Wow, I’m amazed there hasn’t been a thread yet, especially since it reportedly received very favorable ratings.
Anyways, as one who’s a fan of the original CSI series, but disappointed with Miami, I wasn’t sure what to expect of CSI: NY. I knew it featured Gary Sinise, of whom I’d deem a very competent actor, but it takes more than acting to carry a show.
Well, after watching Wednesday’s premiere, I must concede that I was blown away. Even as I type this, I find it difficult to describe the show. I mean, it’s clearly a spin-off of CSI: Las Vegas, but it just feels so different…darker. I had read other posts regarding the Miami/New York cross over episode (which I had not seen) that expressed disinterest in the blue filter the show employs. I don’t know whether it was toned down for the actual series, but I never consciously noticed it, though I have no doubts that it subliminally contributed to the feel of the show.
I also found the premise of the premiere episode to be quite intriguing, and creepy. Locking women inside their own bodies was such an eerie concept, yet it kept me enthralled to the end.
Of course, as the season’s only one episode in, it’s impossible to gauge the characters and how well they’ll carry the rest of the show, but rest assured, I’ll be tuning in to find out.
I found the opener to be cold and unpleasant. I don’t need to see any more violence or new ways to torture—and the mystery solution itself was disappointing. Does not anyone else out there feel like we’ve seen “despair yet struggling along despite the emptiness and ugliness of the world” done better or at least in a more subtle manner?
As the opener of CSI: New York ended, I turned to my wife and said: “Gary Sinise is too good of an actor to be saying lines like that.” His acting is the best of anyone in any of the CSI shows, but the writing on NY is horrible, at least in the first episode.
I was highly unimpressed. The murdering was creepy and barely believeable (even if it’s possible, it still wasn’t believeable). They did a pretty lousy job of using the city; it could have been set anywhere. The all-blue color scheme was mannered and annoying.
And using 9/11 to explain the character’s behavior was just plain cheap theatrics (and, alas, probably the beginning of a trend. Whenever you need to have a character full of angst, you now connect it with 9/11: presto! Instant sympathy! About the only thing going for that is that it might finally replace “I was abused as a child” as an all-purpose explanation by lazy writers.)
I’ll still give it a shot – the early episodes of CSI: Miami were just as dire until they found their rhythm – but they’ll have to do better.
I haven’t seen the other CSI shows, but I tuned in because I think Gary Sinise is a fine actor. I found the premiere to be rather lifeless - the characters had no chemistry between them at all, and there was a remarkable lack of emotion throughout the show. I got that Sinise is going to be the moody, tormented one, but it seemed like overkill, and I couldn’t really read the rest of the characters. I think the 9/11 track was way too obvious, and hamhanded to boot.
I liked the overall storyline, although I could swear I read this exact same plot (psycho inducing strokes in women) in a book recently.
With all that in mind, I’ll give it a few more episodes - I like the main actors and perhaps this particular episode just wasn’t compelling to me for some reason.
Question - do the other CSI shows have the quick flashes of brains/blood, etc. like this one did? That was odd to this CSI newbie.
Let’s see.
Blue filter? Yuk. New York at its sunniest apparently looks like every other city in the world at its mistiest.
Sets? Drab, dreary. Much like New York under a blue filter.
Writing? Poor, cliched.
Characters? As yet completely indistinguishable.
Acting? Plain horrible. I normally like Sinise, but the way he delivered some of his (admittedly, incredibly cheesy) lines had me cringing. But as they say, a good actor can still be good no matter how bad the script is. Just not this time.
I’ll give it another chance or two, but between NY’s all-round initial poorness and Caruso’s posturing, I fear for the CSI spin-off franchise. At least Vegas has still got the touch.
The other shows are pretty famous for showing graphic depictions explaining what the CSI guys are talking about. I think the longer the shows go on the less we see of them (because they are loathe to show the same thing twice) but graphic 3-D depictions of how a bullet entered the body and did some particular damage are commonplace to the other two shows.
I too was less than impressed with the show. Of course we’ll watch more to see how it goes, but my general impression is that the two spin-offs are not as good as the original. My current theory is that they are just less well written. I think the original was always very good in explaining what happened clearly and logically, whereas in CSI: Miami and CSI: NY I always seem to have questions about things that were not explained. So either they are just leaving plotholes or they didn’t explain things well enough for me to understand them.
For example, in the CSI: NY episode [WARNING: detailed plot analysis follows] they had the owner of the place the locked-in girl was found, and he told the cops he didn’t know who had rented the place. How could this be unless he was the perpetrator or involved? Then they did the whole communucate by bliking scene, and she blinks twice when shown landlord guy’s picture… but then goes in to a complete fit. We find out later the two-blinks were just the start of the fit, so she hadn’t really identified landlor-guy at all. So how can he not know who rented the place? And that whole blinking scene was just a red herring added for purely dramatic impact - without forwarding the plot at all. Or am I missing something?
And how did the russion guys initials get on that bag? Was it an impression from his cab license? I don’t remember them saying that, but it’s the only thing I can think of that seems to fit what we were shown.
The bag was engraved or whatever with his initials, you know, the cliched “doctor’s bag”. From when he was still practicing in Russia.
It was a pretty horrible, cliched, wooden episode. I hope it gets better. I am tired of the spinoffs tainting the original (and the cast is too, from what I’ve heard).
Legolamb and I watched this the other night. I thought it was alright. I still prefer the others, but this one is new so it’ll probably take a few episodes to really get into it.
The thing I didn’t understand was why he was doing this procedure on these women. I mean, the first one, I can understand. He said they were having an affair and she wanted him to take care of her, but what about the other two? What was it they said about the crime he committed in Russia?
Richardb, the russian guy was a doctor. I assumed the bag they found was his medical bag and his initials were monogramed on the bag. The cab only came into play because that’s how he picked up his second and third victims.
I freely admit to being bored enough by the plot to have missed or misunderstood what I perceive to be holes but:
Were there no other cops other than the CSI people investigating these crimes? Did anyone go door-to-door asking if the neighbors had seen anything, or if anyone had seen the girl? I thought CSI operated together with the rest of the force instead of operating instead of the regular police.
Why would a guy be so careful to clean crime scene evidence and then take a picture of the girl and leave the camera around to be found?
3)What was the evil Russian guy’s motivation exactly? I know there was something about freedom but…?
Did the criminal clean up the room every time he left just in case the police were to show up…frankly he didn’t look able enough to do that…much less toss bodies and overpower victims?
Is the main characters lack of sleep somehow supposed to make him a better cop?
Didn’t anyone realize or notice that the other victims were getting into a cab before disappearing. Where were they going? Wouldn’t someone have missed them? Isn’t this a bit of a risky way to get victims while at the same time being so careful not to leave other evidence?