Slashdot Mirror
C.S.I.
Several things about this show are odd. For one thing, it's stars -- stocky William Petersen as C.S.I. head Gil Grissom and Marg Helgenberger (playing Catherine Willows) as his sidekick -- are not the hunks and babes of most series. Given the realities of network TV, the younger staffers are prettier, but Grissom is a guy who could actually be a convincing investigator, not a GAP model.
Oddly, too, the show is set in Las Vegas, America's capital of Weirdness. The backdrop of giant, theme-parky casinos gives the show a deliciously odd feel. And the shows plays on the fact that the crime lab in Las Vegas is the country's second busiest, after New York City's. Given the millions of strangers and tens of millions of dollars that pour into and through Las Vegas, the string of bizarre homicides needed to sustain a show like this is plausible. Less plausible is the lavishly equipped offices the C.S.I. works in. Few Silicon Valley companies have better offices or equipment. For the C.S.I., apparently, money is no object.
Although the production values are frequently chintzy (though improving, as the producers belatedly realize they have a hit), and the writing is pedestrian, there are some fine touches. When the C.S.I. unit is called to the desert to reconstruct a skeleton and figure out how the victim died, we suddenly get a fascinating case study in how forensic investigators learn things about bones.
Grissom doesn't carry a gun, kick doors down, chase suspects through alleys, or bang them around interrogation rooms. His SUV is crammed with test kits, infra-red lights, tubes, and evidence bags.
When Grissom determines that one skeleton might have been strangled, we see a sudden, graphic insert of a real neck, with muscles and tissue contracting and cutting off air and blood. The insert only lasts a second, but it's riveting. So is the show's use of increasingly sophisticated databases to match evidence up with recorded crimes, and to gather information from twigs, dirt, pieces of hair. DNA plays a starring role on this show.
One episode had Grissom and his team reconstructing a fire to try to clear an innocent man charged with setting a fire that killed his wife and child. The details -- as investigators peer at burn and fire traces on walls and floors -- were as interesting as any high-speed auto chase.
The C.S.I. unit is part of the Las Vegas police -- represented here by ever-rueful Paul Guilfoyle as Capt. Jim Brass -- which unravels two or three major crimes per show. The episodes unfold without rough stuff -- fist fights, no shoot-outs, hardly ever an explosion. Just science applied to the unraveling of mysteries.
Naturally, computers play a huge role, which could be one reason the show is doing so well. As the Net plays a bigger role each day in American's lives, their fascination with how data is collected and sorted online is growing. Aggregated information is a central tool of our C.S.I. heroes.
The influence of The X-Files is all over C.S.I.. Scenes take place in dark and eerie rooms, and spooky deaths need to be explained by the heroes. One episode showed a gambler who owed a lot of money executed professional-style in a tacky, hotel elevator. The show isn't afraid to be depressing, and the C.S.I. investigators are often defeated. Even their jazzy equipment is no match for a professional hit. There's a dark, often brutal reality underlying these stories. Last week, the C.S.I. had to track down a carjacker/rapist whose victim was in a coma. With his victim unable to talk, they nailed the killer through a belt loop and other DNA evidence.
On the debit side, there's the abscence of a charismatic character like Scully , Mulder or Sipowicz, or of compelling actors like Anderson, Duchovny or Franz. This crew is comparatively bland. Helgenberger's Willows plays an ex-show girl, but has nothing of Scully's fearless, dark complexity.
Still, it's an intriging show, especially for tech-lovers,problem solvers and people interested in how science has become the homicide cop's real partner, playing an increasing role in resolving human conflict and tragedy. Which is to say, this is a police drama for nerds and geeks. It's good stuff.
People don't watch CSI because it's good, they watch it because there is nothing else worth watching between Survivor and ER. CSI got lucky with it's placement. If it weren't for the placement, I don't think it would have half the viewers it does.
I think that people just leave the tv on CBS after Survivor while they run around doing other stuff... Does anyone think that all those utterly pathetic shows between Friends and Frasier really had any followers?
I'm surprised they haven't done this in a more reality-based way... network executives committing horrible crimes on tape in Vegas.
Or...
real life psychological counseling...
real life pre-natal care for crack mothers...
criminal court live...
escape from alkatraz...
the running man...
climbing for dollars...
Sad thing is, I'd probably watch, even though I'm kidding.
"Probably nobody was more surprised than the network when the show took off, usually ranking each week up in the top ten or twenty. "
How is top 20 good? I admit I don't know much about TV ratings, but considering CBS is one of the 'big' networks you'd think top ten or twenty is very poor.
I think a larger part of CSI's success, because I've seen it and been disappointed a couple of times, is the tremendous advantage it gets from being led into by Survivor 2.
:)).
Let's face it: Survivor 2 is really good. I don't even like the reality genre that much but Survivor 2 really compells me. It's just about the only reason I watch CBS (except for 60 Minutes, I'm sure not many others here do that
As for the redeeming qualities of CSI, I think they've all been developed at least as effectively on Discovery Channel, History Channel and PBS.
I agree that the kind of scientific analysis that CSI involves in a drama can be fun to watch, but CSI is not the best vehicle for it. The tackiness overwhelms it. The true drama of a scientific investigation can be just as present on NOVA as the fake melodrama of CSI.
Am I the only one here that thinks that the premiere of "Lone Gunmen" tonight is a TV review much more suited for Slashdot? I dunno, maybe Katz couldn't get an advance copy of that.
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
woxy.com - Bam! The Future of Rock and Roll
but Jon: If i had wanted to find out more about CSI, i would have just watched the show. It's entertainment, and i'm willing to bet that real forensic scientists laugh at this show just like we all laughed when we watched hackers for the first time.
Now tell me about something i couldn't have found out anywhere else!
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Jon, if you are going to write TV reviews, submit them to TV Guide instead of /. If you were giving us your $0.02 on the next game in the Quake series, then we would be listening.
my housemate (whose an idiot) loves the show, thinks it is incredible.
to be fair, i sat down and watched it. it's so cheesy and predictable,
really below the intelligence level of most geeks i would think.
here's an idea: turn off your tv.
Is slashdot now charging for reviews of TV shows? If not, then why is a review of a TV show on slashdot? I have never seen a review of anything from the Discovery Channel, TLC or the Learning Channel.
World Champion F-1
German Blood and Italian Steel cannot lose!
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 13:33:23 -0800 (PST)
From: Larry Augustin
Organization: VA Linux Systems, Inc.
To: All Employees
I'd like to thank everyone for their patience while we've gone through
our planning process.
As you've probably heard by now we will cut our operating expenses by
at least $5M per quarter going forward. We need to do that to stay viable
as a business during the economic slowdown. It's very disappointing
to have to do this, but some very large companies (Dell, HP, and GE
for example) have had to do this as well. We are not alone.
Economic growth has slowed for the economy in general and for us
specifically. We must reset our plans to get the company back on
track towards profitability, and we must reach profitability at lower
revenue levels.
In order to cut that much spending, we need to reduce headcount by
25%. We constantly hear that everyone is overworked and we are trying
to do too much. The only way to reduce headcount and not be more
overworked is to focus on what is important and drop what is not. At
the same time we must improve customer focus and accountability.
We have identified three strategic areas where we will focus, and cut
investment in other areas. Those areas are Storage (NAS), SourceForge
OnSite (SFOS), and Web server solutions. We will be increasing
headcount in those three areas significantly, and cutting headcount in
other areas as a result.
We are also making some significant organizational changes to help us
achieve success in those three areas. First, I am pleased to announce
the promotion of Ali Jenab to President & COO. Ali will focus his
attention on operational success within the company, while I will
focus on strategic direction and customers. I have the utmost
confidence in Ali's ability to manage the operations of the business.
Reporting to Ali will be these people in each of the major functional
areas:
SVP Marketing - John Hall will move to the role of SVP Marketing. All
marketing functions within the company, including corporate marketing,
product marketing, and community marketing will report to John. John
has complete control of all marketing functions and control of the
marketing budget. I'm confident in John's ability to lead the
company's product vision and positioning from this role.
SVP OSDN - Richard French will continue in the role of SVP OSDN that
he took over from John just a few weeks ago. Richard has a goal of
maximizing the amount of leverage we get in software engineering by
utilizing the Open Source community on OSDN. Richard's background in
developing Enterprise software at Oracle will be a huge benefit to us
in this role.
VP Quality, Service, & Engineering - As announced earlier, Allen Ibara
will assume responsibility for all quality, customer care, and
hardware engineering functions. Allen has proven his skills over the
past two quarters with a significant improvement in quality. Allen
also has extensive experience running mission critical support
services in his previous jobs. Bringing Allen's strong management
skills and devotion to customer quality to a broader role will help us
in engineering management.
Also reporting directly to Ali will be these senior managers in their
existing roles:
SVP Sales - Bob Russo
VP Professional Services - Kyle Spencer
VP Manufacturing - Daniel Shore
VP Human Resources - McKinley Littlejohn
Finally, Todd Schull remains as CFO reporting to me.
In addition to the structural changes in senior management, we have
instituted a mechanism for creating accountability in the company for
our key areas of focus. We have created top level P&Ls for our
important lines of business, and assigned responsibility for those
P&Ls to product line managers. Further, we are in the process of
identifying team leads for each of the major functional areas
(engineering, marketing, sales, support, and operations) within each
of those lines of business.
Over the course of the next few weeks, the product line managers will
finish building their teams and report the team leads, goals, and
business plan to the company. Ultimately every employee will have a
one-page summary for each of these lines of business so we all know
who is responsible for that business as a whole and for the functions
within that business.
First, the areas of key investment for us:
SourceForge OnSite
Headcount: 31
Product Line Manager: Adam Frey
NAS
Headcount: 30
Product Line Manager: Cheryl Sindelar
Web Server Solutions
Headcount: 9
Product Line Manager: Jay McKinsey
Our change of focus here is apparent from the resources we have
devoted to each of these businesses. We have moved away from working
on a variety of different products into focusing on these 3 areas.
In addition to those 3 key areas, we have structured the company into
6 other lines of business with P&Ls and definitions of clear
responsibility. These areas are important to our success:
Linux Servers
Headcount: 108
Product Line Manager: TBD
Open Source Infrastructure Solutions
Headcount: 23
Product Line Manager: Marty Larsen
Contract Engineering
Headcount: 13
Product Line Manager: Marty Larsen
OSDN Online
Headcount: 50
Product Line Manager: Jeff Bates
OSDN Events
Headcount: 5
Product Line Manager: Mark Stone
OSDN ECommerce
Headcount: 12
Product Line Manager: Doug Schatz
As we look at the business, there are a number of areas that we have
not funded. We had to make some difficult decisions about what
businesses we were in, and what businesses we were not in. We
selected the top three businesses and assigned to them whatever
resources they needed to be successful. With the remaining
businesses, we chose those that were least defocusing, best leveraged
our Linux and Open Source expertise, best leveraged OSDN, aligned with
common target customers, and provided us the most differentiation in
the market.
We have a tremendous opportunity in the businesses we have chosen to
target. We also have a tremendous opportunity for other products and
businesses that we have chosen not to target. Before we build those
new businesses, we must make these existing businesses work. We must
focus all of our energy behind these lines of business. Once they are
successful, we can turn our attention elsewhere to new ideas.
We are the leading company in Open Source. Deutsche Banc Alex Brown
expects corporate IT departments to spend $75 Billion dollars by 2004
on Open Source. We can be the leading company providing those IT
departments Open Source solutions. We have $126 million dollars in
the bank to do it. But we must execute. We believe that the changes
we are making today and over the rest of the quarter will put us in a
position to execute.
Thanks,
Larry
CSI is one of the worst shows that has come out this season. When it first came out, I watched the season premier with 2 of my friends that are state troopers... Each one pointed out about 100 different things that they were doing wrong, or doing that made no sense at all. How is that a geek show of any type? Jesus... Next thing you know we'll all be praising the movie "The Net" and talking about how realistic THAT was.
Italian Steel?? It's used in the tyres, right?
IF ONE FICTIONAL FIGURE can be said to have dominated the popcult of the eighties, it was the Cop. Fuckin' police ev- erywhere you turned, worse than real life. What an incredible bore.
Powerful Cops--protecting the meek and humble--at the expense of a half-dozen or so articles of the Bill of Rights- -"Dirty Harry." Nice human cops, coping with human perversity, coming out sweet 'n' sour, you know, gruff & knowing but still soft inside--Hill Street Blues--most evil TV show ever. Wiseass black cops scoring witty racist remarks against hick white cops, who nevertheless come to love each other--Eddie Murphy, Class Traitor. For that masochist thrill we got wicked bent cops who threaten to topple our Kozy Konsensus Reality from within like Giger- designed tapeworms, but naturally get blown away just in the nick of time by the Last Honest Cop, Robocop, ideal amalgam of prosthesis and sentimentality.
We've been obsessed with cops since the beginning--but the rozzers of yore played bumbling fools, Keystone Kops, Car 54 Where Are You, booby-bobbies set up for Fatty Arbuckle or Buster Keaton to squash & deflate. But in the ideal drama of the eighties, the "little man" who once scattered bluebottles by the hundred with that anarchist's bomb, innocently used to light a cigarette--the Tramp, the victim with the sudden power of the pure heart--no longer has a place at the center of narrative. Once "we" were that hobo, that quasi-surrealist chaote hero who wins thru wu- wei over the ludicrous minions of a despised & irrelevant Order.
But now "we" are reduced to the status of victims without power, or else criminals. "We" no longer occupy that central role; no longer the heros of our own stories, we've been marginalized & replaced by the Other, the Cop.
Thus the Cop Show has only three characters--victim, criminal, and policeperson--but the first two fail to be fully human--only the pig is real. Oddly enough, human society in the eighties (as seen in the other media) sometimes appeared to consist of the same three cliche/archetypes. First the victims, the whining minorities bitching about "rights"--and who pray tell did not belong to a "minority" in the eighties? Shit, even cops complained about their "rights" being abused. Then the criminals: largely non-white (despite the obligatory & hallucinatory "integration" of the media), largely poor (or else obscenely rich, hence even more alien), largely perverse (i.e. the forbidden mirrors of "our" desires). I've heard that one out of four households in America is robbed every year, & that every year nearly half a million of us are arrested just for smoking pot. In the face of such statistics (even assuming they're "damned lies") one wonders who is NOT either victim or criminal in our police-state-of-consciousness. The fuzz must mediate for all of us, however fuzzy the interface-- they're only warrior-priests, however profane. America's Most Wanted--the most successful TV game show of the eighties--opened up for all of us the role of Amateur Cop, hitherto merely a media fantasy of middleclass resentment & revenge. Naturally the truelife Cop hates no one so much as the vigilante--look what happens to poor &/or non-white neighborhood self-protection groups like the Muslims who tried to eliminate crack dealing in Brooklyn: the cops busted the Muslims, the pushers went free. Real vigilantes threaten the monopoly of enforcement, lÉse majest, more abominable than incest or murder. But media(ted) vigilantes function perfectly within the CopState; in fact, it would be more accurate to think of them as unpaid (not even a set of matched luggage!) informers: telemetric snitches, electro-stoolies, ratfinks- for-a-day.
What is it that "America most wants"? Does this phrase refer to criminals--or to crimes, to objects of desire in their real presence, unrepresented, unmediated, literally stolen & appropriated? America most wants...to fuck off work, ditch the spouse, do drugs (because only drugs make you feel as good as the people in TV ads appear to be), have sex with nubile jailbait, sodomy, burglary, hell yes. What unmediated pleasures are NOT illegal? Even outdoor barbecues violate smoke ordinances nowadays. The simplest enjoyments turn us against some law; finally pleasure becomes too stress- inducing, and only TV remains--and the pleasure of revenge, vicarious betrayal, the sick thrill of the tattletale. America can't have what it most wants, so it has America's Most Wanted instead. A nation of schoolyard toadies sucking up to an elite of schoolyard bullies.
Of course the program still suffers from a few strange reality-glitches: for example, the dramatized segments are enacted cinema verit style by actors; some viewers are so stupid they believe they're seeing actual footage of real crimes. Hence the actors are being continually harassed & even arrested, along with (or instead of) the real criminals whose mugshots are flashed after each little documentoid. How quaint, eh? No one really experiences anything--everyone reduced to the status of ghosts--media-images break off & float away from any contact with actual everyday life-- PhoneSex--CyberSex. Final transcendence of the body: cybergnosis.
The media cops, like televangelical forerunners, prepare us for the advent, final coming or Rapture of the police state: the "Wars" on sex and drugs: total control totally leached of all content; a map with no coordinates in any known space; far beyond mere Spectacle; sheer ecstasy ("standing- outside-the-body"); obscene simulacrum; meaningless violent spasms elevated to the last principle of governance. Image of a country consumed by images of self-hatred, war between the schizoid halves of a split personality, Super-Ego vs the Id Kid, for the heavyweight championship of an abandoned landscape, burnt, polluted, empty, desolate, unreal. Just as the murder-mystery is always an exercise in sadism, so the cop-fiction always involves the contemplation of control. The image of the inspector or detective measures the image of "our" lack of autonomous substance, our transparency before the gaze of authority. Our perversity, our helplessness. Whether we imagine them as "good" or "evil," our obsessive invocation of the eidolons of the Cops reveals the extent to which we have accepted the manichaean worldview they symbolize. Millions of tiny cops swarm everywhere, like the qlippoth, larval hungry ghosts--they fill the screen, as in Keaton's famous two-reeler, overwhelming the foreground, an Antarctic where nothing moves but hordes of sinister blue penguins.
We propose an esoteric hermeneutical exegesis of the Surrealist slogan "Mort aux vaches!" We take it to refer not to the deaths of individual cops ("cows" in the argot of the period)--mere leftist revenge fantasy--petty reverse sadism--but rather to the death of the image of the flic, the inner Control & its myriad reflections in the NoPlace Place of the media--the "gray room" as Burroughs calls it. Self-censorship, fear of one's own desires, "conscience" as the interiorized voice of consensus- authority. To assassinate these "security forces" would indeed release floods of libidinal energy, but not the violent running-amok predicted by the theory of Law 'n' Order.
Nietzschean "self-overcoming" provides the principle of organization for the free spirit (as also for anarchist society, at least in theory). In the police-state personality, libidinal energy is dammed & diverted toward self-repression; any threat to Control results in spasms of violence. In the free-spirit personality, energy flows unimpeded & therefore turbulently but gently--its chaos finds its strange attractor, allowing new spontaneous orders to emerge.
In this sense, then, we call for a boycott of the image of the Cop, & a moratorium on its production in art. In this sense...
MORT AUX VACHES!
Hakim Bey
--
I don't want to sound like I'm bashing Katz here, 'cause I'm not. But something that really bugs me about JonKatz posted articles is that he can never seem to get the "dept." tag right. For example:
from the -tech-culture:--the-nerd-squad- dept.
should be:
from the tech-culture:-the-nerd-squad dept.
See what I mean? Yeah, it's sort of a minor thing, perhaps even bordering on a nitpick, but it does bug me.
It's used to forge victory!
German Blood and Italian Steel cannot lose!
everyone that opposes him!
German Blood and Italian Steel cannot lose!
Schumacher, yay!
German Blood and Italian Steel cannot lose!
Yeah, a lot of things are forged in Italy.
How come everyone agrees Katz is useless troll, yet he's still here?
/. could post kiddie porn or articles on knitting and we could disable those too.
/. wants to have a regular tech columnist, then how about looking for a good one that the readers actually like?! Pretty radical idea eh? Even cooler, how bout having an essay competition and seeing if there arn't slashdotters who would fill the role nicely (you know that there must be).
The argument that we can disable him is crap -
If
The only reason Katz stays is obviously because his trolls generate hits for the advertizers, which is very sad. Surely a good columnist could generate interest as well?
Can Katz now.
Is it just me? It seems that tv has in general has gone bland, no odd quirky shows like Quincy or The Rockford Files any more. Granted, there's the X Files, and Twin Peaks, but I'm hard-pressed to think of any others in the last 10 years or so.
---
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
stfu you damon hill fanboy!!
German Blood and Italian Steel cannot lose!
STFU you damon hill/villeneuve fanboyz!!!
German Blood and Italian Steel cannot lose!
Kind of like that pizza-oven car we saw on the Dominoes commercials? I can see it now: CSI investigator delivered fresh and hot in 30 minutes or he's free!
Forager
student of animation and the fine arts
Are you a damon hill fanboy?
German Blood and Italian Steel cannot lose!
Villeneuve did quite well, getting back at those flag-waving guys.
Winner, Hero, Schumacher.
German Blood and Italian Steel cannot lose!
jon katz is a japanese F-1 pilot fanboy, bah!
German Blood and Italian Steel cannot lose!
As for tv shows not being a good topic on /. - Why wouldn't they be? Television is technology, and tv shows are quite widely watched. I doubt there's a single one of you who doesn't get into discussions on tv shows once in a while online. Not to mention that in the latest /. poll, 996 people voted the tv was most important to them, and *many* others were considering it as an option [read the comments]. Besides, if a tv review was *really* so offtopic, don't you think the staff would've removed it immediately? In effect, it's not Katz you're flaming, it's Slashdot .. and this time, you don't have a good reason.
No one forced you to read the review. If you don't like the series, that's cool, it's an opinion and you have the right to state it. If you don't like Katz, that's cool too, but this review wasn't about him at all.
--
Now, I've never seen CSI (hell, before now I had never even heard of it), it seems reminiscent of the Discovery Channel show "Forensic Detectives," but with a cheezy plot added on. FD is a simple format: at the begining of the show they recereate a real murder / death / kidnapping / BadThing, and then spend the rest of the show explaing how the cops got the guy that did it. It's nice because it's based on real cases, and they have all the guys that actually solved them in for the show. It gets Science across just as well as CSI does (from the desc), but without the need for a Mulder, since there are no consistent characters from one episode to the next; each one is a seperate, quantized case.
Cue The Sun...
Schumacher = GOD
German Blood and Italian Steel cannot lose!
As always, Katz is off the mark. Instead of reviewing what's going to be the coolest new geek-show ever, he reviews some cheesy series that's going to be cancelled next season. Personally, I'm waiting for the Lone Gunmen to start. Katz: Stop pretending to be a real geek. I think that my mother has geekier tendencies than you!
As for the Lone Gunman, I'm looking forward to it. Part of the reason that it's so cool is that I think that ALL of us can associate with one of those three guys. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they mention Slashdot in the first few episodes!
Except to British wit and Scottish drive.
Cue The Sun...
Of course, CSI isn't all that realistic. They get lots of details wrong. But most shows are unrealistic -- for the sake of making the story comprehensible to the average viewer.
For example, in ER, radiologists rarely have any role; the ER docs usually read their own x-rays, CTs, etc. In the death of Lucy Carter, they had the surgeons doing interventional radiology procedures. In Elizabeth's paralyzation of the surfer, no one other than a neurosurgeon would have ever performed such a procedure. And those are just the particularly egregious, memorable errors.
But to introduce extra people into the plot and explain their presence would have slowed down the plot excessively. And I suspect that most people don't notice. (My husband Paul is a radiologist, so he tends to note such things.)
So CSI doesn't strike me as all that unusual in its oversights, omissions, and errors. Any TV show will have serious inaccuracies which go unnoticed by most people, but are glaring errors to professionals.
It's not the Discovery channel; it's entertainment!
-- Diana Hsieh
-- Diana Hsieh
GeekPress: The Weirder Side of Tech News
I'm shocked. NO mention of NBC's The Profiler? That's what CSI struck me as a copy of. Now THAT was an interesting show. There was forensics in that show too, but it wasn't primarily focused on it.
World Champion F-1!
German Blood and Italian Steel cannot lose!
LOL! What are you going to say next, that a japanese F-1 pilot is going to be World Champion?
I LOL at you for your sillyness!
German Blood and Italian Steel cannot lose!
what the?
great comedy company.
I've even filled out the application to be on Survivor III, even though I'm not a swimsuit model (it seems to be one of the new qualifications). There should be self-treatment centers for this thing.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
No, not a show about the dead of winter north of the 49th, but also about forensics and a quality show at that. _Cold Squad_ been around for a few years, I believe, and is now being carried by the CTV network in Canada. (http://www.telefilm.gc.ca/en/prod/tv/tv98/129.htm )
Oddly enough, there's a recent trend in American TV to emulate CANADIAN dramas. Legal dramas? Try Canada's _Street Legal_ which predates them all by as far back as 1985. Day trader drama? _The Street_? Probably a rip-off of Canada's _Traders_. Then again our shows are probably just rip-offs of previous British dramas.
ian.
ian
Where is the world going these days? Sometimes it seems better to leave everything and go somewhere where there are no filthy deviant humans...
Why did this even make it into Slashdot?
Anyways, since we are talking about it. I don't particular care for CSI. Don't we already have enough TV shows about cops as it is? Let's see (counting shows I still see reruns on TV about):
New York Undercover
NYPD Blue
Big Apple
CSI
COPS
America's Most Wanted
America's Dummest Criminals
LAPD
Law & Order
Law & Order: SVU
Nash Bridges
The District
Walker, Texas Ranger
I am sure I've missed a few. Then there are some that can be sort of included like X-Files which has police elements.
Not to say there is anything wrong with cop shows -- I do have my favorites that I enjoy watching. (I still like to catch reruns of Hawaii Five-O.)
I am a bit annoyed that UPN put Level 9 & Freedom on hiatus. The mind-numbing Celebrity Deathmatch and Gary & Mike (which I like) had to take the time slots assigned to them.
But do we really need another cop show?
Geez, give us a break!
Regardless, Westinghouse is probably reeling from their acquisition of CBS.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
As another point, doesn't anyone realize this same show was done 20 years ago with jack klugman, and called quincy. especially in the earlier episodes, each show was a carefully constructed murder mystery relying on science and evidence. true in the later years it got to be political grandstanding and crap, but c.s.i. has a lot to owe to quincy...
sell your certainty and buy bewilderment
It's quite clear none of us care about what comes on after survivor/friends.
It is clear that we'd love Katz to review new shows on TLC or DISC or PBS or Sci-Fi.
None of us care about the drivel that mainstream networks are throwing out at the masses.
We do care about new high-tech oriented shows.
I dunno folks. I have found myself watching that show a few times, but found it to be disturbingly unrealistic. Somehow the X-files manages to seem real even when most of the stuff is far more far fetched than CSI topics. For example, they aren't police officers, yet they act like police officers. Could you imagine what a police force would do if the scientists involved in research would start interrogating witnesses and investigating?
I wish they would get some advisors that know how the real world works, to help tone it down. I also find it to be a little soapy (which often gets worse as shows progress). An investigator was an ex-boyfriend of special short term (1 episode) hired specialist.
-Moondog
After the credits, our heroes investigate the crime scene, during which a character will utter a line setting up the dramatic conclusion. This bit of dialogue will be heavily stressed so that later you will remember it and say "how ironic."
Then comes the establishment of the subplot, usually featuring the Ex-Stripper Who's Trying To Put Her Past Behind Her or the Young Man From The Streets Who Pulled Himself Up By His Bootstraps But Made Mistakes Along The Way.
After that, Grissom explains a forensic technique that's been in common use since 1947 to his fellow investigators. In elaborate detail. A piece of equipment that they've all been using daily since they were hired will also be explained, sometimes with helpful graphics. Everyone but Grissom will express dumbfounded amazement at the Miracles Of Modern Science. At lunch, a ham sandwich is explained.
The action will be punctuated with visualizations of theories of the crime. We know they are visualizations because of the overexposed high-contrast film, jumpy editing and echo-chamber sound track.
Finally, after some breathtaking leaps of logic, the crime will be solved. The subplot will then be wrapped up, and the final shot will be of Grissom pensively considering the Toll This Work Takes On Them All. Once, he did this from a moving roller coaster.
This show is the funniest thing on TV since the first season of G vs E.
"No matter where you go, there you probably are." -- Buckaroo Heisenberg
I would suggest you tune in to Fox tonight.
The Lone Gunmen premieres. This looks at least mildly interesting.
ELITISM: It's always lonely at the top. Uninvited company is rarely welcome.
Even though it is "America's most watched network", CBS has traditionally gotten its ass kicked in the 18-49 demo. So what they did makes sense. I'm a media planner. This is what I do for a living.
Shameless plug: check out Mighty Big TV for funny ass recaps of shows like CSI and Survivor
Sorry if my argument is a bit muddled. I'm really hungover right now.
Pete
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
I don't quite get what's so breakthrough about CSI for John here. I mean, when you think about Profiler, Quincy, etc. there is a lot of precedent for this type of show. As for the leads, I think if you stack them up against the leads on say ER, they look about as attractive.
I like the show, and I think it's pretty well put together, but I definitely don't look at it and go, "wow, there's something totally different". It is, at it's core, a mystery/sleuth show. No big deal.
sigs are a waste of space
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
My introduction to CSI came in the fire episode that was mentioned and I was quite dissapointed. I thought the script was written for a basic level of understanding and I would be worried if a real CSI unit demonstrated as much ignorance of forensics as the characters on the show did. Half the time it seems as if the evidence slaps them in the face and they say "oh wow, how about that?"
What did in the show's hopes of any future eyeball time of mine was the part at the end where they were catching a killer who had a cold. The guy is standing at a casino cashier behind a glass window, where he sneezes onto the window on his side of it. The detective turns around, wipes the OTHER side of the window where he is standing, then proclaims to the cashier that he just got the evidence he needed to put the cashier behind bars. I guess the director thought sneeze snot can travel through glass or something, or maybe just that the American public was stupid enough to overlook that minor detail.
The basis of the show might have merit, but its dumbing down for the sake of the viewers holds it back from being the really good show that it has potential to be.
northern exposure
sell your certainty and buy bewilderment
Too bad for me, I suppose
Hardly.
The last traffic accident I investigated, I solved by talking to people and untangling what they said. I also used a steel tape measure and a drag sled, a very high-tech item consisting mainly of an old tire filled with redi-mix concrete. Neat for speed determination, which allowed me to actually charge the chargeable driver.
My last burglary? Again, talking to people. Comparing the entry and items taken with other burglaries in the same area and at the same time of day. Getting descriptions from witnesses. (Okay, I cheated. I also lifted fingerprints, which has been in law enforcement use for about a century, and used an AFIS terminal, which was new during the Nixon administration. None of which would have done squat without talking to the witnesses)
There are noteworthy technologies in common LE use. There are wireless networks, which give every car NCIC access. There are 800 MHz radios. There are now user-friendly databases which we can use for tracking our reports and FI cards. There are GIS systems which can be used for crime analysis. There are radar and laser for speed enforcement. Fingerprints can be lifted by cyanoacrilate deposition or by laser, and compared with the FBI's database. And its hard to argue with the Intoxylizer as being useful.
And I'd happily trade them all for a ballistic vest and shoes which are comfortable for an entire shift in the summertime.
New technologies have their places. However, we can still write our reports at a typewriter, communicate on commercial VHF, and bust speeders using stopwatches or by pacing them. Law enforcement in the US is fundamentally about interacting with people. It's about talking to them, getting their stories, looking for incongruities, observing their mannerisms, etc. At the core, it's about looking into the hearts of people and seeing whatever is there to be seen.
I have yet to see a computer capable of doing that as well as the average bluesuit.
I really like CSI but am the first in the room to scoff at some of the details. First that comes to mind is that their DNA lab takes 5 minutes to come up with results instead of 6 weeks. One thing that separates this show from others is that the personal elements you'd think would carry to the next episode (such as happens on E.R.) simply don't, like how the black guy on the show was gambling to pay for a judge's habit but we never hear about it again. If I wanted to watch a good show on forensic crimefighting, I'd be watching one of them shows on Discover (they have a couple good ones). The comparison has been made to Quincy in a few posts -- I dun know about you all, but at age 33 I know where I was when the show was first broadcast: in bed because it came on at 10pm and I was in elementary school. Which gives today's TV shows a little more leeway for copying or cheapening; most of the people here in this 'room' either weren't born or weren't awake in that timeframe, and watched the show in reruns if at all.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Been quite happy with the shows on Discovery Channel every Tuesday night. No BS, "just the facts ma'mm". Since I missed the pilot episode of "The Lone Gunman", would have much rather seen a write up on that, would seem to be much more appropriate for this forum as well.
Homicide: Life on the Street is anything but bland and was one of the few television shows to take a long hard unblinking look at race.
Currently playing on Court TV, I think.
I know some very good detectives, and if science were the only way to solve a case, then some of the best detectives would be in labs using microscopes 24/7. This is simply not the case, because many people are getting crime scene investigations, which are static entities that are leftafter the crime, confused with detective work, which is not only the ability to examine crime scenes, but for a nerd is comparable to social engineering for passwords or in their case clues. Detectives who can talk a good game can leave the crime scene investigations to the science saavy medical examineers or more scientifically intelligent detectives. However I also happen to know that science does contribute heavily to detective work too, in that NEW fingerprint identification and forensic technologies have allowed many detectives to solve either 1 crimes they couldn't have solved 20 years ago, or 2, even reach into the unsolved case pile and catch a crook who has been on the loose for at least 20 years. So what some people are saying is not completely wrong, but tradiitonal gumshoe and gritty detective work is needed as much today as yesterday to catch crooks. Book em Dano!
http://www.vanillaafro.com - take me seriously and I will shoot you
I wouldn't subscribe to your rhetoric, but I agree with your basic attitude. NYPD Blue was a decent show, but sometime in its second year I began to note that even the already extremely biased and stereotyping NYPD cops were becoming more openly cynical and biased. I realized their bad attitude was being supported and promulgated through the show, and stopped watching.
I also must take issue with Katz's statement about technology solving a large percentage of crimes: Most criminals are still of the stupid class, and most "violent" criminals are still under the influence of alcohol (or another drug -- 'though not marijuana, of course) when they commit their crime of passion. Most murderers are still found standing over their victims, crying, the weapon in their hands, when the cops show up. The "interesting" cases, which require any work at all to solve them, are still the rare exceptions.
The main characteristic of NYPD cops is actually laziness. Their first step, regarding any crime that might take work to solve, is to deny a crime has occurred. I've had a cop tell me that they can't do anything except in cases where a cop witnesses the crime, for instance. Others cops told me their policy was not to interfere in "domestic" cases. This happened at least twice: Once I tried to help an elderly woman with Alzheimer's and skin cancer, who was being abused/neglected/stolen from by her son-in-law (wealthy Jersey guy), and was told this. (This was just before "elder abuse" became a crime publicized by local politicians.) Another time I had lent my stereo system to a gay man I knew (I'm female), and he decided to keep it -- another situation the cops declined to investigate, since it was defined as a "domestic" problem!
Sometimes police supporters claim the job is so dangerous -- but these people are armed and trained in the use of deadly force. Statistically, it is far more dangerous to be a clerk in some convenience store, or liquor store, or be a cabby, than to be a cop. A few good people may intend to become cops, but by the time cop school spits them out, cop culture has usually taken over. Most are lazy, cynical, dangerous when roused -- and become alcoholic, or drug users, or thieves within a short time.
All they had to do was copy the shows on The Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel about forensic investigations. Unfortunately, it looks more like they rounded up all the writers who weren't even good enough for Diagnosis Murder and gave them a 20 year old science textbook. The tone switches between dull personal drama ("My bastard ex-husband is such a bastard!") and dull science lecture ("And here's a diagram of a dog's nose. Note the large surface area, which gives a dog a better sense of smell than a human.").
Shows like JAG and Homicide succeeded at combining plot and character development (although JAG has been getting a bit light on plot lately), but CSI has yet to get it right. The "mysteries" are usually so simple that the solutions are obvious ("How could he have been shot in the back when he was facing the shooter?"). The lead actor gives a dull, lifeless performance, almost like Don Johnson playing an accountant. The rest of the cast is pretty much filler, providing no compelling reason to care about anything more than the investigation. After all of this, I was surprised that this show was such a hit. Then again, there really isn't much on opposite it (other than the second showing of Battlebots).
One of my roomates had this theory that Quincy was actually the serial killer who killed all the people on the show, did the autopsies and framed someone to take the blame. Watching the reruns, there were several episodes where this seemed likely:)
"Bugger this, I want a better world." - Jenny Sparks
Czech out Seven Days. It's best described as a cross between MacGyver and Quantum Leap with a touch of Moonlighting. It's generally pretty funny with some fine ladies. And the plots occasionally transcend the usual cliches.
dynamo
I think the show would be good with some better acting. It's almost painful to sit through the dialog, waiting for the technology to kick in and take the pressure off the "actors".
Didn't that one chick play in "Walker Texas Ranger?"
My sig sucks.
After USA cancelled the show, it was picked up by SciFi Channel, where it turned into instant crap. They kept the premise, but got rid of the psychotic humor that was the main appeal. (In one episode from the first season they blew up Emmanuel Lewis, and in another a character seduces a woman on an airborne passenger jet, assisted by a spotlit disco ball which mysteriously appears.)
G vs E vanished after a few sorry months on SciFi. The USA season was brilliant, and if you can find it anywhere do yourself a favor and watch it. But the SciFi episodes are just sad.
"No matter where you go, there you probably are." -- Buckaroo Heisenberg