Directed by Howard Deutch
Written by Anthony E. Zuiker, Ann Donahue, Carol Mendelsohn, & Trey Calloway
"Command+P" is the 11th episode of Season 9 and the 191st overall. It originally aired January 4, 2013.
A lawyer is found shot to death in his office. Later, a young inventor is found shot as well. Both were killed with a gun from a 3-D printer. Meanwhile, an anonymous philanthropist is giving million dollar checks to seemingly random citizens, and Jo is determined to figure out who it is.
Tropes for the episode:
- Anonymous Benefactor: The philanthropist turns out to be Sid, who wants to see his patent money do some good so he gives $1M each to 10 families who had been financially as well as emotionally devastated by the deaths of loved ones he'd autopsied.
- Ballistic Discount: As the gun's inventor shows it off to someone he thinks is a potential investor, the other man examines it, then uses it to kill the inventor, and steals it, the software and the printer.
- May It Never Happen Again: A young man develops a way to 3-D print a working handgun and sets up a meeting in a bar with an investor named Andy Stein. Unfortunately he encounters a guy named Andy Lewis first, doesn't verify his last name and launches into his spiel. Lewis follows him home, shoots him with the prototype and steals the printer and software. Later he fatally shoots someone else with it. The investigators are now faced with two shooting deaths without ballistics, serial numbers, etc. After they figure it out and confiscate everything, Mac tells Jo that once the trial is over, they'll send the printer to a local university and keep the software locked up in evidence in hopes that no one else will start printing unlicensed, untraceable guns at home.
- Never Say Goodbye: Jo makes Sid promise this at the end of the episode after he tells her about his potentially fatal medical condition.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted in a way that is actually plot-relevant; the inventor is supposed to meet a potential investor named Andy, but instead walks up to a criminal named Andy in the same nightclub and excitedly begins his pitch about a 3D-printed gun, which the criminal is very interested in, but for far more sinister reasons.
- Shur Fine Guns: The 3D-printed firearm needs special treatment to be able to stand up to being fired. It never gets this, and when it's shot the second time, it blows up in the shooter's hand.
- Secretly Dying: Sid confides to Jo that he has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
- Significant Name Overlap: The inventor runs into the wrong guy named Andy and a case of mistaken identity ensues.
- Terminology Title: Keyboard shortcut for printing.
- Title Drop: After Sheldon figures out how the 3-D gun was made, he tells Mac and Jo that all the killer had to do to print it was "hit Command plus P."
- Wager Slave: Downplayed with the outcome, but Flack challenges Lovato to a game of ping pong. She turns it into a bet, so he asks what the winner gets. Her reply? "Whatever the winner wants." He says, "Ooooh, I can tell this is gonna get ugly!" They've had a bit of ongoing UST so when he wins, he collects his first kiss from her.
