Directed by Norberto Barba
Written by Anthony E. Zuiker, Ann Donahue, Carol Mendelsohn, & Creator/Pam Veasey
"City of the Dolls" is the 9th episode of Season 2, and the 32nd one overall. It originally aired November 23, 2005.
Synopsis:
The "doctor" owner of a doll "hospital" is found dead on the floor of his establishment. Meanwhile a young waitress is found dead in her bedroom with no injuries and no signs of a struggle other than a spilled container of soup on her kitchen counter and a single glove on the floor beside it.Tropes for the episode:
- All for Nothing: The killer of the second victim is the waitresses' next door neighbor, who did it to buy the waitresses' apartment and use it to expand his own by adding a nursery. As he is arrested, he is told that the waitress had terminal cancer and if he had waited a few months, the apartment would have become available.
- Ambiguous Syntax: A recording in the first case is believed by the instigator to implicate them in the murder even though the information on it is non-identifying: it reveals that someone saw "them" but not who it actually was.
- Creepy Doll: The voice box on the doll that holds the recording is damaged, making the doll sound eerie rather than like a small girl.
- Soup Is Medicine: The waitress was supposed to have filled in for a co-worker, but didn't show up and the two fought about it. Feeling guilty because the victim had said she was too sick to go in, the other woman took her some chicken soup from the restaurant.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: The waitress' neighbor had laced some teabags she'd asked him to pick up for her with arsenic in hopes that she'd die from the poison, and he and his wife could purchase her apartment and connect it to their own because they didn't have room for a nursery for their soon-to-be-born baby.
- Teacher/Student Romance: The first case revolves around a teacher having an affair with one of her students. The young man says they had to keep it secret because "people wouldn't let us be together." In the end the teacher asks, "Does it matter at all that I love him?"
