Wow, a good solid crossover. No little cameo, no shoe horning things to make the crossover work. A good cross with a pretty solid story.

   CSI: NY is the third show in CBS's CSI franchise, telling the story of crime scene investigators working the streets of New York City. They apply science to the crime scene and evidence to solve the crime and catch the bad guys.

   Cold Case is a cop show CBS started in the wake of the original CSI's popularity. Folks like police procedurals, give more. Cold Case focuses on a Philadelphia homicide unit that focuses in on old, unsolved crimes: cold cases. All the CSI's have the visual gimmick of zooming into wounds, showing grainy flashbacks of what might have happened. Cold Case visual kick came from zipping back and forth between the present investigation of the crime and the past when the crime occurred. Every important character would end up with two actors playing them, one younger, one current day. They also would make fun use of period songs in the soundtrack. My favorite was their Rocky Horror Picture Show episode. Barry Bostwick, one of the stars of Rocky Horror, played a killer named Roy Anthony about to get out of jail unless they could convict him of an old cold case. The backstory had Young Roy being raised in a crazy strict religious home. Then the girl he loved dragged him to Rocky Horror, a film that breaks tons of taboos. And then his mind snaps and the decadence saps his will and, well, someone dies. In addition to Bostwick and the film being featured, all the flashback scenes used songs from Rocky Horror as their soundtracks.

   The crossover happened on CSI: NY with Cold Case's Detective Scotty Valens showing up in the Big Apple with old evidence of a murder. In Philly they had dug up some items by the side of a road including a jacket with blood on it. But the kicker was that some of the blood on the evidence was identified as belonging to New York CSI detective Stella Bonasera. How could that be? Turns out as a child Stella lived in a foster home. She and another foster child, Mindy, became blood sisters, mixing their blood in a locket that Mindy kept. The trail was long and twisty but in the end it turned out Mindy murdered their foster father. He had sexually abused her. When Stella finally finds Mindy, she doesn't arrest her. Because Mindy saved her from being sexually abused herself and they are "sisters", she comes to warn her "sister" of what the police know and that tomorrow she will come back as a cop to arrest her... if she's still there.

   I really liked that this story wasn't just another murder story to link the shows but that it had real impact for the characters. I liked that Scotty and Stella didn't meet and become instant best friends. He's on a case that she is a suspect in and he tries to keep her at professional arm's length for most of the episode. I like that it pushed Stella into a really grey area where she chose loyalty over the law.

   Okay, now the kibitzing. The story did have a few flaws. If I followed correctly, Mindy ran away from the foster home when she was still kind of young. She did this as a way to ensure Stella would be taken from the foster home and be safe from abuse. Only when they find the foster mom she is still running a foster home. So it doesn't seem like they shut the place down. I'm not sure how Mindy running away caused Stella to be removed from the foster home. And it isn't that Mindy saved Stella by killing the dad. It seemed like the murder happened around the time Stella was graduating from the police academy. Finally, the foster mom seemed really young. She supposedly was old enough to be a foster mom when Stella was just a wee tike but when the cops talked to her in the present she looks to be about the same age as Stella. What the hey?!?!

Other CSI: NY Crossover Links
CSI: NY and CSI: Miami
CSI, CSI: Miami, and CSI: NY: The Trilogy


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Buy these shows on Amazon.com and support this site at the same time! Check out CSI: Miami and CSI: NY on DVD! The crossover/spin off episodes for these shows can be found in the CSI: Miami COmplete Second and Complete Fourth Season DVD sets and the CSI: NY: Complete First Season DVD set.





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