CSI came at us with a completely new angle last night. Instead of following the CSI team around to their various crime scenes, we stayed in the lab and saw what Hodges, Wendy, Archie, and Henry do when Grissom and Co. aren’t around demanding DNA analyses or whatever. Here’s a closer look at what happened on episode 7×20, which was called “Lab Rats”.

All of the CSIs are out on various cases and Grissom will be spending a few hours in the morgue with Doc Robbins, so that gives Hodges the opening he’s been looking for. He wants to take a look at the miniature crime scenes that Grissom has in his office because he thinks he can help Grissom solve those cases. It’s obvious that there’s plenty of hero worship going on where Hodges and Grissom are concerned, so I can understand how Hodges would be driven by a desire for Grissom’s approval here.

Anyway, Hodges gets his lab rat cronies in on the action too. They all sit and pore over the miniatures, and we the viewers also see several flashback scenes from previous episodes to refresh our memories as to how the victims died. The lab rats talk through this stuff, review the evidence that’s been logged, and admit that they’re stymied.

But Hodges doesn’t give up. He’s convinced there must be a link that the investigators have overlooked. He eventually does find it: all the scenes contain bleach of some sort. There was a big barrel of bleach at the chicken processing factory; there was a bottle of bleach in Izzy Delancy’s kitchen; there was bleach mixed with water in Barbara Tillman’s apartment, and there was a coupon for bleach in Penny Garden’s apartment.

Hodges presents this theory to Grissom, who actually thinks Hodges is on to something. The way Grissom sees it, the killer could be someone who is set off by a certain item (bleach in this case). The phenomenon is not without precedent, so while extremely rare, it is possible. Now the CSIs have a whole new course to pursue, and that’s where we leave off for the time being.

My Reaction: Good lord, the way they keep bringing up this miniature killer, the payoff better be spectactular! That being said, I simply don’t understand the killer’s motivations. First, the CSIs thought the murders were premeditated and meticulously planned (the miniature crime scenes point to this).

But now they’re saying the killer got set off by seeing signs of bleach?! Perhaps I didn’t understand Grissom’s explanation adequately. I thought he was saying that the killer would suddenly be thrown into an uncontrollable homicidal rage if he/she saw bleach. If that’s so, then where do the miniatures fit in? The two conditions seem mutually exclusive.

I kind of liked the idea of giving viewers an episode from the lab rats’ point of view (at first), but I quickly discovered that there’s a reason they’re all secondary characters. None of them are interesting enough or developed enought to carry an episode on their own. So while I appreciated the writers wanting to try something new, this ep dragged for me.

Ok — like I said, there better be one hell of a payoff when the miniature killer is revealed!

Last night’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy was one of those retrospective clip shows that are sometimes used to either catch new viewers up on what’s been happening over the past couple seasons or give regular viewers a glimpse of what’s to come for their favorite characters. “Every Moment Counts” falls into the former category, as there were no new scenes and no clues about the future.

Most of the focus was on the characters and their various sexual relationships with each other. This made the whole thing pretty boring, in my opinion, because these scenes have been freakin’ done to death already. I could have gone without seeing Denny and the whole LVAD wire drama again, and I definitely didn’t need to hear Meredith’s totally pathetic “Pick me, choose me, LOVE me” speech to Derek once more. Ugh. That stuff was craptastic enough the first time around.

Some of the clips did make me a bit nostalgic. I particularly liked the stuff from early Season 1 and Season 2 when the five interns were really interacting with each other and not dealing with their own agendas so much. That’s what first attracted me to this show anyway. It wasn’t McDreamy (or any of the other guys) nor was it the sexual exploits. It was the five interns and their developing friendship as they learned to be great surgeons. That’s the Grey’s Anatomy I want to see again. Will we ever get it back?