Can’t believe no-one has mentioned this one yet:
All criminal acts leave an invisible trail that glows in UV light. Innocent activity doesn’t do this. UV light is magic.
‘EVIDENCE WITHOUT SUBSTANCE IS AMBIGUOUS AT BEST’
Grissom said this during one show and it stuck with me for some odd reason. I wanted to use it as my signature, but because of a defective spell checker, I couldn’t nail AMBIGUOUS. At last I get to post it.
Similarly, almost every victim’s house is relatively clutter-free, tidy and immaculate, thereby enabling the CSIs to locate exactly what they’re looking for. If they came to my house they’d be like, “Holy fucking god, who gives a shit who killed her?! Look at the soap scum. I’m outta here!” Come to think of it, maybe only tidy people get murdered…might be onto something here…
How every week they have a new computer program to perform a certain task. “Oh, you need a program to chart the wind currents over Florida in the last month? Sure, we have that”
Yeh, because programs just write themselves :rolleyes:
And as has been said before, Always at night because Grisholm’s team works the night shift.
I’ve learned that sifting through microsopic evidence, chemical tests and DNA
samples is more effective when done in the dimmest light possible.
Also, when gathering the evidence at a crime scene, portable shop lights are not necessary and flipping on a light switch in a vic’s home apparently is taboo. You will find all the blood spatter and hair strands you need with a mini mag lite. :rolleyes:
My favorite - Photoshop copy and paste is a perfectly acceptable tool for determining who it is wearing the sunglasses and wig on the (infinite resolution, of course) security camera footage. Because a picture of a person’s face can’t be scaled to fit onto someone else’s head.
Did anyone see the Monk episode where Adrian was working as a consultant on a very CSI like show? It was extremely funny. They solved all their crimes with a tool that looked like a metal detector covered in LEDs and UV lights.
And my goodness, it sure rains a lot in Las Vegas.
Sure about that one? I’m a pretty avid watcher, and only two episodes are coming to mind in which it rained (and one of the rains wasn’t even in Vegas…it was off in the mountains).
I could, of course, be way off base here…
“Too Tough To Die”, “$35K OBO”, “Identity Crisis”, “Lady Heather’s Box” (where a man * drowned* in urban runoff) … The list goes on. It’s rained more on “CSI” than in all the seasons of “Frasier”, and that was set in Seattle.
Plus no matter how arid a neighborhood appears in a long shot, we close in to a lush subtropical landscape straight outta Pacoima.
What else I’ve learned is that:
A) you need eye protection while using power tools or UV light, but feel free to go barefaced while slinging around hazardous reagents, or crawling under a house and peering up a drainpipe, and
B) if you go to the police after being raped, you’ll be dead before the end credits.
About a year ago, I saw a very small magazine item about the real head of the Las Vegas crime lab. It turns out he’s a genuinely weird guy, some of whose quirks William Peterson gave to the character of Grissom (the real life CSI guy is an authentic insect lover, and keeps hundreds of bugs of all types in his home).
Anyway, when this gentleman was asked about how realistic the TV show is, he sort of shrugged and laughed and said the single most unrealistic thing is the time element. That is, he and his staff really CAN do most of the things you see done on the TV series. However, on a TV show, everything has to be wrapped up in one episode. In real life, the guy said, it would probably take his staff about six months to do many of the things that Grissom and Horatio do in 45 minutes.