Eva Larue review CSI: MIAMI (CBS) Fallen CSI: MIAMI “Fallen” Season 9 Episode 1

CSI: MIAMI “Fallen” Season 9 Episode 1 – In season 8 of CSI: MIAMI we were left with a cliff hanger. The lab was poisoned and we had no idea who was going to survive.

Season 9 premiered on CBS with the episode “Fallen” and opened with everyone in the lab literally… fallen. Everyone was down for the count and just when it looked like Eric (Adam Rodriguez) had breathed his last breath, enter Horatio (David Caruso). Horatio shoots out a window, and much needed oxygen flows back into the lab and everyone is alive and kicking.

Everyone except Jesse Cardoza (Eddie Cibrian). As viewers, we knew that someone was taken from the unit, and for a brief second it looked like a toss up between Jesse and Calleigh (Emily Procter), but our favorite blond ballistics specialist is still going strong.

For me, watching Natalia (Eva LaRue) attempt to revive Jesse was heart breaking. I love the way that the characters in this series really seem to CARE about one another, and treat each other like family. We’ve seen this relationship between team members since the beginning of the series, and I more so think that this is the overall theme to the show. You know… with a lot of high tech crime scene solving thrown in for good measure.

“Fallen” was a continuation of the pursuit in nailing Bob Starling (Roger Bart) for a trail of murders. Turns out that even in police custody, it’s possible for Starling to keep killing, keep leaving his cryptic clues, and almost take out the entire crime lab.

That’s pretty impressive, and you sort of have to hand it to the guy for his ingenuity. However the whole “accomplice framing random guy to throw the police off the trail” has been done, and I will say I called the outcome of the episode the second they showed Melissa Walls (Kristen Hager) trapped at gun point in her apartment.

CSI: Miami is one of those shoes that always seems to make me talk out loud to the screen as I watch. And “Fallen” pretty much had me running dialogue the entire time. Things, like they usually do in this show, happened a little too conveniently for my liking.

Call me crazy, but I sort of enjoy it when the team has to WORK for their evidence. The tank of Halon gas that was being piped into the air vent causing the lab to be poisoned? Anyone NOT know that the label from that thing was supposed to spell out “university”?

And really? Did anyone reading this NOT think that the SECOND they showed the pictures of Wells and Starling kissing that she wasn’t in on it? Come on now. Don’t insult our intelligence.

The only piece of evidence that made me pause throughout the show was the math that Delco and Ryan were figuring to see when the halon was released into the lab. In fact, I still don’t think I fully understand it, but I’m a right brainer. Yep, that’s my excuse.

I feel that “Fallen” spoon fed a lot of information to the audience, even more so than usual. I wasn’t overly impressed with the detective work that happened (or didn’t happen). Instead I was more focused on what Starling was going to do next, and how he was going to out smart the unit.
I will say this: I really thought Starling was home free when he disappeared from the transport car. I would’ve liked him to come back later on in the series, so this was a little disappointing to me.

So the season 9 premiere of CSI: Miami played out like any other episode of the series for me. I’ll keep watching because I pretty much love Horatio and the team, but I was hoping for a little more “wow” factor from a premiere.