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The Rise of CSI
The stars of CSI are William Petersen, 49, who plays the solitary, brooding, and obsessively scientific Las Vegas Crime Scene Investigations chief Gil Grissom, and Marge Helgenberger, who plays his sidekick Catherine Willows. They have a team of young and hunky criminalists, including a recovering gambling addict and an ex-jock who has fallen in love with a casino hooker. According to Variety, C.S.I. has become the number two drama on network TV (behind ER), with over 25 million viewers a week.
The real star of the show is science. Grissom and Willows and the other criminalists share one pronounced trait -- they believe nothing anybody tells them, and they only trust solid evidence. They depend heavily on a well-equipped crime lab and use a wide variety of scientific tools to re-construct crimes. Like X-Files, the show shoots many scenes in darkness and shadow, and has a tendency to include brief and disciplined flashes of shocking gore: the path of a bullet will be illustrated graphically, or a diseased organ, a rotting corpse or slashed artery. Computers are a mainstream tool of this crew, along with smart thinking, and laser and DNA testing.
Like X-Files, the show has a dark view of science. Science is the real hero and the real star, but it's used mostly to reveal truth in sad circumstances. The CSI criminalists work in a depressing world where they nonetheless seek the raw truth, and believe in the ability of science to uncover it. Grissom is an older David Duchovny. He has a lonely life, a corrupt boss, endemic authority problems, and absolutely no patience for the stupid, dishonest or lazy. He shares another trait with Mulder -- he has to deal with the fact that in this world, the good guys don't always win.
It's fitting that TV's most intelligent drama follows one of its shlockiest programs -- Survivor. It would seem to be a foolish pairing, an idiotic broadcast followed by one so cerebral. Together the two shows cover the spectrum of contemporary TV. But while Survivor seems to become more unbearable by the week. CSI, already good, is getting better all the time -- gutsy, smart and inventive.
They do incredibly clever, incredibly observant things. They make huge logical leaps.
We don't make the same leaps, so they have to explain them all, and find some excuse to do so; this gets tired after a while, when sombody performs a bit of a monologue - they may as well turn to the camera and say 'And for the folks at home...'
..and fp..
CSI is clearly the best looking show on TV. I think that is part of its attractiveness. How many scientists do you know who look like Marg Helgenberger and Jorja Fox?
They might be geeks, but they're Hollywood geeks.
It is by far the best shot HDTV on tv right now. Pitty more people can't see it that way.
What most television executives today miss, is that shows that are POPULAR (ie, get good ratings) always have something UNIQUE about them.
Examples: Gilligan's Island, Seinfeld, M*A*S*H, The Beverly Hillbillies, I Love Lucy- they all have something unique about them, whether it's a crazy background plot, the first successfuly show starring a woman, or a show about 'nothing'.
It seems that all of the sitcoms that are coming out nowadays are just copies of each other. Shows that have been on the longest now (Simpsons, Drew Carey, Frasier) seem to still be popular, but are definitely losing their charm as writers struggle to find new story lines. But these shows all had something definitely unique about them, and that's what made them popular.
Airing shows that are trying to be based on 'real life' just come off as copycats of Friends or Seinfeld, and they definitely don't duplicate the success of those shows.
Want to know why shows are popular? They have a theme. Whether it's the Sopranos with the mafia theme, West Wing with it's presidential theme, ER with it's hospital theme, or NYPD Blue with it's cop theme, these shows are popular because they interest people.
Throwing another "The Show" out on TV won't captivate people to watch.
But give us something unique, and television audiences will eat it up.
The show was rejected 25 times by television executives before someone on CBS realized its potential.
The characters are two dimensional and they also sum-up a complete forensic case in one episode. I think were they to spread a case over several episodes it'd be much better. Prime Suspect and Silent Witness were two programs that managed to do things in a more gritty way. It comes across as as a cross-between Scrubs and Columbo.
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I just discovered CSI a few months ago, thanks to my Tivo 'recommending' it. It's a great show. The only thing I don't like about the characters is their tendency to use their authority to push people around. I've encountered enough authoritarian jerks that it rubs me the wrong way.
I'm all for using clever scientific methods to knock off troublesome momos, but using stuff that has been unobtainable for twenty years stretches credibility a bit. While that bothers me personally, a worse possibility is causing people who aren't knowledgable (like network TV watchers) to want our government to institute even nastier safety restrictions to solve problems that have actually been fixed for decades.
Ok, it's a nit, but it bugs me.
* Old Farts Club
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
I saw CSI (the episode with the animated bullet trajectories) on British TV only last week. A laudable effort to make science accessible to the mainstream, but it did seem to me that the "mainstream" they were aiming for must have the attention span of a goldfish.
The Miami Vice comparison is particularly apt - lots of jump cuts etc. The CG animation is sometimes overused (and the animation of a bullet striking a lung had me rofl).
That said, much of the basic science is sound. I particularly liked the admission that while a $10k electronic nose was very cool when it came to identifying perfume residues, the same results could be had with a bottle of adsorbant and an existing benchtop gas chromatograph).
Anyway - I'll be watching it again to see if they can get the balance of plot/science/graphics right. If nothing else, it is nice to see an attempt to incorporate some properly researched, hard science into a mainstream show. Better they labour the explanations a bit than dumb it down at the expense of veracity.
"E pur si muove!" - attributed to Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642
Ah, c'mon, he uses it correctly half of the time.
...but some of the shows on TLC and the like such as Forensic Detectives are far superior. They look at real cases and over the course of the half hour show can take you over the investigative steps even if they lasted a year+. In addition, they have no need to gloss over certain details or make something look cool my doing a computer generated graphic. For example, the bullet pierced the lung is sufficient explanation without showing an animated picture of the same lung deflating. Check it out sometime.
Now, CSI almost never goes after any thing "larger" - it's almost always just some guy offing some other guy. Also, the science is almost as atrocious as Taco's spelling. On one show they made the following bloopers:
In none of the above cases was the error necessary to the plot - in fact the lightning goof would have been far better played out had Grissom said, "No, actually that is a common misbelief. What protects you is the shielding action of the metal car body. If lightning can jump thousands of feet of air gap, what makes you thing an inch of rubber WITH METAL WIRES IN IT would stop it?"
Furthurmore, the show has to have this BS conflict between Grissom and the sherrif (after all, one rule of modern TV is that ALL AUTHORITY FIGURES ARE ASSHOLES). Again, on Quincy, the chief of police and the head of the M.E. department all were foursquare behind Quincy.
Plus, do we have to have all these stupid shots of what the investigators think happened? "Hmmm. The bullet came through this window and hit him in the head " (CUT: blue-tinged shot of fake bullet breaking fake glass and impacting on fake head).
www.eFax.com are spammers
A professional writer should know the difference. A professional writer should care.
If you think it looks beautiful in SDTV, wait till you see it in HDTV, its an amazing picture quaility, with an great story line.
I started watching it only because it was in HDTV, now I'm hooked and love it
`find / -name "*your_base*" -exec chown us:us {} \;`
Maybe you haven't noticed, but the animation only illustrates what the actors are thinking happened -- not necessarily what actually happened. Maybe it's a subtle way of telling people not to believe everything they see on TV. But it certainly leaves the possibility of people imagining alternate scenarios.
Also, the cuts between the animation and the story are always extremely fast. You don't have to have much of a memory to remember what was going on just before them. If you don't like them, you must have hated Requiem for a Dream.
As for hand-holding, CSI seems to leave nearly as much to the viewers interpretation as the X-files. Even when the X-files were good, they still showed plenty of gore and other nasty things. Also, most of the cases were resolved -- or at least resolved in the viewer's mind. Besides, if a show like CSI left cases unresolved, people would get angry. CSI is a straightforward cop drama where X-files was a sci-fi / character based show.
If you really feel the need to criticize CSI, criticize the acting. Those people should be told that their show is in prime time and not during the day.
I always saw CSI as successful for pretty much the same reasons as Law and Order. It requires a low emotional commitment but a high intellectual commitment. They're both about systems first and the people within them second. There is a demographic (a lot of them work with computers) that eats that up.
My only complaint would be the same as a bunch of other people here, they play is real fast and loose with the science. Often it has nothing to do with a plot point, it's just poorly researched.
I understand there are crazy time constraints on network television, they aren't made of time. I would suggest hiring a 'resident geek' to read scripts somewhere on the way out and suggest 'technical' fixes to move their science more into reality. I think it would really help the show, and it would give them access to a world of wierd science stuff they aren't getting now. And make it more crediable ta boot.
People who's heads are full of wierd science are a dime a dozen down at the local comic store (or here on slashdot), pick one up..
The last two lines of the intro I caught the other night, while investigating a (TBD) murder that occurred during a beer league hockey game:
"Hockey sure can be a brutal sport."
"Yeah, it can be murder."
I mean, c'mon. 'Nuff said. I sure didn't see much special about the show, tho I'll admit it's well shot.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Too bad; it's a show that glorifies geeks ("You were never an athlete." "I'll have you know, in high school, I was captain of the chess squad.") and science, and often has good mysteries.
I'm still trying to figure why, so many Thursday nights, we end up eating dinner at home at 9 p.m., just as the first corpse appears.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Fox tried to follow up the success of The X-Files with Millenium which persisted for a few seasons only because the network wanted to remain on good terms with Chris Carter. Millenium also tried to follow the niche of a gory TV series set in the present time with something resembling police work to investigate crimes. Why didn't it have the success of CSI--because Fox let Carter get away with not following the formula used in The X-Files. For The X-Files Carter carefully chose the young and attractive Gillian Anderson and elevated her role to be equal to Duchovney's. Carter was not forced to do this either for Millenium or for Harsh Realm. In the past decade US television SF has swung decisively towards recognizing the importance of having hot young females as the stars, similar to how the Winter Olympics is really about figure skating and the Summer Olympics are about gynmastics, and similar to the last successful TV Western set in the past being Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman. Note that James Cameron created for Fox Dark Angel which follows Cameron's typical pattern of having a strong female character as the star. Unfortunately Fox failed to follow the formula again--almost no network SF other than the Star Trek franchise can build a large audience if the show is set in the future. At least Voyager management made the correct decision of introducing the 7 of 9 character in a skintight catsuit to save the show.
Almost all bombs can be explained by not following the formula. CBS's The Fugitive failed because CBS failed to follow the formula that the lead character should have some sort of superhero edge. The loner who comes to town and fixes things decades ago rapidly morphed in being a superhero or angel, not an ordinary guy. It would have been even better had the star been made female with martial arts ability.
Notice how the 50-something main character resembles CBS's 50-something audience, and how impatient he can be with the headphone-wearing kids in the crimelab. Obviously it's meant to re-enforce their viewers' perspective, rather than challenge it. I always felt like the show was geared towards my grumpy uncle Ed, or like it's a Simpsons parody of a CBS show. The fact that it concentrates more on the forensics than, say, a character's fight with the bottle makes it a good tech show. But I do get the feeling sometimes I'm not the target audience.
--- Ned!
It's Marg not Marge. (What is this, the Simpsons? Hey, now that I think about it, I think the cast of CSI should come on the Simpsons for a 'murder investigation' that happens at the Simpsons home. Much hilarity will ensue.)
No, unlike X-Files, if a room is dark and has a light switch, CSI will flip it on instead of getting out the flashlights. I haven't noticed any penchant for filming in unusually dark places to enhance the mood. (Other than when they've got the purple light out looking for semen.)
"And like that
I don't mean this negatively; I'm sure you're right since it's just another TV show. I'm genuinely curious as to what sorts of facts or "unobtainalbe" things you're talking about...
Sure many of you posting are slamming for details on this or that. Or that a weekly script written of all ages to enjoy isn't the level of classic novel, who cares. Its good entertainment, that happens to bring some science to people who wouldn't be reading Scientic American. I would bet a lot of the people complaining just don't like TV in general. Fine, but for those who of us who been bit-banging for twelve hours a day and just want to veg' a bit, CSi is good entertainment.
I guess I really shouldn't be surprised that Katz loves this show. Katz, like most of the rest of the US, seems incapable of using logic in any meaningful way.
Now, by way of introduction...
My name is Zandr, and I'm an HDaholic. At a recent event at our local PBS affiliate, I pointed out that if they put their HD camera on the roof, we'd probably watch the feed.
And CSI is beautifully shot and produced. I keep an episode around just for the interstitial flyovers of the Strip.
That's why it pains me to say that I simply can't watch CSI. I actually find forensics fascinating. I don't have a terribly strong stomach when it comes to things organic, so I think I'll stick to my current career, but my TiVo is usually madly collecting all the forensics specials off Discovery, et al. You can almost measure the production cycle of CSI by watching Discovery, and then seeing how long it takes before the same technique gets used on CSI. (I get about 8 weeks by this method.)
The problem is that CSI makes these incredible leaps of logic. One that comes to mind: They found peanut shells on a pair of shoes, and immediately concluded that the owner worked a concession stand. I'm sorry, have these people never been to a proper bar, where there's an inch of peanut shells on the floor at all times?
And then there's the downright bad science. There's one episode where they figure out where a boat drifted by setting up a washtub and a fan in the lab. Give me a break; throwing dice would be more accurate. Or "you look left when you're remembering, you look right when you're making it up." Polygraphs are pretty flakey devices, but now that we can just watch your eyes we're all set.
My wife watches it, but it's only really watchable with a PVR, since she has to pause the show every three minutes to ask why I just recoiled at the last leap of logic or horrible science.
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
But he put an apostrophe in the wrong place! Surely this is a crime that deserves only death?!
More than likely, it is located in a high corner of your remote control. If you press it in the presence of your family, they can no longer entertain themselves by ingesting graphic images of medical autopsies, brutalized bodies, blood-spattered sets and decomposing corpses.
Nice troll though, regardless.
The idea is a good one for a very specific audience, but CSI should not do that because it would be horrible in syndication.
You couldn't sell it properly.
It works with dedicated fan bases like soaps and sci-fi, but is bad for other things.
CSI is gorgeous in HD - the night shots of Vegas from the air, with all the color; the dark exteriors and interiors which would wash into a blur on a regular TV; the closeups of evidence, etc are wonderful in HD. HD does such a good job on color and low-light reproduction compared to NTSC that people who see it at my house are amazed, and CSI is a great example. I think the transfers or camera work has gotten better too since it started.
And everything said in the article is true - it's a riviting drama where science is often the star, for more so than the old detective-story-ish Quincy was.
I'm shocked it ever made it to the screen, and hope it'll be there for a Long Time.
The three-part series dealing with the middle aged men showing up dead in bathtubs of apparent suicide was great. I won't spoil the ending but it was perfect, the twists along the way were truly shocking, and the good guys did not entirely win.
We may debate the validness of some of the science on the show (I take issue with many of their unpossible audio tricks) but story lines and twists like this trump some of the best we've seen on The X-Files.
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
Yet using two exclamation marks is acceptable?
In certain circumstances, yes.
Actually, in a very specific circumstance. There is a town in the UK called "Westward Ho!" (yes - it is spelt with the "!"). Now, put that at the end of an exclamation. Gives all sorts of opportunities for "incorrect" punctuation: "!!", "!?", "!.", and "!," etc.
I hate to say this with all the people trashing the quality of the Science of the show, but I love it. Usually the errors aren't so blatant that they distract me too much. I really enjoy it though. Katz OTOH, I doubt has really watched it. His write-up sounds an awful lot like the one I read in TV Guide at the Convienant store. I think that he then added in his "notes" from the last show that was on. Yes, Warric is a recovering gambling addict, and in that epasode, he did take a fancy to a dancer in a casino. That was it, the plot ended there. She is no longer in the show. It's a lot like watching the show from last season where the man died in Grissom's hands, and the blood was litterly on his hands. A priest had talked to him ealier in the show. As he now looking at returning to Catholicism? No, he isn't.
Oh well, another Katz flame. At least it's my first!
--Josh
There are exactly 42,935,718 letter sized sheets in a square mile.
Like X-Files, the show has a dark view of science.
The X-Files has very little to do with real science. Vampires? Weird implants? Alien conspiracies? Pseudoscience doesn't equal science.
The CSI criminalists work in a depressing world where they nonetheless seek the raw truth, and believe in the ability of science to uncover it. Grissom is an older David Duchovny.
I hope you meant Agent Mulder. David Duchovny is an actor.
>>and its near total absence of traditional
>>TV fare like sex
I guess Katz must be a eunic. It's the only explanation for his comment. How many times in one show can they show Marg Helgenberger in a low cut, tight shirt, bend over, exposing the majority of her 'hidden-assets' to the camera?
Please don't take my statement as a critique of the show---it's not. I like the show, just the way it is!
I don't know what dream world you were in when you saw DD5.1 kick in during CSI. CBS has never passed 5.1 sound on their HD feed.
My Grandma watches is. . . .
.
:) )
Heck when I visit her I watch it with her, along with Law and Order (whatever version may be on) and Quincy.
(I happen to like Quincy)
I always categorized it in the same category as all of the other various murder mystery shows, just a bit more gruesome and with a bit more technical accuracy here and there.
Of course I also like Murder She Wrote, so. . .
(And I loved Father Dowling Mysteries. . . . hmmm. For a Science Fiction fan I have some odd tastes in TV.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Every episode of C.S.I. I have seen is just as titillating as any other American TV program. In one episode, prostitutes are killing clients by poisoning their nipples, which is shown over and over in SI swimsuit-style soft core. The hero can't just tell the cops this; no, he has to "investigate" this personally and in "private". Another episode has the hot chick investigating a semen stain and having to find a "matching sample"....
For that matter, why does everyone on this program, even the skid row prostitutes, look like a fashion model?
- Dan I.
Fair enough...but then, to really have a significant effect on the blood-iron level, you would likely be taking in toxic levels of iron. Iron IS bad if too much is taken. It isn't a freebee that you can just load up on.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
That is precisely my main complaint/criticism. CSI types do NOT do basic police work. The POLICE do that, the CSI types develop evidence that can be used by the POLICE foot soldiers to make arrests and the prosecutors to make a solid case.
That other pathology/CSI-like show...Crossing Jordan?...is only slightly more correct in this regard. MOST of their work is done in the morgue or lab, etc, and not doing the basic police work. It's a rather sucky show but in some ways it is more realistic in THAT regard.
Now Scrubs, that is reality at its best. Med school is EXACTLY like that. Really.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
It's fitting that TV's most intelligent drama follows one of its shlockiest programs -- Survivor.
Just because the Survivor producers rejected your application is no reason to take pot shots at it.
And if you find the show so schlocky and unbearable, why do you watch it every week?
..."Blackhawk Down" and "Behind Enemy Lines" which were both US government propaganda films designed to promote patriotism in the wake of September 11th.
Nevermind that these movies were finished and had scheduled releases very shortly after Sep 11, but were postponed so as not to offend anyone. Doesn't exactly sound like they were "designed" to promote patriotism to me. But then again, I suppose something's gotta keep the conspiracy folks satisfied.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
In the vein of there being nothing new under the sun. Both the X-Files and CSI appear to me like skewered retakes on Holmes and Watson. No matter the garnish I prefer the original.
heuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
is that people like my mom and sister watch this show and think it's a complete duplicate of real science. In fact, I've had conversations about forensic science and heard the quote "well, you know, on CSI they <insert bullshit dramatic device passing for science here>."
/. crowd may be a bit more savvy than all that, but your average american isn't.
I am very weary of shows like this because they seem to dupe 99.9% of the american public into actually believing half of this shit is real scientific technique. The
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Did anyone else read the headline and think this might be about the Church of Scientology, Inc.?
:)
Maybe after all the legal kerfuffle where Rob pulled that document they just don't want to offend them again, but I must say Scientology stories have been thin on the ground since then.
It's a shame -- I like a good conspiracy theory, I do, and when you're talking about the Scientologists, *nothing* that anyone says about them can be dismissed out of hand. Billion-year contracts? Aliens executed by leaving them on exploding volcanoes? Sure, whatever....
Besides, the more people who can be warned away from them, the better... it's worse than Amway, even!
deus does not exist but if he does
Speaking of intelligent police shows...
It is truly shameful that the brilliant and inspired Homicide: Life on the Street never got the acclaim it deserved while it was around. Even more tragic is how memories of the show are fading. If it isn't in syndication where you are, REQUEST IT!
Not a bad thing, except that they're not actually pushing `pure science'.
They're only pushing materialism - as if it were the be-all and end-all, the totality of science - in the guise of total, pure science. Materialism can only take you as far as you currently believe `reality' extends, which can seem to be a long way but is pretty limiting in the grand scheme of things (think Copernicus).
In the end the only proof of her position a materialist actually has is her faith: exclusive proofs are generally impossible, and one good counterexample can break generations of hereinbefore `irrefutable' beliefs.
The big myth underlying materialism is that you can completely understand and control the universe around you, which is again only true in a strictly limited degree, and in reality is just arrogance. Anyone who proclaims total control of their life, to say nothing of the lives of others, is simply displaying the limits of their knowledge (from another POV, their ignorance) in public.
There, have I used enough emotive words now? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Considering its setting -- Las Vegas -- and its subject matter - decomposing pigs, corpse-sucking larvae, transgender serial killers, serial killer make-up artists, murderous and skate-wielding hockey fiends -- and its near total absence of traditional TV fare like sex or shoot-em-ups, this show shatters conventional wisdom about what people want to see on TV.
How exactly does this "shatter conventional wisdom about what people want to see on TV?"
This is exactly what TLC has become: sensationalistic, dumbed-down crap, more of a cross between the X files seasons of late and Jerry Springer than actual writing.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
I got the impression that Katz doesn't like the work of Bruckheimer too much (which is totaly OK). But CSI is from JB. Now why doesn't Katz mention Bruckheimer in his review, is it because he'd rather not mention him because he likes the show and is in denial about JB's involvment, or because he simply doesn't know?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
He mentions a guy who was into SPORTS falling in love with a hooker not with the SINGER. The white guy who was into sports DID fall for a hooker. He even did forensic tests on her blouse in order to prove that the guy spit on her. I believe it was an assualt case and she was being charged (missed the beginning) for attacking the security guy. Turns out the security guy provoked her by spitting on her etc..
:-P
Anyway, he ends up looking like he's fallen for her but ends up not getting involved at the very end. She kisses him and off he goes on his merry way. Katz refers to more than just this last episode
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