Dr. Jekyll is a villain that likes to perform unnecessary surgeries on his victims in order to create excruciating pain that leads to death. He'll pop up in various episodes, leaving his "gifts" to tantalize and intrigue the entire CSI team. While he was an okay villain, I actually much preferred the one-off episodes. There were some real doozies this season, but my two favorites are the season opener, "Family Affair," and an episode called "Appendicitement." What I loved about the season opener is it begins with a three minute segment that is also covered in a featurette called "Frozen in Time." Here, we get to see a chaotic few minutes at the lab that is the resulting climax of a wild and crazy episode and all of the insanity is frozen on the screen, as the camera pans through. Its truly amazing looking and from what I learned, took 6 weeks and lots of work to film. The other episode is absolutely hysterical and revolves around the guys taking Henry out for his birthday. What starts out as a guys' night out to have great BBQ ends up in a murder scene at a closed-down restaurant with a charred corpse who has a fried raccoon attached to his face. It doesn't get any better than that.
There's yet another Lab Rats episode, this time with Hodges (Wallace Langham) and Wendy (Liz Vassey) posing as CSIs when a group of teenage "junior" CSIs-in-training mistake them for actual CSIs. The entire episode is sort of a fantasy where they are discussing an old cold case with the kids in the hopes of solving the crime, only they insert themselves into working the crime scene when they retell the story. It's good stuff because the junior CSIs are basically a little Catherine, Grissom and Warrick. It was a nice tip of the hat to two departed characters. Plus, there's a sweet little romantic triangle going on in this episode between Hodges, Henry (Jon Wellner) and Wendy. Geek romance! While the episode was cute, it wasn't as good as the Lab Rats episodes in seasons past.
One super cool highlight of the season was the return of Sara Sidle (Jorja Fox) and boy has she been missed! Sara returns for a "stint" because Riley Adams (Lauren Lee Smith) from last season left the team because of clashes with Catherine's (Marg Helgenberger) management style. Since Grissom is off in Paris doing a long lecture, Sara comes back for a while to help out and stays the entire season. Hopefully, she'll stay on because the chemistry of this new CSI family has really started to gel. Greg Sanders (Eric Szmanda) really comes into his own this season as a CSI and Langston seems to find his stride as well, plus Nick (George Eads) gets promoted into Catherine's old spot. Overall, the cast finally feels "right" again after the devastating loss of both Grissom (William Peterson) and Warrick (Gary Dourdan) last season.
The three episode story arch which has Langston traveling to Miami, then to New York and then back again to Las Vegas was a really good one and I liked that they worked the episodes from CSI: Miami and CSI: New York into where they should be watched within the continuity of the storyline. This was good material and while each episode felt different, because they were all different shows, it gave me a chance to appreciate the other two shows, since I don't personally watch them. The story arch had a good, satisfying ending. Another interesting episode, especially to country music fans, is "Unshockable" where Rascal Flatts joins the cast. Turns out one of the band members gets shocked via his mic and the team has to figure out whether his bandmates are trying to kill him. Oh, and he loses his memory and decides he hates country and loves rap. It's a funny episode and while I am not a fan of country music, I did enjoy the episode.
As for special features, there is commentary on two episodes, featurettes on the season opener (as mentioned earlier), Langston's trek across country and the resulting story arch, one on the Lab Rats, one on Season 10 as a whole and finally, one on a traveling exhibit called CSI: The Experience which was fairly in depth. It is an exhibit where you can test your own skills as a CSI in one of three possible cases, complete with a crime scene, lab and computer equipment and the team helping you via video. It looks like great fun and fans of the show need to check it out. Overall, CSI Crime Scene Investigation: The Tenth Season is still going strong, even with the cast change of the previous year and continues to show why its made it for 10 years and counting. Fans should definitely check this out.
