CSI: Season 5 thread (1 Viewer)

[Malcolm R]

It probably means they were rehired under the terms of their existing contract, whatever they were, and not the new renegotiated terms the rest of the cast got.

But I still have zero sympathy for them. The fact remains that the rest of the cast apparently got their "confirmation letters" submitted in a timely manner and Eads and Fox were holding out until the last minute to send their confirmation (if they were going to send it at all). Not exactly team players.

Good article in the new Entertainment Weekly. Fox and Eads seem to both be eating a bit of humble pie.

 

[John_Lee]

Interesting, as Jorja Fox had a DUI in real life not long before this was brought into the CSI storyline.

 

[Hanson]

I'm sure it was. As was Sara's confessional in the mirror when she said something about "making the stupidest decision of her life" over the summer.

Although the plotlines pretty much fizzled out at the end, the multiple plotlines is why I enjoy CSI over it's spinoffs -- the shows are dense, allowing less room for slack character stuff. There just isn't time to allow cast members to indulgently look off pensively to show how tortured they are. Yuck.

 

[Mikel_Cooperman]

Did anyone read this weeks Entertainment weekly with the cast on the cover. I have to agree when most of the cast when they say, time to tell us more about the crews life instead of just the same CSI dead body stuff each week.

 

[Malcolm R]

I have to disagree (and agree with Hanson, above). I don't want another soap opera full of "very special" moments, needy, dysfunctional characters jumping in and out of relationships, and confronting their parents/spouses about everything under the sun.

The procedures are the show, I don't need, nor want, to know anything more about these characters.

That's why I finally gave up on "ER." It became less medical drama and more soap opera about who's doing who, who's doing George Clooney, or whether or not the boss is a Lesbian.

"Without a Trace" is being horribly bogged down by all this crap about Jack and his family problems. I don't care! I'm watching for the mystery, not the in-depth psychology of a crappy marriage and one man's cluelessness in refusing to deal with it.

All I want to know about the characters I can learn from them doing their jobs. Anything non-job related is extraneous and unnecessary.

 

[Richard Travale]

I don't want this to turn into another ER.

*EDIT* Malcolm said the exact same thing.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

One of the reasons that Law & Order has lasted so long (and produced so many successful spin-offs) is that it is about the formula and the guest characters, not the personal stories of the regulars. But all the shows do spotlight the private lives often enough to humanize the characters, they don't make them the focus of the series. When L&O briefly did spend more on the personal lives of the characters - during the Benjamin Bratt era - the experiment clearly failed and the series felt less focused. (I believe the ratings reflected this.)

This is also why the original series has survived so many cast changes. While all of the actors have been good and done a good job, in the end it is the slot each character fills in the show, not the character, that matters. (There is always a senior ADA, a junior ADA, a senior and junior detective, a lieutenant in charge of the detective squad. Don Cragan and Anita Van Buren are very different people (as are Ben Stone and Jack McCoy), but they perform the same function and their function is more important than who they are as people. (The same is true of certain roles in even character-driven shows. The Lieutenant in NYPD Blue was always primarily a sounding board for the detectives and this frustrated whichever actor had the role. The only exception was during the early days with James McDaniel's Lt. Arthur Fancy - and then only when David Milch had "SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO SAY ABOUT RACE".)

CSI has been doing just fine mostly concentrating on the work at hand, with just enough of the character's personal lives being revealed to make them well-rounded and to introduce the odd extraneous complication into the plot. It is precisely the aspect of the show that I think could have allowed it to survive the departure of Eads and Fox (both of whom I rather like, by the way) with hardly a hiccup. I'd hate to see it tip over into the personal life/soap opera area, since there are more than enough such shows on the air already. It is precisely the police procedural aspect of CSI that makes it such a stand-out series. (And precisely its surrender to the tempation of soap opera that makes CSI: Miami such a pedestrian show by comparison, for all its success in the ratings.)

Regards,

Joe

 

[Lee Jamilkowski]

Well, I one for one like the personal/characterization stuff. As long as it stays somewhat to the side of the team's joba... because, face it, no matter what happens, your personal life always touches upon and/or interferes with your job at some point.

 

[Kwang Suh]

Grr. I miseed this episode. And it was in hi-def, so it's even more of a blow. Argg.

 

[Patrick Sun]

10/7/04

I still think the Las Vegas version is the best CSI on the air. I liked the first half of the episode, but the last half seemed scattershot in how the case unravelled. Will Catherine and Warwick just get on with it or what? Watching Grissom watch Greg's reaction to his first autopsy was strangely entertaining to a degree. When Grissom asked for #2, I busted out LOL. I just don't think I could go there in a work environment...eww...

 

[Kwang Suh]

CSI was solid. Far better than either Miami or NY at this point.

 

[Paul McElligott]

Do you get the feeling the 10/7 episode was filmed first? Nick and Sara don't show up at first or do much and the whole story seemed kind of rushed and unfocused, like it was a patchwork job to cover up the early season issues.

 

[Michael Hughes]

I really liked the 10/7 episode. I thought it was an interesting storyline.

This is still the Best CSI on the market

 

[Patrick Sun]

Well, you could almost gauge the order of the episodes being shot by looking at George Eads' hair growth since it's pretty short at the start of their shooting schedule.

 

[Cindy V]

I missed the last 10 or so minutes of last nights episode. The last thing I remember is Katheryn showing her daugher the dead girl and teh ME giving her a hard time about it. Who killed the 13yr old?

 

[Patrick Sun]

The father confessed, but the evidence didn't quite support him as being the only one involved. Then the attention went to the strong-willed mother (and daughter). The mother did get in a dig on Catherine being unfit for motherhood given that Cat works nights and probably wasn't there for her own daughter (which tied in with Cat's problems with her daughter being rebellious). But the evidence showed that the brother's blood was on the blanket used to wrap up the girl. The brother loaded up the girl's milk drink with something that killed her. Then the cover-up commenced with the whole family, and it was the mother/daughter team that tried to frame the pedophile that was picked up for questioning in the middle of the episode.

Grissom confronts the brother in church where everything is laid out, and Grissom asked why he had to kill his little sister when he could have just killed himself if his time was short due to the disease he had (though his little sister was born to be a donor of bone marrow and possible other organs), and the brother came back with a lame "suicide is the unforgivable sin" in his faith, and Grissom countered with a "so murder is okay, then?"

 

[Cindy V]

Patrick Sun - Thanks. So the whole family was in on it. Boy that is lame and you would never have guessed it with the way the mother acted when she took her shirt off and threw it at Grisson.

 

[Jeff*S*C*]

Technically it showed that it was the girl's blood which is what threw them all off.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Right. Because of the bone-marrow transplants the bother's blood contained the sister's DNA, a side-effect of transplants that's been touched on in the show before.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Rob T]

I was suprised to see David Anders (Mr. Sark from Alias) on last nights show. I wonder if this means he's done with Alias.