User Reviews

Dr. Langston" has to deal with the insane killer "Nate Haskell" once again when the latter is on trial.

Bill Irwin does a great job of playing the highly intelligent-but-nuts "Haskell." He is riveting in all his scenes.

Meanwhile, teen idol Justin Bieber ("Jason McCann") is back playing a kid seeking revenge on the death of his older brother (see episode one of this season's series.) Nick, primarily, deals with him. Bieber actually does decent job of acting in here, although his wholesome looks just don't go with his character in this story.

Between the two stories, the episode as a whole is an interesting one.

Langston has to be in court to testify against Nate Haskell. The criminal dismisses his defense lawyer to defend himself, and uses the statement of a geneticist to support his defense. But Langston has arguments to refute his defense. Meanwhile, Nick is entering home when he receives a phone call in his private number from Jason McCann saying that he is in danger. The Bomb Squad arrives and saves Nick. Later they find that Dr. Huxbee received a new credit card that was used to buy supplies for a bomb. Nick, Catherine, Vartann and Kip go to the building where he lives and find Dr. Huxbee's dead body. Further, they learn that they are trapped inside and a bomb has been activated.

"Targets of Obsession" is an episode of "CSI" with two engaging segments. The revenge of Jason McCann, catching Nick, Catherine and Vartann together in the same trap. The judgement of Nate Haskell and the negligence of the police in the end is amazing. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Targets of Obsession"

And the show nails the landing in both stories. One story is complete by the end and genuinely a nail-biter. The other is an episode of an arc, a duel between Haskell and Langston, but a duet by Bill Irwin and Laurence Fishburne. Hard to imagine an episode of television where an actor who is magnificently external as Irwin who is a a movement and performance artist as much as a character actor, and another who is as internal as Fishburne, who has as textured a face as James Edward Olmos or Danny Trujillo, but is almost always calm in his line readings.

The additional elements: suggestive but maybe junk science involving genes, FMRi and a "warrior" disposition, a common abusive background for the serial killer and the forensic scientist (Dr Langston). This begins a series of episodes in which CSI does its own Hannibal story, where the investigator must (it seems) identify with the killer to solve the crime. That it is a riff on on the Hannibal Lecter oeuvre is because Fishburne spent four years as playing Jack Crawford on "Hannibal", the same Crawford from Silence but in the origin story of Lecter, brings in the neurodivergent detective, Will Graham back into the field. And of course William Peterson, the first star of CSI, played Will Graham in his first appearance on film in Michael Mann's Manhunter. Oh, and Jason Bieber does a fine job as the son of a white supremacist.

I have to add: Only viewers who think operatic touches in a procedural are "too dramatic" but they are basically clueless viewers. Robert Goren's tricks in the interview room may have made clear the melodramatic heart in the best of procedurals, but it has always been there. Recall Ben Stone's quiet but mant defense of liberal pieties. McCoy always could second-guess his second-guess how his beliefs squared with the law, though never in the courtroom; there his reedy tenor was pitch-perfect when it came to inducing guilt and judgment. But the punchline of how procedurals enable melodrama and operatic touches is of course that Paul Sorvino who replaced George Dzunda.as Mike Logan's partner on fons origo of procedurals, Law & Order, was also an opera singer. Once one sees the key, it unlocks a lot: courtroom speeches and intense interrogations are arias and duets, the detective (even if they deny it) are the knightly combatants against the chaos outdoors and, lastly, very few of the detectives and lawyers are in the final instance happy, partnered and balanced people. This is why Ted Danson's DB Russell from the west coast and cosily married knows he is the weirdo.