Directed by Christine Moore
Written by Anthony E. Zuiker, Ann Donahue, Carol Mendelsohn & Trey Calloway
"Damned If You Do" is the 3rd episode of Season 7 and the 143rd overall. It originally aired October 8, 2010.
A couple are found savagely beaten in their bedroom. The husband is dead and the wife is barely clinging to life. At first she identifies their son as the culprit, then denies having said that. Later, an unrelated person confesses. Who is really responsible?
Tropes for the episode:
- Comatose Canary: Subverted. The woman wasn't responding to Mac's instructions to move her fingers for yes or no after all.
- Mama Didn't Raise No Criminal: The mother has this type of reaction when she realizes that her son is the number one suspect, and demands that Mac leave him alone. Turns out she's right.
- Never My Fault: Paul Benson tells Mac he was only a kid when he raped his girlfriend Sarah, for which his parents turned him in after he confessed his crime to them. Mac tells him he was 18, old enough to be held accountable for his actions.
- Revenge Myopia: Mac points out to Paul that him wanting to kill his parents for turning him in is this, saying that Paul was expecting his parents to just let Sarah go through life knowing her rapist got away with what he did.
- Self-Made Orphan: The intention of the real killer, who didn't know his parents had moved out of the house he grew up in. He wanted to kill them for turning him in for a crime years earlier.
- Techno Babble: Adam attempts this when Jo recruits him to pose as a lie detector technician, but it morphs into Buffy Speak when he refers to the needle as "the pen thingy."
