Directed by Jeffrey G Hunt
Written by Anthony E. Zuiker, Ann Donahue, Carol Mendelsohn, & Jeremy Littman
"Obsession" is the 13th episode of Season 3, and the 60th overall. It originally aired January 17, 2007.
Synopsis:
One man is found dead during a shopping cart race known as the "Idiot Run," while another is found dead in a brownstone, possibly at the hands of a woman he was holding captive.Tropes for the episode:
- Broken Glass Penalty: In the opening, a group of boys are playing football in the street when their ball goes thru a ground-floor apartment window. They look in, see a dead body, freak out and run away, thinking they killed the man. Later, one convinces another to turn themselves in. Det. Flack tells the team he locked them up just for fun.
- Fictional Sport: The "Idiot Run." Although very loosely based on the Iditarod, it uses human teams instead of sled dogs and shopping carts instead of sleds, the teams dress up in costumes, sabotage is encouraged, and the only rule is that the first team across the finish line wins.
- Improvised Weapon: The first victim is bludgeoned to death with a mannequin leg the killer happens to have in his possession at the time.
- Rescue Romance: It initially appears that the woman in the second case gets back together with her ex after he saves her from being kidnapped and assaulted. It turns out that the "abduction" is a fetish game she and her current partner knowingly staged, and her ex kills her lover in a fit of jealousy - she just finds it hot that he would go that far for her.
- Shopping Cart Antics: The race participants use shopping carts as their mode of transportation while dressing in matching costumes of their team's choice and trying to sabotage one another in order to win. Tricks include spraying the snow-covered course with water to make slippery frozen patches, and disguising grates with snow as trip hazards (particularly for opponents wearing high heels).
- Shopping Cart of Homelessness: One of the teams steals a cart from a homeless man...and damages it. This upsets the man so badly he kills one of the team members.
- Shout-Out: One of the participants tells Danny that the race is based on the Iditarod dog sled race in Alaska.
