Directed by Jeffrey G Hunt
Written by Anthony E. Zuiker, Ann Donahue, Carol Mendelsohn & Zachary Reiter
"Green Piece" is the 17th episode of Season 5 and the 109th overall. It originally aired March 11, 2009.
A car bomb destroys a house while Adam and his friends are playing street hockey. The daughter of an electronics recycling manager is found dead in the rubble. Danny proposes to Lindsay again.
Tropes for the episode:
- Creepy Red Herring: One suspect is a belligerent Neo-Nazi racist. He turns out to be innocent, of the crime anyway.
- Gaia's Avengers: The bombers are an eco-terrorist group who use bombs to get across their message that humans are destroying the planet.
- Lampshade Hanging: Lindsay asks Sid about the autopsy results. He says, "I realize this is usually the part where I tell you that I found some strange, unusual, bizarre, aberrant, peculiar, idiosyncratic...uh, that's it, I don't have any more synonyms for strange. Wait, weird...weird piece of evidence. But alas, there's no Gila monster in her stomach. She simply succumbed to the bomb."
- My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: Downplayed. Stella asks injured Adam if this had happened to him. He says all he could think about was another kid who'd beaned him in the head during a dodge ball game in the third grade.
- Non-Fatal Explosions: Despite being the closest one to the van with the bomb, Adam is only injured and is back at work before the episode ends. (It helps that the side of the van he was on had been shored up to direct the force in the opposite direction.)
- Red Herring: A suspect who seems to have motive turns out to have been framed for the bombing.
- Techno Babble: A mild example. While searching for the bomb's trigger, the team find pieces of a metal drum they surmise held ammonium nitrate and the following exchange occurs:Mac: This fragment is big enough to estimate a radius of 12 inches.Flack: You two are gonna talk Chinese now, right?Mac: Circumference equals two pi R.Stella: Two times 3.14 times 12.Mac: Approximately 72 inches. Consistent with a 30 gallon drum.Stella: [looking around] Well, we've got fragments of at least two drums. One blue, one red. Five 50 pound bags of ammonium nitrate per drum.Mac: We're looking at a 500-pound bomb.
- We Are Everywhere: When he's arrested, the terrorist leader brags to Mac that there are plenty of other members out there who will continue to get their message out as long as people keep selfishly destroying the planet. Mac turns it on him, saying he has plenty of people too, good people who will hunt them down for as long as it takes to put them all away.
- Wedding Episode: Downplayed by Danny & Lindsay tying the knot at the courthouse before she heads to Montana on maternity leave.
