If real CSIs don't like the TV CSIs, then... (1 Viewer)

[JeremyErwin]

Grissom ended up buying the nose-- not for the gadget, but for the software.

I gave up on Miami. I still watch New York.

 

[Nick Martin]

The thing is, all three shows are essentially the same - when it comes to the forensics.Sure one show does things with the science differently than another, etc, etc, but the biggest difference lies in the characters and locations.

Vegas without Grissom (since he isn't in every episode) seems like something's missing every time.

If it weren't for Caine, I wouldn't care much about Miami - because I genuinely like him. He makes the show enjoyable to me. I wish the writers hadn't changed him so much for season 4, though: relegating him to an observer more than a participant (like Grissom in seasons 5 and 6) and making him more rigid. Grissom and Caine both started out as pleasant, outgoing, take-charge leaders, but both have become reserved, quiet, almost emotionless observers with no real explanation as to why. Seeing a recent 'set visit' segment with Caruso was quite jarring...so much lighter, casual and talkative than his character.

New York has likeable characters all around. I like how everyone can have a little fun with their work, but I admit the darker tone of season 1 was quite good.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

I find the NY characters OK, but kinda bland. Sinese is one of my favorite actors, but I just don't find him compelling in this role.

I think the original series has the strongest ensemble in both actors and characters. All of them have stronger personalities and more interesting backstories than the leads on the other shows, and come across as more vivid characters. On the other shows you could change which CSI is in which scene and not have to change anything more than the pronouns 99% of the time. On CSI you can't give Jorja Fox a scene written for George Eads or Marg Hellgenberger, because each character's entire approach would be different.

I genuinley dislike David Caruso. Nervous tics and playing with props and bits of wardrobe do not a performance make. A graduate of the William Shatner school of acting, Caruso went directly to self-parody without ever creating a body of creditible work, as Shatner had with things like Andersonville. I've been watching his schtick since the first season of NYPD Blue and he hasn't gotten any better. He does make it work for Miami, but if it weren't for the diversion value of the stories, the gorgeous location shots and Emily Proctor (whose character is the only remotely interensting human being on the show) I wouldn't bother watching. (And often don't.) The less said about Khandi Alexander's coroner character, the better. (Loved her on Newsradio and I don't think the actress is to blame for reading the lousy lines they give her the way the directors want them read but - damn!) As for the rest of the cast, I can't remember names of either the characters or the actors, which should tell you something right there. NY's characters are less vivid, but they aren't the collection of cyphers that inhabit Miami. (I'm glad they killed that one guy and brought in the Greg look-alike, because for the first couple of seasons I could never tell two of the field guys apart. At least now I have some visual cues to work off)

Regards,

Joe

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

I had forgotten that. Was that in the same episode or did they pickup the thread somewhere down the line?

Joe

 

[Sean Cauley]

Never mind.

 

[Nick Martin]

Everyone's got a problem with Caruso...that's not remotely surprising.

I'm certainly in a small minority when it comes to liking him.

 

[JeremyErwin]

Television without pity

 

[D. Scott MacDonald]

Funny, I was in a Doctors waiting room six months or so ago reading an article on jury consultants and shadow juries, and they used CSI as an example of a question that they would ask potential jurors. Depending on the evidence and circumstances of a specific case, the defense will either strike those jury's that do watch it, or would look for jurors that watched it frequently. In most of the cases, they wanted the latter.

I don't really care that most professions are frequently mis-represented because in the end nobody really gets hurt by it. When a multimillion dollar business of getting criminals off based on the distortions presented by CSI, however, I can certainly see why people would start complaining.

BTW, I have a friend who is an actual CSI and she despises the show. Of course, most doctors and nurses that I know (including my wife) also hate ER.

 

[JeremyErwin]

eh. Multimillion dollar industries are a dime a dozen.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

That multibillion dollar business of getting criminals off existed long before CSI. (It is called "the legal profession" and seems to be the second oldest on record, although there are those who would argue that it is only a variant on the first.* ) So did the multimillion dollar business of jury consulting. The jury consultants are just tapping into people's misunderstanding of CSI the way they normally tap into their ignorance of science, their personal prejudices and their emontionalism. Same job, new tool. In a few years CSI will be gone and they'll be using something else. You can't really blame the shows for the fact that some people are too dumb to know that they're fiction and that other people are cynical enough to use that stupidity to undermine justice and protect the guilty. Because those same people would be just as dumb and the jury consultants just as mercenary if CSI had never existed.

Regards,

Joe

(* And to all the lawyers in the house, yes, I'm kidding. I worked for a law firm for a year and I know that the cliches aren't true. By and large lawyers aren't nearly as bad as they're made out to be. In my experience, most of them are a lot worse. )

 

[Nick Martin]

I wonder how lawyers feel about ANGEL?

Lawyers were essentially the main villains of the series.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

I wonder how they feel about Boston Legal where they are also arguably the main villains.

Joe

 

[Yee-Ming]

I sometimes, just sometimes, wish I had the balls to practice law the way Alan Shore does. Of course almost all of his antics would get me suspended real quick, if not outright disbarred.

Angel: they were lawyers, sure, but they hardly ever practiced law. Just a convenient cover organisation, if you ask me, they could just as easily have been investment bankers or private equity corporate raiders, but if you called Wolfram & Hart a "private equity fund", most viewer would just go "huh?", so calling them lawyers was an easy tag. The real disconnect was, how can Angel, a non-lawyer, be invited to and allowed to run a law firm? So it all went down with a huge pinch, nay handful, of salt...

One of the "stranger" law shows, if "strange" is the right word, to me at least is JAG. A lawyer who flies F-14s for fun. Yeah, right. Better yet, when he's actually left the Navy, he goes and lands a C-130 on an aircraft carrier...

 

[Mark Maltais]

Close but not quite exact. Luminol will glow on it's own in the presence of blood, it does not need an excitation source (light) to fluoresce. Just turn off the lights and close the drapes. The darker the better. If we do not have 100% light control we usually spray at night. Photographs take long exposure and the luminol effect is short lived. We keep spraying until the haemoglobin is used up, then the effect stops. If we are lucky we will get a few minutes of effect which gives us sufficient time to photograph the area. Our outfit does not use it too much anymore, there are better products on the products on the market now, such as Leuco-malachite green (LMG).

 

[Nick Martin]

I should have been more specific -

I know that the lawyers on ANGEL didn't have their profession at the forefront, but the show did poke fun at the whole 'lawyers are evil' stereotype...and that's what I was referring to.

 

[JeremyErwin]

One of the things that appeals to me, personally, about CSI, is the notion that science can supplant all the uncertainties associated with traditional criminal justice--witnesses who misremember, politically motivated prosecutors, and replace it with something concrete.

Yes. A fantasy.

I'm constantly told that labs take months to process samples, making forensics unlikely to supplant more traditional forms of investigation, including rubber hoses and phonebooks...

But is this because of backlogs, or because the tests themselves are time consuming?

 

[D. Scott MacDonald]

Me to. I think that they should (and do) build as strong a forensic case as possible. I also love that DNA is able to provide cold hits, positively IDing bad guys that did bad things many, many years in the past. Heck, the Green River Killer was caught this way.

My only concern is that in real life it's not always possible to build as strong a forensic link as people would like to see. My fear is that shows like this will cause some people to turn off their brains and indicate that no solid DNA link always means not guilty. For example, I would love to see Jon Benet's killer positively connected to DNA left at the scene, but from what I've heard that DNA may now be too degraded to do a full profile. I still think that it may be possible to solve the case using other means.

As a side note, I always found it curious that some people seem to pick and chose when DNA is important or not. For example, many people are convinced that Jon Bennet's parents did it even though their DNA definitely does not match the crime scene samples. That doesn't seem to deter many/most from "knowing" that the parents did it.

 

[Nick Martin]

Thank you.

That is a great answer to my original question.

 

[Derek_J]

I thought she just gave the go ahead, and someone else actually did it?

Anyway, it's just a tv show. I would expect they don't go breaking into people's houses in real life. Or even blackmailing each other.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Oh. Actually answering the original question in a thread. I guess that's OK if you're into that sort of thing.

Joe