So, on to CSI Central, wherein we find Sevilla and Token hustling to an appointment with Rancid Man's possible girlfriend. Well, possible ex-girlfriend, because he's dead now. Sevilla found the ex by scouring recent missing persons reports and matching the description of a "Doug Reid" to Rancid Man's height and coloring. Oh, and look! Here's Rancid Man's ex emerging from the elevator now. The girlfriend's name is Caroline. Get it? Just like the titular object of affection in the Neil Diamond song? Caroline dated the deceased for all of three months, planned to travel to Aruba with him, tore up all photos of him save one when he disappeared, and bears a frightening resemblance in both appearance and dizzy demeanor to Paula Abdul. This last detail is the only one that holds any interest for me whatsoever. Caroline hands over her remaining photo of Doug and leaves.

Elsewhere, Jade the autopsy underling and Token compare Doug's photo to one of Rancid Man's. I don't know why I'm bothering, but I have to ask: Why compare the post-mortem face with all of its bacterial bloating to the pre-mortem face? Wouldn't it make more sense to reconstruct Rancid Man's face using a scan of his skull and some of their fancy imaging software? Whatever. Like I said, I shouldn't bother. Token spies a pair of presumably custom-made plugs in Doug's ears, and notes that Doug's uniform bears the name of Larry's Tool Up And Die machine shop. The autopsy underling is most enthused, for if Token can find the earplugs, he might be able to match them to Rancid Man's ears. As she puts it, the ears of "a bloater" are the only bits that retain their original shape after lengthy periods of submersion. Token motors on over to Larry's Tool Up And Die, where he breaks into Doug's locker and retrieves the custom earplugs. Back at the morgue, he bursts in on Alexx with, "I've got my glass slipper, now where's my Cinderella?" Token worries me. No snuggling for him with this particular corpse, however, as Alexx cremated Rancid Man yesterday. Some in the forums have questioned cremating the remains of an unidentified body, but I would suppose that, if they've gathered the necessary forensic evidence and stored DNA samples for future identification, it makes sense to dispose properly of the remains as soon as possible, though I would think they'd choose interment rather than cremation on the off chance that the family, if found, would want an actual body. No matter, because Token has a cunning plan. He scans in photographs of one of the plugs, generates a three-dimensional image of the thing, concocts an accompanying three-dimensional image of Rancid Man's ear, and then matches the two images in an absolutely stunning display of forensic moxie. Or something like that. I'm so bored with this entire episode that I'm just babbling away to myself at this point.