CSI 11.08 'Fracked'

Episode Title: “Fracked”

Writers: Bradley Thompson and David Weddle

Director: by Martha Coolidge

Story:

Kids are drinking beer and skinny-dipping at night in a hot spring so just know something bad is about to go down – and it’s a dead body floating up in the water. Everyone out of the sulfur pool!

Langston is on the scene and explains to Capt. Brass that if you bathe in sulfur water every day you’ll have a beautiful complexion. “His complexion’s really improved,” says Brass of the dead John Doe. Groan.

The team prods John Doe with all sorts of thermometers and various science doohickeys to determine that he was probably killed and then dumped in the water. Back at the lab, Al’s got so much brain matter and entrails on display I think I’m watching “Fringe” for a moment. He explains to Katherine that the dead guy was extremely ill.  The team discovers that he died by drowning, but not in the sulfur spring.

Evidence soon reveals that John Doe is Walter Burns, a rancher from Cable Springs. His phone records show that he’d been in close contact with Rosalind Johnson, the sole operator of a small local newspaper.

Langston and Brass meet with Johnson (Angela Bettis) but she plays the First Amendment card when asked about the story she was working on Burns with. However, she does tell the boys that Walter’s wife was also sick.

Meanwhile, Archie does inventory on an Escalade owned by one Richard Adams, who took a recent trip out to Burns’ ranch. Bullet casings and blood lead Nick to believe Adams was shot in the vehicle but he’s MIA.

Detective Reed (Katee Sackhoff) meets with Nick at the last place Adams visited according to his GPS, which she refers to as “hooker alley.” Now we’re talking. They soon come upon Adams body next to a dumpster, along with his iPhone.  The last person he called?  Rosalind Johnson.

Adams’ wife (Megan Ward) tells Nick that he had become increasingly paranoid about being followed. That’s because Adams was a safety inspector for Conservo, a local gas company. When pressed for more info on the company, she clams up. But that’s because someone left a rotting goat’s head on her doorstep. So you can’t really blame her. 

And what’s worse, the goat was suffering from the same illness as Walter Burns. When Nick, Langston and Reed visit another rancher named Bill Gibson, whose address on Adams’ GPS. Gibson (Henry Sanders) goes on a tirade about Conservo poisoning his water. As proof, he drops his cigarette into a well, causing a massive explosion. Ok, I’m awake now.

Rosalind Johnson meets with Langston again and asks if he knows what “fracking” is.  Sounds like a sci-fi expletive,” says Langston. You mean like on "Battlestar Galactica"?  I think that’s what he meant.

Some Googling on Langston’s part reveals that “fracking” is the process Conservo uses to mess with the water and make gas – and indeed not a reference to BSG.  Bummer. I was hoping Cylons were behind this whole murder thing. 

A trip to the Conservo drilling site proves fruitful for Langston and Nick. They find the pool, filled with chemically treated water, in which Burns was left to drown after he was spotted attempting to collect a water sample. The team then discovers that Adams and Burns were killed by the same man, a truck driver for Conservo. And just to cover all their bases, the company had him killed too, via a hit-and-run. 

With the case solved, Langston and Katherine press Conrad to pursue taking down Conservo but he sternly reminds the pair that they’re CSI detectives and not corporate whistleblowers. He agrees to leave the case open on the hit-and-run and Langston offers Rosalind Johnson, who is also sick, an invitation to a clinical trial a friend is running. A rather sober ending to story that’s as sad as it probably is true.

Breakdown:

Damn, that was depressing. One of my biggest complaints about “CSI” is how easy the criminals make it for Langston and his team to gather evidence, with bullet casings everywhere, shreds of clothing and enough DNA to clone a human being found at most crime scenes. But in the case of “Fracked” the ease with which the CSI team solved the murder made a poignant statement about the limitations of the justice they really wanted. 

Even though the team was able to demonstrate the crimes of Conservo with microscopic clarity, taking down a monolithic corporation with a stranglehold on a small town is well outside their means. As much of a downer as the episode was, if it had ended with an eleventh hour cure for Rosalind Johnson’s illness and Consevo closing up shop, I’d have felt duped. 

There are plenty of people more qualified than I to argue the authenticity of the methods used on “CSI,” but as a simple layman, I’m left to assume the science the team employs is more or less plausible. But I am capable of calling b*llshit when a procedural attempts to tackle in one hour what takes legions of lawyers and whistleblowers years to accomplish. And for that, I applaud the writers of “Fracked.” 

“CSI” is loaded with cheesy one-liners but when Conrad told Katherine she’s a crime scene investigator not Erin Brokovich and reminded Langston that the case “isn’t Chinatown” it kind of broke my heart just a little. 

The team can gather as many bullet casings, carcinogenic water samples, dead goat heads and rotten entrails as they like but it’s just not enough to take down the corporate big bad.  As much as Conrad’s heartless devil’s advocacy unnerves me, he’s absolutely right here. 

As for Katee Sackhoff’s turn as Frankie Reed, you don’t suppose it’s a coincidence that the episode is titled “Fracked?”  Sackhoff did what she does best, play a feisty, strong willed woman with a take-charge attitude – this time with red hair. 

With bad jokes and lab time kept to a tolerable minimum (there was even an explosion in this episode!) “Fracked” was a solid hour of “CSI,” striking the right balance between hard science and good’ ole flatfoot pavement pounding. And despite my complaint, Katee Sackhoff always scores bonus points.

Crave Online Rating: 7 out of 10.