And then back to Nicky, who's doing his Ed Grimley grimace -- "It is a small coffin, I must say! I'm sure to go completely mental, as I have neither my photo of the fabulous Pat Sajak, nor a triangle on which to play!" He then has another freak-out. As would anyone, really. We get a pretty cool cutaway shot of him in his coffin -- it's a nice diagonal, so we get the sense that he's suspended in a little bubble, surrounded by earth -- and then we pull in tight again so the claustrophobics among us can begin rocking back and forth in sympathy. Nicky continues to desperately beat against the coffin. Catherine watches him, her pupils telegraphing, "I wish my face could express emotion." Gil continues to stare. As per usual, he is a sphinx.

When we get back from commercials, Nicky is being tormented by the coffin lights blasting on again. Catherine stops gaping long enough to comment to an equally slack-jawed Warrick, Sara, and Liam: "I don't think he knows we can see him." You think? Sara wonders if they can be sure it's a live feed, and Warrick sighs, "We've got to be sure that it is." Gil soon calculates, "The space in that box looks like two by two by six, which would be 24 cubic feet. That would hold approximately 600 liters of air" -- ladies and gentlemen, Gil's just taken the lab to the metric system in mid-calculation; stay tuned as he calculates the ambient temperature in both Fahrenheit and Celsius -- "figure half a liter per breath, maybe 12 breaths per minute, panic breathing would be twice that much? If the math is right, he's got an hour and half of breath left in that box." Catherine's stumped by this: "If the kidnapper's trying to keep him alive, it must mean he's got an additional air supply." Air Supply? Will Nicky's torture never end? Will he also have to hear REO Speedwagon? I wouldn't put it past this director.

We go back to Nicky trying to shake his way loose in the box, and we hear the low, persistent rattle of what sounds like a fan. It's unclear whether the fan gets turned on when the lights go on, or if it gets turned off when the lights go on; the point is, there's some sort of air circulating system. Then the lights go off and it sounds like something powers down.

Back at the lab, the CSIs continue gaping. They keep this up, they'll be world-class. Warrick takes this opportunity to click on the "You can only WATCH" link and confirm that yes, it is a live feed. Nicky wouldn't be blinking from having a bright light aimed directly at his corneas otherwise. Although if this show were thinking of filthy lucre, what they would have done is paired with Burger King and launched SubservientCSI.com, where sadistic little Web surfers could command a Nick Stokes look-alike to comply with their every whim. Warrick tells a gaping Gil, "I say we keep the light on. Nicky will know it's us doing it because it's both dim and inconsiderate. So it'll be a comfort to him."