CSI: Crime Scene Investigation “Slaves of Las Vegas” (November 15, 2001)

A body found in a sandbox leads the CSIs to an underground sex club in this pivotal episode that gets inside the heads of the main characters without violating the show’s essential mandate of focusing on the professional, not the personal.  Credited ambiguously as a “consultant,” the cult novelist-memoirist Jerry Stahl was the secret weapon on CSI’s writing staff for several seasons, contributing an array of episodes that limned the funny, naughty ins and outs of outre sexual fetishes in jaw-dropping detail.  “Fur and Loathing” (about “furries”) and “King Baby” (adult babies) were wilder, but “Slaves” was the template, introducing the fascinating recurring character Lady Heather (Melinda Clarke), a madame and dominatrix who forms a unique bond with the enigmatic lead investigator Gil Grissom (less-is-more star William Petersen).  From the opening scene in which Catherine (Marg Helgenberger) asks Grissom if he gets his trademark aphorisms out of a book, and he calls her “Grasshopper,” Stahl lets us know that he’s going self-reflexive.  In his hands Lady Heather becomes the team’s unlikely interlocutor: Nick (George Eads), freaked out by her dungeon, reveals himself as a prude, while Catherine, a former stripper, is impressed by Heather’s success as a businesswoman and single parent.  But the two long scenes in which Grissom and Heather spar verbally, then flirt, are the real delight.  It’s Stahl’s conceit that Heather’s professional skills make her both a gifted amateur sleuth and the only person thus far to have some real insight as to what makes Grissom tick (a talent that clearly turns him on).  Positing that your law enforcement hero’s moral/intellectual/romantic counterpart is a sex worker, and that there’s nothing particularly unhealthy about that: how’s that for subversiveness within a Nielsen megahit?