What good premise, what intriguing case details, what interesting developments, and then what a horrible excuse for an ending.

It was almost like "CSI" this week was too good to be true. Guns! Sexual tension! Pakistan! Government conspiracy! Corrupt operatives! And to top it off: The Federal Bureau of freaking Investigation.

Sounds like a recipe for success doesn't it?

It wasn't. Perhaps the writers got a little pencil shy. Perhaps they realized they had crammed so much other stuff into the episode they had to wrap it up quick. Or maybe they just had a little performance anxiety.

Whatever it was, the episode followed the murder of an ex-military guy with a giant hidden guns cache. Seems to be a running theme on tv these days ("House" just had one as well) but this wasn't artillery as much as a museum dedicated to the finer arts of the gun.

But, the puzzling details piled up. The gun rounds found at the scene couldn't be identified by any of the CSI's, and wasn't from a gun on the premise. The team had to call in a ballistics expert to help trace the shells to a gun that was still outstanding from another case in Pakistan.

Running the details on that case file raised a red flag with the FBI, who swooped in to you know, just keep an eye on things. The team (well, not this exact team) has worked with the FBI before, and I understand the ripe soil for departmental and chain of custody tension. But, I thought everybody turned it on a little too quick, bringing things to a boil almost the moment the two FBI agents entered the office. Where's the respect from Los Vegas' finest?

Despite the rough start, D.B. Russell (Ted Danson) gave his best performance yet, both in his interactions with the FBI and his handling of the private gun shipping company that became the main suspect. The FBI couldn't pin it on them, but suspected that the company had stolen the guns from the event in Pakistan and was now bringing them into the states. Of course, Catherine(Marg Helgenberger) just happened to be long lost friends with the wife of the head of the company, which was a dangling end that never really got the time it deserved. Also, Catherine has a really swank house apparently.

The show still had a lot going for it when Catherine and her new sexually charged accompanying FBI agent tracked down the guns to the back of a tractor trailer. They were caught off guard and locked in the back of the truck, before having rounds shot at them from the outside of the vehicle. What could have been a really dramatic and action packed scene was shrunk down to a few minutes of teasing foreplay, before one lone shot from Catherine took down the assailant on the other side of the truck. Weak.

But, with that they caught the runner who was bringing the monstrously powerful guns into the country, and the FBI cut an immunity deal with him if he agreed to turn on everyone else higher up the chain. Why stop at the low man on the totem pole who was just carting the guns around? Things were still interesting, as the real people behind the events in motion were not yet in custody, and there were still a lot of things left to be resolved.

And then boom, the show blew its load early instead of actually writing or working out a resolution or climax. The informant died of a ‘heart attack' that they assumed was the company covering its tracks but decided probably wasn't worth looking into, and then the FBI said they would handle the case from here, happy days are here again, case closed. Pack it up team.

Uh, what?

After giving so much screen time to developing Russell's interactions with the head of the company, and the side plot with Catherine, the show just threw it all away. There was still so much story to tell, and for everyone to just pack things up and call it a day is just so un-CSI like. Where's a montage about justice? What about one never-before-found but hidden-in-plain-sight clue that leads to bringing in the real bad guys? I'm hoping that this plot is eventually resolved in a later episode; otherwise this will remain a horrible ending to what could have been a very strong episode.

Willie Clark has been playing games and spinning cds since the days of the Game Boy Color and cd players(both of which seem dinosaur old in today's world). To keep up with his musical and gaming ramblings, be sure to follow him on FB, and on Twitter, because if you can't beat them, join them.