How do you rank the three shows against each other?
CSI: Miami has Horatio Caine and the Justice Shades, which pretty much seals the deal for me after Grissom left the original CSI.
I'm finding I don't miss Grissom as much as I thought I would, but at the same time I've got seven seasons of back-catalog to get my Grissom fix off of.
For me Justice Shades border on "wait, are they serious? He's being ironic, right? Right?"
New York is really growing on me. I've always been a fan of Gary Sinise, so anything that gives him a job is fine in my books, but without a Grissom type character the cases tend towards much more standard procedural affairs.
Of course if the shows were all just the same kinds of wacky cases in different cities there wouldn't be much of a point to having three different series to begin with (though some would already say three amounts to an obvious money grab, a half step away from turning Spike into the CSI network) so it's good that there's some strong thematic differences between the shows. It's pretty well represented, actually, by the theme songs used: Las Vegas's "Who Are You" being curiosity and intrigue contrasting New York's "Baba O'Riley" being about power struggles, both internal and external. While that's still interesting, those are pretty much the exact same themes of every other procedural law drama set in New York City (Law and Order, NYPD Blue, Cold Case...) in essence giving up a good bit of what made CSI different from all the other procedural dramas in the first place (a sense of the fantastic).
Of course I can't help but think about how setting affects the whole deal. I'm reminded of an episode of The Show with Ze Frank where he talks about Las Vegas and how everything in Las Vegas is out of its natural context because nothing actually belongs there out in the desert. Because everything in Las Vegas is out of place, the strange and the weird are at home. New York and Miami, on the other hand, have long histories and natural context: the cities themselves behave differently.
I sense that this thread will fall into flaming within a week.
Factioning, or just general anti-CSI sentiments?
I'm guessing it will end up with a little of both. These kind of threads almost always devolve into an online ******* match.
Eh, I can live with that. I've been awake for two days and just need someting to keep me awake for... 4 more hours.
After that, it's NY. I've just never really gotten into the Miami one - just too much like a soap opera, I guess. Too many "shocking plot twists", etc., etc....
How about ... none of them?
Prefer Cold Case? How about Law & Order (the lawyer side of things) or House (medical mysteries) or are you just not a fan of procedural dramas all together?
1) The science and proceedures are often sketchy. In the first CSI: Las Vegas episode I watched, the lab blew up because someone put an unknown chemical under a fume hood (which looked like a clear plastic box), which then gave off fumes which collected and ignited. A real fume hood is a device similar to the fan over a stove and is designed to safely vent toxic fumes. I simply stopped watching when they started inventing technology that doesn't exist.
2) The stories, and main character of CSI: Las Vegas in particular, seemed tobe nothing more than a mouthpiece for the writers to rant about stuff at times.
3) Related to point number two, the series' poorly researched and presented versions of certain subcultures has negatively colored the public's perception of said subcultures. This is just irresponsible.
William Peterson is a solid actor (although I haven't seen any eps since he left the show) as is Gary Sinese; David Carruso just isn't in the same league as these guys in my opinion. I enjoy Fishburn's work (especially Event Horizon and the Matrix); wonder how he does as a series lead?
CSI: Miami, I liked up until about the time they killed off Speedle. It's not that I liked the character to that degree, just that after that it got soap-operish with Horatio marrying Delco's sister and she's murdered and Delco getting shot in the head and Wolfe busted by the treasury dept, and the new chick from All My Children coming on board...it was just too much for such a short span of seasons. However, I still watch it occasionally now that it's kind of calmed down (the episode with P. Diddy the other night wasn't too bad_
CSI: NY, I almost can't stand to watch. To me it seems like the whole episode is nothing but a montage. None of the characters seem genuine, plus how are you going to start a show like that when you have, what, almost 40 seasons of the Law and Order franchise to stack up against in New York. They totally should have went with D.C. or Detroit or something.
Even the theme song doesn't fit. Baba O'reilly? Are you kidding me? Totally should have went with Behind Blue Eyes, or better yet, I Can See For Miles.
Just my two cents
I actually prefer NY over original CSI.
As do I. Miami is eyeroll worthy for me.
I prefer NCIS, Law & Order:CI, and Criminal Minds.
I prefer NCIS, Law & Order:CI, and Criminal Minds.
Now you're talking!