Helicopter shot of the Las Vegas strip with hip, ominous music. Cut to montage of cleavage, poker chips, slot machines, cleavage. Cut to tracking shot of sidestreet leading to a nondescript small church. Police tape can be seen, and CSIs are milling around snapping on rubber gloves. Nothing gets to these people, including any kind of characterization that causes me to remember their names, so I'll just make most of them up. Tight shot on Grissom, the fearless and analytical leader; in a hopeless and futile attempt at injecting some continuity and pathos to this show, the writers have decided that he's going deaf for some reason. The Flinty Young Gal CSI is speaking to him, but all he hears are Charlie Brown-parent noises.

FYGCSI: Waaah waaah wa-wa-wa-wah. Waah.

Grissom says nothing, and nods sagely. He realizes that FYGCSI always looks kind of like someone who just found out that they were out of milk. He's staring at something on the church doorstep.

Cut to a wheelbarrow filled with the hacked-up remains of a person, a stuffed rabbit, and a dildo autographed by Stockard Channing. Like all CSI premises, this is wildly improbable, but by the end, all will be made quite clear.

Grissom: (Unneccessarily) Looks like we've got a hack-and-bunny job with a geographical twist.

FYGCSI: It's no church offering.

Grissom: (Impassively examining the body parts) You need a lot of force to get through bone. I'm thinking axe. Or possibly badger attack.

But then Grissom spots something! ZWIIIIIP and the camera does a vertiginous zoom down to a close-up of a knuckle of bone; it has curious scrapes on it. The whole thing is incredibly repulsive.

Grissom: My mistake. Machining marks. Unless I miss my guess--and I never do--this person went through a tree debarker.

FYGCSI: A debarker?

Grissom: Yes. In this case, the bark is definitely not worse than the bite.

Having drawn yet again on his inexhaustible store of nightmarish puns, Grissom raises an eyebrow and the camera cuts away to the opening credits while Roger Daltrey screams the lyrics to "Who Are You," which makes me vaguely sad. Then I remember I'm watching the merely ridiculous CSI as opposed to its ghastly sequel, the inventively titled CSI: Miami, and I feel a bit better.

After commercials, we see The Big Clod and Warrick (or however you spell it--the token black guy with the gambling problem that he spent two heroic episodes irrelevantly getting over) chatting with a Quirky Lab Rat. QLR has hair that looks as if it is home to exotic birds.

QLR: I gotcher DNA results. Dos equis.

Warrick: (Glancing at The Big Clod) Two Xs. Female.

TBC: Buh.

(Note: It is deeply uncool for CSIs to ever relay information in a straightforward manner. Terms must always be couched in cute shorthand or mouth-breaking jargon. Hence, QLR's stupid pun.)

Warrick: Grissom still processing the scene?

QLR: That's what he said on the phone.

Warrick: I'm going to go have a look at the vic. You take the bunny?

TBC: Boot.

Cut to Warrick in the lab, watching the Jaded Forensic Guy carefully and dispassionately rearranging the puzzle-woman.

JFG: Nasty. I figure she got tossed into the debarker about . . . six or seven hours ago, based on the degree of lividity in the severed buttocks. Her corneal glaze index is five, which agrees with that, as does the liver temperature and the thymus gland squeeze coefficient.

(CSI can keep this horseshit up indefinitely. It's best not to actually listen to the words.)

Warrick: So our vic went down around midnight.

JFG: Yeah. And see this abrasion? (ZWIIPP! Close up of a graphic skin wound. It is utterly horrifying.) Classic palmar shear. Definitely had her arm grasped by . . . I'd say a left-handed panther wrangler.

Warrick: (Totally unfazed, almost thinking out loud) . . . animal act at the Tropicana . . .

We are treated to a flashback "possibility" montage; blurry figures are struggling; we hear a woman's scream; we see we are in a sawmill; a man is wrestling with her atop some awful chain-driven device, and then the woman is plunged into it. Loving closeups of the machinery rending her body into chili meat. It is unbelievably revolting.

Suddenly, the Sexy Older Female CSI sticks her head in the door.

SOFCSI: Warrick? You'd better come see this.

Warrick: What?

SOFCSI: The Big Clod locked himself in the bathroom again.

Offscreen we hear a muffled cry. "GLUD!" Warrick and SOFCSI crack up. The JFG stares at them like they are misbehaving petri samples.

Cut to Grissom in another lab, staring at a computer screen. He is statue-still, and one can imagine actually seeing his hair grow. Obligingly, ZWIIIP! The camera zooms in to Grissom's scalp, down the the follicle, being fed by tiny capillaries, and the hair-root pulses malignantly as it squeezes a bit more hair upwards a fraction of an inch. The whole thing is unbelievably disgusting.

Grissom: (Loving his follicular vitality) Rrrrr.

He clacks at the keyboard, and the computer does something unnecessarily flashy and cool, especially for any kind of government-related programming, which normally looks like it was designed by blind accountants.

Grissom: Now I see.

We don't. We don't know what the fuck is going on. It's too dim to see anything in the lab anyway; it looks like it's lit for some incredibly clinical porn shoot, and the blue light pools around Grissom noirishly.

Suddenly, the author of this website realizes that he's pulled just about enough out of his ass for the evening, so he cuts to the end. Grissom is sitting across from the perpetrator, who sweats perfectly. Grissom interrogates the victim, which is kind of puzzling to the actual police detectives lounging uselessly in the room, not to mention the viewers.

Grissom: The rector ID'd the bunny as his. And it's got your DNA all over its fur. And we know that the dildo came from your girlfriend's memorabilia collection, didn't it?

Perp: (Sneers) You can't prove any of that.

Grissom: Oh, but I can. See, at the sawmill, you left behind traces of panther hair. Which we traced to your female, Bathsheba. A panther, sir, that appeared in a movie with Stockard Channing, who autographed your girlfriend's sex apparatus. QED.

The viewer gasps in amazement and utter perplexity. What the fuck is he talking about? It doesn't matter.

Perp: (Hissing) Damn you. Who the hell do you think you are?

Grissom: I'm just the man . . . who finds the truth.

The perp looks poleaxed by this piety while the viewers guffaw at the writers' shocking ineptitude. They make Harold Pinter seem like free 'n' easy natural dialogue. The perp is led away, probably still thinking, "Did he really say that? What a dork."

The Big Clod and FYGCSI come in.

FYGCSI: Another day's work at the lab.

Grissom: I don't work for the lab. I work . . . for the victims.

The viewers go crazy! Stop it! You're killing us!

FYGCSI: Well, nice work.

TBC: Carl.

Grissom: You too. She came. He sawmilled. We conquered.

Cut to credits as the viewers scream HOLY FUCKING SHIT! That was really something. Suspenseful, creative, and, as always, incredibly revolting.