Aimee Garcia as Yvonne Sanchez, working for the Sheriff (also seen in Dexter). I recognized her the last episode also, but her part was insignificant then.
Michael Wiseman as Johnny Rizzo, Mia's father (Wiseman has a very long list of appearances on TV, not many leads though).
Anyway, I'll say from the start that obviously, I'm not watching Vegas every week to see another issue of cowboy CSI, it's the mob story line that I love to follow.
What happened:
A press conference of the American boxing team is held. They are back from Rome Summer Olympics with gold medals. The issue of racism was briefly addressed at that point (a boxer, Ray, who's an African American, was refused to be served breakfast). Later, one of the boxers, Tommy (Toby Meuli), head covered in blood, collapses on the street. Here I had a feeling of deja vu: it looked like a beginning of any episode of House, only this time, unfortunately, the patient didn't make it to the hospital (not that anyone tried to take him there).
We meet, as usually, a couple of suspects. The last time I guessed the murderer when he appeared, this time I guessed who hit Tommy with a metal stick. That was Ronnie (Austin Herbert), a fellow boxer who was abusing his wife. As Tommy tried to arrange Ronnie's wife escape, he got hit with the stick. But that's not what killed him.The writers made a twist to the story: Tommy was taking painkillers for his broken neck, and his bestie Ray (Alano Miller) tried to keep him away from the ring and fed him a couple of his asthma pills. We all know where a road paved with good intentions leads to; the combination of painkillers and asthma pills caused a heart attack Tommy died from.
Guilty!
Now to the good stuff. In my review of the previous episode I thought that killing two feds and a witness would be a problem to Savino. Well, it isn't. Apparently, it was impossible to prove that the explosion wasn't just an industrial accident (well, that's what the D.A. says and he's corrupted, as we know). But Savino does have a problem: Chicago boss, Angelo, comes to check on him. Vincent wants to use this opportunity to ask for money for expansion of Savoy, but there's mister hothead in his way, Jonathan Rizzo, the CFO of the gang, so to say.
Vincent and Angelo. Gosh, they look like twins!
Michael Chiklis is getting better and better, though it can't be hard to outshine Dennis Quaid and his uncharismatic entourage. Vincent Savino is a very layered, sophisticated character (he is based on a real-life mobster Marshall Caifano), he has great plans for Las Vegas: he wants to completely change the landscape of the city by turning Savoy into an incredible entertaining centre. Other casino owners would then have to match that or go out of business. Mia seems to support that idea and she seems to grow loyal to Savino. She's clearly ambitious.
Our three musketeers, Katherine, Jack and Ralph are trying to figure out how to bring Savino to justice.
Katherine wears practically only two colors: green and red, which seems a bit weird. Jack's funky shirts I can't really comment on.
And the best idea they could think of is to put Ralph's head into the wasp nest. Rizzo, we learn, can't lose with dignity, and as he got upset at some point in the past, he left one of the dealers one-eyed, so he's in the black book and can't play in Vegas. Savino tries to make everyone happy: he creates a personal casino for Rizzo in a penthouse. The dealer lets Rizzo win, which, apparently is also offensive. Rizzo beats up the dealer
and goes to the Savoy to play. *Can't not to mention that Savino asks "to call their guy" to fix the dealer, but we don't see the doctor. That's how much the mob doctor actually matters to the mob bosses.*
Ralph arrests Rizzo (that's when a signature punch-up happened and for the first time I enjoyed it, Rizzo was very unpleasant throughout the whole episode and finally someone made his face meet the table), which obviously made the latter very upset. Rizzo wants Lamb dead. Here we have a little "mob court of justice" scene, where Rizzo makes a case for and Savino against Lamb's murder. The fans of legal dramas must be satisfied.
The mob jury
Savino wins and the next day the gang leaves Vegas. I guess Rizzo is not in good terms with Vincent now (even worse than before). Angelo says Savino does a good job with Savoy, but he doesn't seem to support the idea of expansion. He also says that Vincent should bring his family to Vegas.
So, I don't know what Lamb achieved by his bold move or even what he hoped for, but it was fun to watch.
I wish they could drop the procedural and concentrate on the mob line solely, that's why I can't put 10 out of 10 score.
Here's a creepy Lamb's smile instead of a goodbye.
Score: 9/10
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