Grave Danger: Volume 1 (19 May 2005)

The CSI Nick Stokes is kidnapped while investigating a crime scene and buried alive in a glass casket by his kidnapper. The Las Vegas Police Department receives a package with a tape and a ... See full summary »

Director:

Quentin Tarantino

Writers:

Anthony E. Zuiker (creator), Naren Shankar (teleplay),

Stars:

William Petersen, Marg Helgenberger, Gary Dourdan

Cast

Episode cast overview, first billed only:
William Petersen	...	Gil Grissom
Marg Helgenberger	...	Catherine Willows
Gary Dourdan	...	Warrick Brown
George Eads	...	Nick Stokes
Jorja Fox	...	Sara Sidle
Eric Szmanda	...	Greg Sanders
Robert David Hall	...	Dr. Al Robbins
Paul Guilfoyle	...	Captain Jim Brass
Scott Wilson	...	Sam Braun
Tony Curtis	...	Himself
Frank Gorshin	...	Himself
Andrew Prine	...	Rodger Stokes
John Saxon	...	Walter Gordon
Lois Chiles	...	Jillian Stokes
Michael Bacall	...	Delivery Man

Storyline

The CSI Nick Stokes is kidnapped while investigating a crime scene and buried alive in a glass casket by his kidnapper. The Las Vegas Police Department receives a package with a tape and a hardware to permit watch Nick inside the casket, together with a request of one million dollars cash to release him. The mayor refuses to pay the ransom, but Catherine Willows asks her wealthy father and gets the amount. Then Gil Grissom schedules a meeting with the criminal to deliver the money and be informed where Nick is.

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Plot Keywords:

million dollars | buried alive | dynamite explosion | coin | explosive | 

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | Mystery | Thriller

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Certificate:

TV-14

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

19 May 2005 (USA)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Jerry Bruckheimer Television, Alliance Atlantis Productions, CBS Productions

Technical Specs

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Trivia

When Grissom goes to meet with the kidnapper and the kidnapper inquires as to how the money has been booby-trapped, Grissom says "Normally you'd be 100% right, but this time you're 100% wrong." This is taken from another of Tarantino's movies, Kill Bill: Vol. 2, when the Bride is explaining her run-in at the hotel after she found out she was pregnant.

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Goofs

When the CSI show the video feed to Nick's parents, the timer is clearly inconsistent. It is most visible at the end of the scene: just before Nick's father leaves the room, the timer is on 04:01:42 going down to 04:01:39. When Cathrin looks at the screen 18 seconds later into the scene the timer is still at 04:01:39

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Quotes

Conrad Ecklie: I'm proposing we eliminate all overtime on lab work except for priority cases, stop hiring based on attrition, reassign existing personnel based on peak staffing needs. Over the next fiscal year, that should clear at least a million.
Undersheriff McKeen: Assuming any of those measures actually saves money, which isn't really the issue here, is it?
Conrad Ecklie: I'll take the heat.
Undersheriff McKeen: You want to do something for your people? Get them ready for a funeral.

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Connections

References The Dukes of Hazzard (1979)

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Soundtracks

"Outside Chance"
(uncredited)
Written by Warren Zevon
Performed by The Turtles

User Reviews

(*best episodes ever*)

I don't know why I first developed an intense love of CSI Las Vegas, given that so many of the episodes follow the same basic format, but this is the first time that that format has been completely thrown away and the show went in a completely different direction. We can thank Quentin Tarantino, of course, for that change, since he was given the opportunity to write and direct these two episodes in his own way.

It's interesting to consider that he made these shows a year after making Kill Bill, in which Uma Thurman's character is also buried alive. Nick Stokes' kidnapping and live burial is not necessarily an homage to Kill Bill, but it seems that Tarantino has noticed the effectiveness of a live burial, particularly one in which the person is unconscious when buried and then wakes up underground. Can you imagine? I was particularly affected by these two episodes, because being buried alive is one of my own worst fears, along with drowning, spiders, and Global Thermonuclear War (an intense fear that I developed in 1983 after watching an early Matthew Broderick movie).

I had hoped that Tarantino might take it upon himself to write and direct more for the show, but as of now that has yet to happen, and it looks like it's not going to. Other than these two episodes, all of the rest of the series looks surprisingly homogenized...

Note: my summary is in all lower case letters and parentheses because in my first attempt to post this comment, I had it all in capital letters to emphasize how impressive these two CSI episodes are, but then when I tried to post it, the IMDb told me DO NOT SHOUT in my summary. So it's a whisper. Happy now?