Disclaimer: In the interest of full disclosure, I borrowed a line from the official CBS site's episode summary, as well as the season 5 tagline.
A/n: Glad so many of you got my humor; your reviews alone made me laugh! Thanks, Rosefern, for speaking up; I couldn't remember who had posted that on the message board.
I feel like this chapter sounds different; more summary and less random humor? I don't know. I was going to do seasons 3 & 4 in one chapter and be done with it, but then I started expanding what I had on season 3 and it ended up being quite long…so it gets its own chapter. There IS more coming.
Chapter Two: Lies Are Hurtful
Much better. Now, where were we? Right, the relationship that broke up before it began.
Feeling a little betrayed by one of the few people she trusted implicitly, Yelina accepted a date with Stetler and then proceeded to date him for quite some time, even after he gave her a black eye. She denied this occurrence, knowing H wanted a reason to a) say I told you so and b) punch Rick. He and the Rickster, you see, have a long grudge match stemming from the time Horatio got a promotion that Stetler didn't, even though Stetler thought he should have gotten it due to the qualification of Being More Awesome. Consequently, Stetler's life is devoted to giving H and the members of his team as much grief as possible, which H meets with increasingly open hostility.
For example, when a suspect went shrieking to the people in charge that Horatio dislocated his shoulder while arresting him. Stetler promptly swooped in to investigate, and as near as I can tell, the conversation went something like, "This unbalanced petty criminal says you hurt him. I relieve thee of duty!" My girl Calleigh took about two hours to come up with proof to the contrary and smack Rick over the head with it, but Horatio still got ordered to see the counselor. I hate to say anything nice about that guy, but at least SOMEBODY recognized the need for it.
All the same, when Rick Stetler takes charge of your mental health, that's a scary thing. You have to be really on the edge for Rick Stetler to be the one that notices that you are legitimately in need of professional help. And thus Horatio was ordered to therapy about his "unresolved issues," which mostly involved me.
Can I just skip this part?
What do you mean, "Don't I think I already skipped an important part?"
Fine. I GOT KILLED. Are you happy? H and I went into the damn jewelry store, and my gun misfired, and I got shot and I died and it sucked.
Because H has a ridiculously large guilt complex, he twisted the scene around and convinced himself it was his fault and he didn't do enough to save me, or something (I'll bet the therapist can somehow tie this in to his brother). Rather than, say, just blaming the guy that shot me. Or the faulty firing pin in the gun.
FAULTY FIRING PIN.
This was the first time that Stetler suggested, nicely, that he might want to see a counselor…when his suggestion was not taken, he changed it to an official order. Incidentally, if Horatio had just kept that stupid appointment two years ago, today would have been a much better day. Completely devoid of storytelling.
Unluckily for me, his version of obeying orders was to go tell his girlfriend about the recurring dream where he's in my place and it's his gun that jams. Look, I'm not going to analyze the dream. That's not my job. I just don't understand how that didn't set off, I don't know, a chain reaction of neon lights pointing to "call a therapist, STAT." But since Rebecca Nevins does not have a license to practice therapy on her wall next to the one that lets her practice law, talking to her didn't do a lot of good in the long run.
Before I forget, let me quickly catch you up on the youngest Caine's escapades. Ray Jr., after an elementary school stint of playground fights, continued to act out in junior high by befriending teenage hooligans who shoot paint guns at homeless old men, giving them heart attacks. Yeah, I said hooligans.
Not too long after, Horatio discovered that Madison (the illegitimate Caine) had been diagnosed with leukemia, and needed a bone marrow transplant. That all by itself is probably enough to drive a person into therapy. For H, it also meant that he was backed into a corner, and finally had to admit all the dirty details surrounding her birth . Arguably less ticked off by Raymond's cheating than Horatio's attempt to cover it up/bold-faced lies, she promptly ran back into the arms of Stetler for a few more weeks. Nobody's seen Madison since, but I checked and she's not up here, so presumably that worked itself out.
On the other hand, Horatio kicked Rebecca to the curb because she insulted Yelina and gave her lip. He claimed that wasn't actually the reason, but look at his track record for telling women the truth. I only mention this because it's the first in a long string of relationships that ended badly, and therapists love that kind of thing.
I feel like I'm forgetting something about this year; there's so much to keep track of…oh, right. He also racked up another arch-nemesis – this time, one with judicial powers. That, too, eventually came back to bite him in the ass.
Wait, you didn't think I was done, did you? That only gets you from summer 2004 up to April of the following year. This saga is getting ridiculously long, and it only gets worse.
Around this time, he started hearing whispers that his brother might still be alive. Yep, dead brother isn't actually dead, merely in hiding and/or undercover somewhere. I want to run to a psychiatrist just hearing that. Despite repeated threats to back off - issued by a tall, spooky-looking FBI agent – he continued to dig until he got to the bottom of it. Didn't learn his lesson about keeping Ray's secrets from her, either; she had to stare him down just to force him to admit it was "possible" that Ray was still alive.
The next day, Stetler was back to the black-eye business. This time, though, it was in the context of him leaving with one of his own. No reason to keep an abusive boyfriend around when there's a chance to reunite with the husband who spent the last year of your marriage doing drugs and cheating on you.
I was just asked nicely to refrain from so much sarcastic commentary. I nicely responded that such a thing was impossible, given what I'm talking about. I hope you're happy; I get to spend tomorrow taking care of the last hundred lobsters that were boiled alive. It's exactly as fun as it sounds.
So, happy coincidence, about a week later Ray semi-came out of hiding, seeking Horatio's help. Understandably, there wasn't a lot of tearful hugging between the brothers, since H was rather hostile about Raymond deliberately ditching his family, and Ray was ticked off by Horatio's judgment. And mostly, because Ray Jr. had been kidnapped and it was a race against time to find him. Since there was no way to explain the reason for the last part to Yelina without mentioning Ray Sr. – though believe me, he tried – he finally just spat it all out at once and hoped she was too distracted by her missing son to care about him hiding that other part.
So there was a showdown with the guns and the deception, and the kid was saved but his dad was shot, and I'd go into a lot more detail if it wasn't all part of an elaborate fake-out, the highlight of which was making Yelina think her husband was dead. Again.
To take her mind off the recent whirlwind of events, Horatio came bearing the gift of three plane tickets to Brazil. Apparently it's the sexiest place on earth; so in other words, a great place to get over the fact that after about three hours' worth of knowing that your long-dead husband is actually alive, he ended up dead. Especially if you're going there with his brother, to whom you may or may not have been attracted to in the past. Or…
Bait and switch! Casablanca style!
Try and wrap your brain around this. I will simplify it by using letters: A is for Horatio, B is for Yelina, and C is for Raymond. And D is for Ray Jr.
A and C both love B. B is, or was, married to C, but halfway in love with A. C is blissfully ignorant of any untoward behavior between A & B, until he sees them together and promptly bashes his head against the airplane wall. No worries, though, because A is noble and self-sacrificing and would never violate the sacrament of marriage/disrupt familial honor by asking B to stay. And so the little B-C-D family disappears forever, leaving A all alone.
Okay, by "simplify," I might have meant "needlessly complicate," but I think I made my point.
Bottom line: H watches his undead brother fly off to Brazil with "the woman he secretly loves and the son he never had." (Seriously, girls, do you write novels in your spare time?) Now the Caines can be dramatic on two continents.