CSI: CRIME scene investigation

Season 5 - Episode 1 - Viva Las Vegas

Written by  Carol Mendelsohn & Danny Cannon
Directed by Danny Cannon

It’s one of those nights in Las Vegas: there’s been a night club shooting; a dead stripper is found in a blood-soaked hotel room; ET is found buried in a dry lake bed; a transient commits suicide by electrocution, and as usual, nothing is as it seems.

Added to the multiple crime scenes, an introspective Sara is back from a much-needed vacation after her near-arrest for driving under the influence, and a nervous Greg is handing over the DNA lab to his potential replacement (guest star Reiko Aylesworth) as he begins his move out into the field, under the watchful eye of Grissom.

 Catherine takes the call at the Palermo Hotel, and cannot figure out how the john found with the dead stripper could have fallen asleep at such a gruesome and violent crime scene. He’s claiming innocence by amnesia, and he may be telling the truth. Catherine finds a blood sample that IDs a bouncer at the strip club where the dead woman worked, and she very much doubts she’s looking at a threesome gone bad.

Nick and Sara travel to a remote area of Vegas, only to find they are not alone at the scene -- it is the mysterious Area 51, and the corpse there appears to be that of an alien. As intriguing as an X-file might be, Nick and Sara’s investigation leads them down the more traditional murder path; traditional, that is for Vegas, because in this case, the killer might be hiding in the chapel of love, or he could be Elvis (guest star French Stewart) in a pink Cadillac.

Warrick goes to the hotel to investigate the apparent suicide of a man who, on the surface, looks like he had very little to live for. When Warrick discovers the victim had won $50,000 the night he died, but the money’s nowhere to be found, it appears that someone else wanted the loser-turned-winner dead.

 And Grissom, with Greg at his side, follows the evidence from the nightclub shooting, with echoes from a scene in “The Godfather,” to the scene of yet another homicide, on this night that looks like it will never end.