There was this minor tweak with the opening titles to last night's CSI: Miami that you might've missed, if you turned away for snacks when "Won't Get Fooled Again" started to play.  Megalyn Echikunwoke's name isn't listed in the cast anymore, a reflection of last week's twist, when her character, Tara, was arrested for messing up with evidence.  Suddenly, questions about the future of her character on the show have gone further up in the air.  Sure, I think there's a big chance that she'll be back, perhaps to address questions about the origins of her drug addiction and her tangling up with the law, not to mention the fact that Kyle needs all the guidance he can get while working at the crime lab.  Or maybe not.

But, as we'd later find out, it isn't really the biggest of our concerns.  The most important question we'll have on the show, as we wait for the eighth season to kick in, involves someone whose name wasn't scrubbed off those opening titles: Adam Rodriguez.


While I knew Delko would get himself in trouble after helping his dad out, I didn't expect that decision's impact to power the first part, if not the whole, of the next season.  A refresher: he's gone missing, after showing up on the other end--or the middle, depending on how you look at it--of a shootout between the Russian mob and the MDPD.  The dad says he's bleeding, the result of being shot at by his own clueless colleagues.  And then he lost control of the car, crashed--and disappeared.

The Russian mob story was, more or less, wrapped up after tonight, although closure is out of the question.  There were the minor bits, from the supposed carjack victim to Yelina being endangered by her undercover work.  That's all sorted out.  The thing with Delko's thing is, there were as much questions before last night, as there were questions after.

His relationship with his father isn't smooth, especially considering it almost cost him his job--and yet he decided to risk just that in this effort.  So what exactly were they doing there?  There were hints in last week's episode, but that doesn't give anything away.  Last night, they met somewhere, but that didn't leave anything either.  Right now, I'm absolutely confused about how, or why, Delko would get himself there.  Was it supposed to be the very last favor he'll do?  That's an unusually blank area.

His relationship with Calleigh made it more complicated.  While the two finally took themselves to the next level in the middle of the season, it wasn't exactly a blissful one.  They didn't fight, sure, but compared to other workplace relationships in other CSI shows, something felt missing between them.  Trust?  She did try to convince him out of it.  He still continued.  I know I'm misreading him.  It is, after all, an unusually blank area.  Throw in the possibility that she fired the shot that caused the (possibly) serious injury, and you have something really complicated in your hands.  The obvious question is this: how would this affect their relationship?

If there was a competition between the season finales of all three CSI shows this week, the one last night took it, hands down.  The Las Vegas team played with the subtle changes in their dynamic, and specifically with Langston's change of behavior that came with his new work; it's something that you wouldn't notice, and probably get lost with.  The New York team decided to end everything with a brutal shooting that leaves no clue as to who was affected, if anybody; they can all get out alive as if nothing happened.  Sure, they all still set up events that would swing as fall kicks in, but CSI: Miami's given us a clear idea of what to expect.  Delko is missing, and everybody will have to find him, and slowly we'll all figure out the many whys to what happened last night.  It'll take long.  It should be fun.

As an aside, though, it seems we've forgotten that Ryan's yet to get something after he tinkered with evidence, under pressure from the same Russian mob that caused all this to happen.  But the answer's simple: he didn't have a choice.  Delko did.  Then again, it felt he didn't entirely know what he was getting into.  In the end, something's gotta give.




-Henrik Batallones, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
(Image courtesy of CBS)