Synopsis  

The episode opens with Morgan Brody rushing through the lab to tell D.B. Russell that Sara was involved in a shooting in Larkston, but there’s still no word on Finn. DB and Nick take a helicopter out to find Sara has been grazed by a bullet, but Finn is missing. We cut to Finn, who is beaten and bloodied, walking down a desert road, only to be hit by a car. Sara is checked out alright, and she is sent back to talk to Brass while DB puts a BOLO out on the last car Finn was seen using.

Forty-eight hours before, Morgan was leaving on a trip to a spa in Reno, and since Finn and Sara also had the weekend off, they decided to make a trio of it. Taking Finn’s car is a mistake, as it breaks down, leaving them stranded in Larkston. They make the best of it, with drinks and karaoke, until Finn leaves with the mechanic, Darryl. He turns out to be married, so she leaves him, only to be attacked and assaulted, with intent to rape. In the tussle, Finn stabs Darryl with his own knife and leaves him for dead. Except … the body vanished.

When the trio arrived at the scene, there was no body, and the evidence indicated Darryl survived and left with someone else. The sheriff showed up at that point, hauled all three off for questioning and accused Finn of making the story up. While Morgan handed over the photos to the local police, they also sent the photos to their own lab, where Greg pulled up records based on the tire prints, and Darryl’s wife become’s a suspect.

She is, of course, exonerated when she proves she was at work, and drove straight to Las Vegas afterwards, but the evidence on the truck showed that Darryl was growing marijuana in an old barn, where he stored cars and the dead, mummified body of a young woman. Two other women also had gone missing in the same area, indicating Darryl had raped and killed them as well. Sara leveraged that to get Finn freed from house arrest and working on the case, where she learned there were traces of algae on the dead girl’s shoes.

At the same time, Sara went with the sheriff and deputy to where Darryl’s car had been abandoned. While Darryl’s gone, Sara gets a call from Henry that the deputy’s DNA was found on the body. When confronted, the deputy shots the sheriff and tries to shoot Sara, but she kills him first, catching us up to ’now.'

The sheriff corroborates Sara’s story, and she goes back to Las Vegas, while Nick and DB trail Finn’s car and, eventually, find both a dead Darryl (shot by Finn), and a nearly dead Finn (after being hit by the car). Morgan and Sara process Finn and her clothes, finding that she was hit by a car owned by the town’s doctor and coroner. He too was in on the rapes and kidnapping.

Review  

Sara initially planned to go home, drink some wine, and watch old movies. While she’s interested in the idea of the spa, she does seem awkward around the younger Morgan, and slightly out of touch with the time. When Finn returns to the bar, cut and disoriented, Sara takes charge to find out what happened.

While Sara is angry that she, and Finn and Morgan, aren’t taken seriously by the local authorities, she’s also stubbornly helpful and nudges her way into their case with evidence and facts.

Notes  

• Sara likes Hepburn and Tracy movies
• Sara claims she doesn’t know who Beyoncé is

Quotes  

Sara: Larkston was never part of the plan. How often do we all have the weekend off?

Sara: Uh… who’s Beyoncé?

Sara: So, what do you want to do next weekend?

Gallery  

Images ©CBS (2013) - CSI: Crime Scene Investigation from the episode 'Girls Gone Wild'.