To true fans CSI:Miami does not exist. Never happened. CSI:NY has just stepped into the hole of non-existence and will hover there for a mere moment before it too goes away.
William Peterson is awesome. The cast is awesome. The plots are awesome. The labwork is so awesome that it’s unreal. 
If you want reality in a tv show, go watch… go watch…
Got nothing.
Paul Guilfoyle’s character – who is not just a supporting character that wanders in every now and then, but appears in the opening montage – is a cop.
That’s funny and so true. I do like the show but I’m a grad student in a research lab and my coworkers and I like to make fun of how the labs on CSI are always really dark and there’s some cool background music. Our lab is brighter than the sun and we’re not allowed to use the radio! Whenever I see them pipetting I think “man I wish there was a zoomed in camera on me with some hip electronic club music playing when I pipet…1000 times each day”.
Science is cool, but not that cool
Wow. Very convincing.
I don’t think any examples he/she could have provided would have swayed your opinion any further.
Well, especially since those were exactly the things that I said I hated about the show in my OP.
CSI is great fun, if you don’t take any of it seriously.
Favourite things to shout while watching CSI;
The Kid Did It! The child, as the obvious innocent, always has more to do with the crime than first thought.
Enhance! Magnify! Everything, and I mean everything, can be enhanced and/or magnified to reveal incriminating evidence.
Turn On The Lights, Stupid! CSI training doesn’t cover “finding a light switch” and all crime scenes are best examined by torchlight.
Use The ‘Guilty’ Light! CSI has a special light that shows up the traces of previous criminal activity, but without showing any previous innocuous activity. I think it works on an extra special wave-length that examines the soul of the person who left the trail.
I’m not alone!
sobs with relief
Anyone played the game, Dark Motives?
All of them are really unrealistisic but what I want to know is how a crime scene investigator rates an H2 while the chief of police probably has to drive a Crown Vic or an Impala. Must be some wicked ass-kissing going on.
People are conflating three different shows, with different casts and styles.
The original CSI is one of the best shows on TV. The fact that it isn’t 100% accurate is irrelevant. This is what’s known as “drama” (look it up), which means that it is sometimes necessary to take liberties to make the show less dull. A 100% accurate CSI would be very uninteresting, so they speed up the detection process, don’t show all the people who would normally be on the case, make minor variations in procedure for the sake of the plot, put in on an attractive set, and generally take some liberties in order to tell a story. It’s known as “dramatic license.” Anyone who doesn’t understand the concept should stick to reality shows (oh, wait – they do the same thing. But they’re “real,” so it’s OK. :rolleyes: )
CSI: Miami is in the same vein, but the main difference is David Caruso, who is passionate about catching the criminal. William Peterson is dispassionate – a scientist gathering the data. Caruso gets involved in the case. I can understand that people might not like that model, but it certainly works in this case.
CSI: New York has only had two episodes (not counting the crossover/pilot). It still hasn’t found it’s voice, but the two episodes were only mediocre, and it seemed like a cheap ripoff of the original.
Peterson is what makes the original CSI fun. I like the fact that he’s a relatively disfunctional guy with absolutely no personal life. And his staff, though they respect his abilities, are aware that he’s in actuality an alien life-form.
I remember in the early going that CSI’s in Vegas never carried guns - a few plot twists actually turned on this. After Miami, where Caruso is always drawing down on some guy (grimacing into the sun all the while), suddenly the Vegas guys are all armed too.
Caruso is a hoot - he’s so very bad, he’s good. It’s fun to try to talk like he does on the show.
But don’t nobody dis the blonde chick in Miami - she’s hot, and she’s funny. I’m so glad she chucked her Washington job to become a CSI.
(Shrug)
I think it’s the best show on network TV. Absolutely fantastic crime procedural. Is it unrealistic? Of course it is. So was “MAS*H” and “Star Trek” and “The Simpsons.” I don’t like reality shows, I like fantasy shows, and the good looking scientists who solve crimes are tres cool. The dialogue is witty, they don’t lean on soap opera elements, the effects are neat, and the crimes are interesting.
Genghis Bob, the CSI: Vegas folks have been armed since Day 1. Grissom in particular sometimes didn’t carry a gun - like Columbo, he doesn’t like guns - and it got him in trouble a few times. But the others almost always had them. You will recall the chick who was killed in the very first episode was carrying a peice. The difference is that in CSI, they carry guns and almost never draw them. In CSI: Miami, David Caruso still thinks he’s in NYPD Blue.
Okay, gotcha. I discovered CSI some time after the first episode. I had not realized they killed someone off right off the bat - pretty cool move.
I enjoy the program. I don’t expect it to be all that realistic just so long as I’m entertained. The program certainly has its own level of silliness, like the space age lab, the difficulty they have in finding light switches, and how you can guess the criminal is the one who looks least likely to have committed the crime. Saw an episode on Spike yesterday and within the first few minutes I knew the state trooper was involved somehow.
Television is all about entertainment and so long as they provide me with that I’m happy. If a show happens to be realistic and entertaining then so much the better.
Marc
You mean … drama series aren’t real?! :eek: 
Thanks for the primer, but I actually have a vague understanding of “dramatic license,” and I hate freakin’ “reality” shows. My beef with CSI isn’t that it’s unrealistic; it’s that it’s unrealistic in a way I find very shallow and cheap. I’m relieved to discover I’m not the only one.
There are about half a dozen “documentary” CSI-type shows on A&E and Discovery Channel, and they all do pretty well, so I don’t buy this.
Horatio Caine responds: “So what are you saying you little punk? You saying I got some problem because I carry a gun? You saying I’m trying to compensate for something? You saying I need some cop following me around to arrest people like that pansy Grissom does? Well, let me tell you something, my friend. Horatio Caine does not need anyone. I don’t need Dennis Franz or Kim Delaney to help me carry a show. I am a detective you scumbag and I have a humungous penis. So don’t you forget that or I’m walking out of here and going back to my highly successful film career.”
Yeah! I’m glad to find out that others also think that CSI (and all of it’s spawn shows) are the most overrated crappiest crapfest on TV. I call it the flashlight show because they can’t do anything without shining their little flashlights everywhere, even in broad daylight in the middle of the desert.
Looks like Peterson got fat in the face and had to grow a beard to hide the pudge.
Caruso-someone with that hair color and skin tone (rudy) should never live in South Florida…can you say skin cancer.
I believe the show is written to appeal to all the grandma types in the Midwest and South. “Oh my goodness Ethel, did you see that there CSI show on CBS last night? They showed a dead body rottin’ into the shag carpet. Jeepers it ascared me to death!”
I’m just waiting on a guest appearance by Angela Landsbury from Murder She Wrote, the high surpreme grandma show! “Look it’s Angela, somebody’s gonna die!”
Ditto. I like the Vegas version, but the Miami version is horrible. I fell asleep during the last half of this week’s New York version, if that says anything for it. I do like Gary Sinise and Hill Harper, but that gadget he was waving around to find the rat that ate the bullet was way over the top.
You tell me which gets better ratings.