Silly Little Country

CSI

I mentioned earlier that sleeplessness was allowing me to spend several hours a night studying the CSI phenomenon.
I mentioned in a post long ago my taste for German Krimis, crime shows. Many of these shows are police procedurals featuring a team of investigators, led by a senior investigator, who sends his team off to perform various tasks, and synthesizes the solution just before the end of each show. This is not a form much used in American crime shows; Law and Order is fairly procedural but the hierarchical nature of the team is not so obvious. Moreover, Law and Order deliberately features not simply investigation but also prosecution.
The CSIs, all three of the series that I have investigated (Las Vegas, Miami, and New York), have surprising similarities to German procedurals. In fact, the Las Vegas team's hierarchy seems to be emphasized about every third episode, as Gil Grissom bristles because one of his team has communicated something directly to another team member without going through him first. A very bureaucratic style indeed.
I am still working on what I think of the shows. They seem to be one long-running commercial for flashlights. Even when a room clearly has better lighting available, the investigators all tend to whip out their flashlights and start waving them about. The love for flashlights means that quite a bit has to be staged in relative darkness too.
Another gimmick is the odd thing they do showing a viewer the gory details of analyses; if during the autopsy someone says that the bullet entered the right occipital whatever, next thing you know there will be a whooshing sound and the viewer will be riding the bullet into the poor victim's brain. I am not quite sure what the point of this repeated idea is. I suspect to make one feel one is not far from playing a video game.
And all those instruments and chemistry sets! It sure looks sort of like science. And a lot of it sure seems dubious.
And the music. Hmmm.
I have concluded that I have not seen enough episodes yet. My friend EclectEcon says

The Miami CSI is so bad, I laugh at it

and to be honest I have yet to find it more laughable than the Las Vegas CSI. For me the main difference between the two is that I have long been a fan of William Peterson and of Marg Helgenberger, and I have never much liked David Caruso. It's also true that Gil Grissom's crustiness is more fun to watch than Horatio's endless sympathy.
My studies must continue, and at four episodes a day, I should soon have some feel for this odd form of art.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 7:47 PM