-friendly towards Lindsay Monroe, the detective brought in from Bozeman, Montana, at Mac's request to fill the gap in the roster left by Aiden's dismissal. On her first day, Danny tricks Lindsay into calling Mac "sir," a title that Mac has always hated (episode 203, "Zoo York"). Since then, however, Danny has become friends with Lindsay. For the remainder of Season 2, their relationship is one of friendly competition and playful banter. In episode 302, "Not What It Looks Like," Danny's true feelings towards Lindsay manifest themselves in his objection to her volunteering to go undercover, and his holding her close to him after the team rescues her. In the following episode, "Love Run Cold," he confronts her, wanting to know where their relationship is headed. Lindsay says "it's not you, it's me" and explains that she is not ready just yet. The reason is brought up later on in the season after Lindsay is informed that a suspect in the murder of her friends, Daniel Katums, has been arrested.

In episode 318, "Sleight Out Of Hand," Danny is working multiple shifts in an effort to keep his mind off Lindsay, who had since returned to Bozeman to testify as the lone witness in a murder trial. After Mac sends an exhausted and borderline-delirious Danny home, Danny makes a spur of the moment decision to fly to Bozeman and arrives at the courthouse when Lindsay is on the stand. His presence gives her the confidence to finish her testimony, after having broken down on the stand once already. After the trial concludes with the conviction of the murder suspect, they hug and Lindsay tried to reel him in for a kiss but they are mobbed by reporters and it doesn't happen.

In the third season finale, after an evening of playing pool and drinking, Danny and Lindsay have sex on the billiard table at Danny's apartment in episode 324, "Snow Day."

Family

• unnamed mother
• unnamed father
• Louie Messer (brother)