Living Doll (CSI)

Infobox Television episode | Title = Living Doll
Series=


Caption =
Season = 7
Episode = 24
Guests= Jessica Collins
Airdate = May 17, 2007
Writer = Sarah Goldfinger and Naren Shankar
Director = Kenneth Fink
Prev = The Good, the Bad, and the Dominatrix
Next = Dead Doll

"Living Doll" is the season finale of the of the television series "". The episode is a cliffhanger, which is resolved in the "CSI" Season 8 premiere "Dead Doll". The identity and origins of the "Miniature Killer" are revealed during the course of this episode.

Plot

Grissom and Brass visit Trevor Dell, one of Ernie Dell's many foster children. They find him lying dead in his apartment, and a miniature doll of Trevor nearby. The autopsy shows that Trevor died of accidental electrocution.

Grissom finds a partial fingerprint on the Trevor doll, and epithelials in the print come back with female DNA. He also observes that the doll wears a metal bracelet. Grissom visits a hobby shop that specializes in miniature work. The owner recognizes the bracelet and says he made it for someone named Natalie, who also bought a battery-powered micro motor.

The CSIs learn that another one of Ernie Dell's foster children was a Natalie Davis. Grissom and Catherine visit Natalie's biological father, Christopher Davis, who is a ventriloquist whose stage name is "The Great Rainone." Mr. Davis tells them that when Natalie was six years old, she killed her younger sister, Chloe, by pushing her out of their treehouse. He had used bleach to clean Chloe's blood from the driveway, as Natalie watched placidly from the treehouse. Later on, Mr. Davis put her up for adoption because he could no longer deal with her psychosis. Grissom and Catherine discover that the doll pictured in all of the miniatures is the bisque doll that the Great Rainone uses in his act, and that the doll is modeled after Chloe. They seek out the first foster family that took in Natalie after Mr. Davis gave her up. The foster mother confirms the CSIs' suspicions about bleach being the trigger for Natalie's murderous tendencies, then says that she had Natalie put back in the foster care system after she tried to kill her foster sisters by pushing them from the tops of their bunk beds.

Grissom returns to his office and is disturbed to find another miniature crime scene on his desk. The miniature shows a doll trapped underneath a battered and overturned red Ford Mustang on a nondescript stretch of desert road. The doll's hand, which is visible from under the car, is moving. Grissom lifts the model car and is horrified to discover that the doll under the car is made to resemble Sara. He immediately calls Sara's phone and gets no response. Grissom later learns that Natalie had abducted Sara from the parking garage; Natalie Davis, a member of the CSI lab cleaning crew, is revealed as The Miniature Killer.

Grissom tells the other CSIs about Natalie. After recalling that Sara was the lead CSI on a case involving a car accident six weeks before, the team pulls up case photos and discover that Natalie had been in the crowd observing the crime scene. Grissom remembers gently stroking Sara's arm at the crime scene and realizes that, unlike the other murders, which were triggered by bleach, this crime is personal. Feeling cornered, Grissom says that Natalie holds him personally responsible for taking Ernie Dell, the only person she ever truly loved, away from her, so she intends to do the same thing to him. Catherine, Greg, Nick, and Warrick are shocked by the revelation of Sara and Grissom's relationship.

Natalie is arrested. As Grissom questions her, she hallucinates that she slashes his throat. Grissom angrily demands to know where Sara is, but Natalie tunes him out as she plaintively recites lyrics from "I've Got a Pain in My Sawdust," a song the Great Rainone performs in his act.

The episode closes with a shot of an overturned red Ford Mustang lying in a remote stretch of Nevada desert as it begins to rain. Sara's hand reaches out from under the car and claws at the mud as puddles of rainwater begin to grow around the car. The cliffhanger is resolved in the first episode of season 8, "Dead Doll".

Continuity

This is the climax to The Miniature Killer case which has featured through large parts of season seven, most prominently in:

* "Built To Kill, Part 1"
* "Built To Kill, Part 2"
* "Post Mortem"
* "Loco Motives"
* "Monster in the Box"
* "Lab Rats"

Reception

According to TV.com, this episode is rated 9.6, which is one of the highest rated episode in .

ee also

*

External links

*imdb title|id=1003874|title=Living Doll
*Tv.com episode|id=1024631|title=Living Doll
*csiguide episode|id=340|title=Living Doll
* [http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/csi/season7/living_doll.shtml "Living Doll"] at CSI Files
* [http://www.fanhistory.com/index.php/Living_Doll_%28CSI%29 "Living Doll"] at Fan History