CSI: Miami: Season Three - Part 2 (www.the-usher.com)

The Miami-Dade CSI team of Lieutenant Horatio Caine (Caruso), Calleigh Duquesne (Procter), Eric Delko (Rodriguez), Tim "Speed" Speedle (Cochrane), Ryan Wolfe (Togo) and Chief Medical Examiner Alexx Woods (Alexander) investigate…

Lost Son
After a large yacht slams into a major Miami bridge, the team finds that the man steering the boat was shot and killed before the accident. The victim's wife reveals that their son had been kidnapped and her husband was handing over the ransom - three million dollars worth of jewels. But when the team learns that the jewels were fake, the investigation leads them into a dangerous situation at a jewellery shop that may contain crucial evidence, where Horatio must face the unimaginable when one of the team is killed in the line of duty.

Pro Per
A woman is killed during a party at a Star Island estate when a man opens fire on the proceedings from a cigarette boat. When a former con is arrested, he acts as his own lawyer and proves to be smarter than he appears. Complicating matters is the fact that the leading witness in the case is the dead woman's young son, who Horatio wants to protect, refusing to let him testify.

Under the Influence
The CSIs must find the killer after a young woman is pushed in front of a moving bus. Alexx finds a bruise shaped like a hand imprint on the victim's back, proving that she was pushed in front of the bus, and her boyfriend, Jay Seaver, is the prime suspect. When one of Jay's office rivals also turns up dead, Jay reveals that he has a psychotic stalker, Claudia, who he thinks might kill to please him. However, when Jay hires a lawyer to protect Claudia, Horatio suspects that Jay may be more involved than they thought. Later, a man's body is discovered down an elevator shaft in a nearby building, and there is evidence to link the victims to a common killer.

Murder in a Flash
E-mails and text messages trigger a mass gathering of students to perform a random task on a golf course. However, as the crowd disperses, the body of a high school student is found. The original message triggering the "flash mob" is traced to a high school senior whose father is a high-powered defence attorney.

Legal
An 18-year-old girl is stabbed to death in a bathroom of a popular Miami nightclub. Horatio learns that the victim was an investigative aide working for Alcohol Beverage Control and was monitoring underage drinking. As Horatio interviews the club's owner, an unknown man drives by the club, sees that the police are there, and crashes his car while fleeing the scene. However, the case gets more complicated when they discover another murdered victim inside the car.

Hell Night
The wife of a famous baseball player is brutally killed in her home and her philandering husband is charged with the crime. The jury on the case, as well as the accused and his defence, visits the house to examine the crime scene, but when the lights are dimmed, as they were when the victim was killed, and then turned back on, the ball player is found dead with a meat clever in his back and a note that reads "guilty."

Crime Wave
As a huge tsunami heads directly towards Miami, a ten-hour warning gives citizens just enough time to evacuate the city. In the chaos, two people are killed in a parking lot and the evidence leads Horatio to discover a plot to rob a bank timed to take advantage of the evacuation.

Speed Kills
A murder investigation takes Horatio and the team into the world of speed dating. Richard Laken is found killed by a tire iron outside a lounge following an evening of speed dating. The team discovers his car is covered with acetone, which traces back to one of the female guests. She reveals that she dated Laken and he dumped her, so she doused his car with nail polish remover for revenge, but she didn't kill him.

Pirated
The team investigates a modern-day piracy off the coast of Miami after six bodies are discovered floating in the ocean tied together by rope. Horatio suspects that a ship was hijacked with some of the crew killed and then dumped overboard. Evidence suggests that other crew members might have escaped on a life raft. Using radar and GPS technology, the CSIs find survivors but their stories don't match. After the Fall The CSIs must investigate when a pedestrian is killed after a man falls from a building and lands on him. Horatio and the team find that the victim found on the sidewalk is not the same man who fell from the building, but the unfortunate person he landed on.

Addiction
When a woman is killed in what looks like a carjacking, the CSIs talk to her husband, the oldest of the three brothers who run their lucrative family business. However, when it is revealed that the victim had a gambling addiction that could have bankrupted the company, the team must follow the evidence to find the killer.

Shootout
When gang-related gunplay goes down in an emergency room, Horatio and the team must find the gang members responsible. The evidence suggests that an orderly in the hospital recognized the wounded gang member, who possibly killed one of the orderly's friends and alerted gang members to his location.

The first CSI spin off series enters its third season but can it keep up the blistering pace of the first two seasons?

For some reason CSI: Miami isn't quite as big as either the original Crime Scene Investigation show or the one set in New York but this shouldn't take anything away from what is still a very good piece of television. Many critics and views blame David Caruso's approach as the lead character Horatio Caine but as with the other two shows, the programme is more than just the leader of the squad.

The series third season opens with the departure of a major character and the repercussions of that event effect the first few episodes of the season. This is a real change for the CSI franchise, as the shows have always been about the crime and not the investigators, as we discover very little about their lives outside of the job and how the work affects them. The plotline of 'Lost Son' brings a little more to the character dynamic of all of the major characters but fans still don't really get to know much more about them.

The third season also sees the action quota increased tenfold. 'Crime Wave' sees a tsunami hit Miami Beach. 'Pirated' sees the team come against a gruesome murder out at sea and 'Shootout' has a gun battle within a hospital. This gives the show that real difference from the other two shows in the franchise, with the ocean side location allowing the writers of the show to be very creative when it comes to the murders and crimes.

The problem of character development continues and it is still the show's major problem. We only ever get the slightest of snippets into the personal lives of the main cast members. We have Horatio's family dynamic, Calleigh's problematic, alcoholic father and Eric has a small problem this season but nothing that makes you really connect with the characters as much as you would want to. This is probably the reason why the departure of a major character in the first episode doesn't quite have the same traumatic effect as it should have.

'CSI: Miami' is different enough from the Las Vegas and New York to make its own impact on the CSI franchise. With a far greater action quota, the only reason it probably isn't as popular as the other two shows it David Caruso slight overacting as lead character Horatio Cane but this is still and excellent, well produced show that sets the standard for programmes of this ilk.

PICTURE & SOUND

Presented in Anamorphic Widescreen 16x9 with Dolby Digital 5.1, the series looks great.

BONUS FEATURES

CSI: Miami Deep Blue Sea (8.32 mins)
Co-creator and producer Ann Donahue and director Sam Hill talk about working with water surrounding Miami. Here we see how they produced the water-based shots in 'Lost Son' and 'Pirated', including the tanks shots filmed in Los Angeles and the shots produced around Miami.

CSI: Miami Visualising Season 3 (11.38mins)
Co-creator Ann Donahue and visual effects supervisor Larry Detwiler reveal the secrets behind making CSI: Miami. Here we see how the Tsunami was created for 'Crime Wave' and other effects for the episodes 'Pirated', 'Lost Son', 'Game Over' and Money Plane'.

Commentary
Listen to audio commentary from supervising producer Elizabeth Devine on 'Lost Son', writers Marc Dube and Corey Miller and director Scott Lautanen for 'Under the Influence', writer Elizabeth Devine and director Karen Gaviola for 'Crime Wave', writers Marc Dube and Ilby Modrovich and director Scott Lautanen for 'After the Fall' and writers Corey Miller and Sunil Nayor for 'Shootout'. These commentaries offer a fascinating insight into how a successful television team is made.

OVERALL

With five commentaries and two featurettes, the bonus features for this CSI release are just as good as before. Why Momentum continue to release them in two halves is still confusing but they do manage to put together a good package for fans.

DVD

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