By Jonathan Klotz
| Revealed
For 15 years, CSI reigned on CBS as one of many highest-rated exhibits after perfecting the procedural method. From time to time, the collection broke its method, from “Lab Rats” specializing in the aspect characters to “4×10” telling a collection of quick tales, however none shattered viewer expectations fairly like Season 11’s “Sqweegel.” The night-shift crew was making an attempt to determine the motives and id behind the gimp-suit-clad serial killer, resulting in probably the most sudden ending of the complete collection: They failed.
The Dangerous Man Wins
From time to time, there’s an episode of CSI the place the villain’s triumphant, going again to Season 1 that happen din “Chimera,” besides the physician with twisted DNA ultimately was dropped at justice in a later episode. Sqweegel, named after the noise a bit woman heard in a carwash, is rarely arrested, his id is rarely uncovered, and he’s by no means seen once more. When the episode begins, viewers know one thing is off about what they’re about to see by the best way the killer strikes by a complicated, upscale Las Vegas house. Slipping in by a window is one factor, however the best way he walks up the steps in an odd, herky-jerky movement that’s additionally inhumanly clean and fluid is instantly unsettling.
The crew, led throughout this period by Catherine Willows (Marg Helgenberger) and Dr. Raymond Langston (Laurence Fishburne), begins piecing collectively Sqweegel’s motive once they understand every sufferer was a hypocrite. The primary was a disability-rights advocate who killed her son, however she admitted what she did and was allowed to stay. Of the remainder of the victims, a firefighter who begins fires to be a hero, and a dishonest spouse who serves on the Household Values Committee. So far as motives go, it’s par for the course for the procedural. It’s additionally the one a part of the episode that’s regular.
The visible of Sqweegel stalking his victims and slipping into areas too small and tight for a standard human is someway extra disturbing than the same old useless our bodies. Sqweegel’s ultimate shot, lacing up the gimp go well with and saying, “I’m nobody,” is extra darkish and extra haunting than you’d anticipate from a community present. After the episode first aired in 2010, CBS didn’t outright ban it; as a substitute, the community quietly pulled it from the common rotation, but it surely’s accessible immediately wherever CSI is streaming.
A Killer From A Completely different Sequence
“Sqweegel” felt like an episode from one other collection dropped into CSI. That’s primarily what it was. Sequence creator Anthony E. Zuiker wrote a collection of novels alongside Duane Swierczynki referred to as Stage 26which featured Sqweegel because the villain. The episode’s launch date coincided with the discharge of Stage 26: Darkish Prophecy. Disturbingly, Sqweegel within the e-book was even darker and extra disturbing than what was proven on community tv.
The character was dropped at life by Daniel Browning Smith, a proficient contortionist, who additionally co-hosted Stan Lee’s Superhumans. Smith has hypermobile Ehlers–Danlos syndrome, which permits him a superhuman diploma of flexibility. On the one hand, understanding that an actual human was performing Sqweegel’s stunts they usually weren’t particular results could make them worse, however however, Daniel Browning Smith additionally performs comedy and hasn’t killed anybody.
Company synergy is the actual horror of CSI’s most annoying episode. As a result of Sqweegel wasn’t created for the collection, there was by no means going to be a decision. As a substitute, he managed to kill, traumatize a baby, and get away into the night time, not as a result of he was a legal mastermind, however due to company licensing. Thousands and thousands of followers have been left questioning when he’d return, by no means realizing that they’d solely be taught his destiny in the event that they took a glance, as a result of it’s in a e-book.