Directed by Rob Bailey
Written by Anthony E. Zuiker, Ann Donahue, Carol Mendelsohn & Pam Veasey
"Right Next Door" is the 16th episode of Season 4 and the 87th overall. It originally aired April 9, 2008.
Stella's apartment building goes up in flames and a burned body is found after the fire has been put out. Meanwhile, authorities have issued an "Amber Alert" for a missing girl.
Tropes for the episode:
- Accidental Pervert: Because a hole he creates allows him to see into her bedroom, Stella originally believes one of her neighbors is a young Peeping Tom. It turns out he's trying to get her to help him escape from his kidnapper.
- Comforting the Widow: A variation. Danny sleeps with Rikki, who is a single mother and has lost her son, not her husband.
- Fiery Cover-Up: Subverted. The team theorize that the fire was set to cover up a murder, but then figure out that the burned victim had died from injuries sustained in a vehicle accident 2-3 days before the fire started.
- High Heel Hurt. Zigzagged. Opens with a young woman leaving work for a date, happily changing her hairstyle and swapping her flats for high-heeled shoes she had in her oversized bag as she hurries down the sidewalk. A few steps after she gets them on, one heel catches in a subway grate, inertia propels her forward, she loses her balance and crashes through the display window of an art gallery, and a very large painting lands on her, knocking her out. She dies when a sharp piece of glass falls, severing an artery.
- House Fire: Stella's apartment, and those of her neighbors, catch fire. They all have to be evacuated and find somewhere else to live.
- Hypocrite: Part of Bonnie Dillard's Freudian Excuse for kidnapping the girl. Bonnie had been badgered into giving up her own child for adoption earlier because she'd have been a single mom. Now that this girl's parents divorce, leaving her with a single parent, Bonnie kidnaps her even though her mother (Bonnie's employee) had nothing to do with Bonnie not being able to keep her own child... and ignoring her own double standard: *she's* raising a son alone now, too.
- The Kindnapper: Part of the reason Bonnie kidnaps the girl is that she thinks the girl's mom will be unfit due to being a single, working parent. As it turns out, her "son" is not her own; she'd kidnapped him year earlier from yet another single, working mother.
- Life Will Kill You: The young woman dies because she caught her heel in a grate, tripped, and crashed through a plate glass window.
- Sex for Solace: Danny and Rikki each admit that they're sleeping with each other just to comfort themselves after Ruben's death.
- Sexy Discretion Shot: Danny tells Rikki he's going to need his shirt (that she's wearing) back and begins to unbutton it and kiss her, then there's a jump cut to another scene.
- Sexy Shirt Switch: Rikki emerges from Danny's bedroom while wearing his shirt.
- Shirtless Scene: Danny makes an omelet for himself and offers to make one for Rikki, too, while not wearing a shirt.
- Storefront Television Display:
- In the opening sequence, one of the Victims of the Week stops in front of an appliance store to freshen her lipstick via her reflection in the window. As she does so, an Amber Alert for a missing little girl is playing at volume on one of the tv sets.
- The episode concludes with Stella walking past the same display while multiple screens show the boy being reunited with his birth mother.
