Agent Booth asks why they can’t simply zoom in on an image on a video recording to find out more about the bad guy … and one of the scientists explains that you CAN’T DO THAT!
The show definitely earned some bonus points right there.
As opposed to last week’s show which took place in an area of Eastern Washington that looked amazingly like Yosemite, complete with a “half dome” shaped mountain.
I suspect the writers were doing a subtle jab at CSI. Of course, it would have been more convincing if they hadn't also shown that stoopid hologram imager in the same show. Or if their sketch artist hadn't jury rigged a program to identify kids in those self-same surveillance photos based on their size and body mass (possible, but probably a six month development effort) or reconstruct the image of a person from a reflection in a door in that 640x480 image (and am I remembering correctly -- did they use polarization to view it better?)
Basically, one step forward in believability, but then about 1000 back.
It reminded me of the gag in the Buffy episode “The Prom”, where they have security video of a hellhound attack and Cordelia tells Xander to zoom in on a detail like they do on TV shows, and he says he can’t do that because it’s just a regular VCR.
Then it’s a good thing I specified the amount of realism as being only a bit! 