“The Good, the Bad and the Dominatrix” Aired May 10, 2007, IMDB
In Lady Heather’s previous appearance, we learn that her deceased daughter Zoe may have had a child. The fourth Lady Heather episode follows up on that plot thread.
This time, Lady Heather meets an unknown person in a Wild West theme park. The man strangles her, and she passes out. The night watchmen finds her unconscious and calls the police.
Examining the scene, Willows comments on a bottle of expensive scotch:
Willows: “S&M is a rich man’s sport. Kind of like hockey: a lot of equipment.”
Not necessarily.
Willows makes a few low-key jokes about kink.
Willows: “Wonder which one wore the chaps.”
Willows: “My fantasy does not include costumes, or pain… and certainly not sawdust. You?”
Sidle doesn’t answer.
Heather is evasive when asked about what she was doing there, and refuses to be examined for sexual assault. We also learn that she got out of kidnapping and assaulting a man in the last episode because the judge was a client of hers.
There are the usual twists and turns and red herrings, including the revelation that Heather has marks from previous strangulations on her neck, and that she’s taken to drinking in spite of her diabetes.
While Grissom largely stays out of the investigation, he does get involved personally. He realizes something is seriously wrong with her, and provides an alibi for Heather when she is suspected for a murder.
This causes some friction between him and the rest of the team.
Willows: “You know, I’d slap you, but I think you’d enjoy it too much.”
While reading a psychology textbook, Grissom has a flash of talking with Heather:
Heather: “When the submissive accepts they’re in control that’s when they embrace their true power. They can say ‘stop.’ They can choose to either end the pain or continue enduring it. But higher consciousness doesn’t negate our animal instinct to survive.”
He also gets a court record about Heather being denied visitation of her granddaughter by her ex-husband, Jerome Kessler. (She kept her married name?)
In another flashback, Heather says:
Heather: “I can’t give her love, but I can give her the freedom to be who she wants to be.”
Grissom meets with Jerome, saying he’s a friend of Heather’s. Jerome never even knew he had a child until after she was dead. Heather set up a trust fund for her granddaughter, Alison, worth over $800,000. Also, Heather closed her business trying to convince a judge she’d be a fit guardian.
Jerome regards it as self-evident that Heather wouldn’t be a good guardian.
The plot is a tangle of blackmail, jealousy and family conflict, but ultimately the owner of the theme park paid Heather the money for the trust fund in exchange for being allowed to strangle her to death. There’s also no mention of what was to be done with Heather’s body after death.
Ben Oakley: “The Marquis de Sade’s got nothing on my old man. Inflicting pain is his idea of foreplay. […] Do you know how much money he’s spent, abusing women? He didn’t leave anything for my mother and me, except more abuse. It had to stop.”
Jack Oakley is arrested (though for killing another man, not because of what he did with Heather).
Jack Oakley: “I didn’t do anything. She solicited me. Strictly a business deal. She needed the money. I paid her close to one million dollars for this, you know that?”
Brass informs Heather that she’s legally safe.
Brass: “Attempted murder, assisted suicide, the lines are kind of blurred. But do yourself a favor. Get some help.”
Note that there is a bottle of whiskey and a full tumbler in the frame next to her.
It ends with Grissom arranging a reconciliation between Heather and Jerome Kessler over their granddaughter. For the first time, we see Heather in regular clothes and not her usual Gothic/glamour.
***
The first two Lady Heather episodes showed a woman in control of her life (even while murders were happening around her). The next two put her through hell: the murder of her estranged daughter, denial of her granddaughter, a drinking problem compounded by her diabetes, selling her business, and finally letting herself be murdered by a man for money. CSI has a long history of harshly judging mothers, far more than fathers, and Heather’s double failure as a maternal figure can be read as driving her self-destructive behaviour.
Many characters judge her harshly, and only Grissom is a steadfast advocate. It’s hard not to feel this punitive, that as an independent woman and who is both a sex worker and a practicioner of a non-normative sexuality, Heather has to be contained.
The ultimate cause of all this is Jerome refusing to let Heather see her granddaughter, and his prejudice against his ex-wife is not explored. Nor is how Grissom, notoriously uncomfortable with anything personal or emotional, is able to overcome it. There’s a bit of ideological sleight of hand to make this episode about Heather’s improbable world of snuff-for-pay, instead of Jerome’s all-too-real prejudice and spite.
The happy ending, with a reunited family and no threat of prosecution, feels contrived. Does Heather get to keep the money?
