CSI TV series: Entertaining or Laughable?

[PrincessFiona60]

The original CSI was good and really tried the first couple of years. Then they started including the characters into the why and wherefore of the crimes. They were no longer objective observers, but participants. This would not be allowed IRL.

I do enjoy the technical aspects, but do see where they mess it up, too. Kinda like me watching ER, House, etc and spotting all the laughable screw-ups with medical equipment and how people react.

I still enjoy the Original CSI, never liked NY or Miami (I think Horatio Caine should be horsewhipped out of town). But now I watch knowing it is far removed from reality and they have some good episodes that make you go "Hmmmm!"

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

i used to watch csi. after a couple of years i got tired of the same old plot. the miami version , i only watched once.

You've reminded me of one thing I particularly hate about CSI, that they have this recurrent theme with a serial killer who keeps (barely) just escaping. They keep recycling him in episode after episode.

Serial killers has got to be one of the smallest classes of all criminals. Read Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, or see the movie. It's the best serial killer novel/movie ever. I read a couple of the sequels but I had to quit before I read the last in the series.

I'm not up for any more serial killer fiction, in TV, print or movies. Particularly I'm not up for it on CSI.


The best CSI ever was CSI: Las Vegas when Grissom was part of the series. That was the best ever. I liked it then. Not the two part ender where he was buried underground. Maybe that's when the CSI science and I finally had a parting of the ways. I think Grissom was their best character ever.

 

[GLC]

Bones is technically a bit more realistic, other than the expected near miraculous speed and reliability of their devices and the wholly bogus existence of a museum employing criminalists. And of course, there's the FBI agent running around investigating all sorts of local crimes over which the FBI has no jurisdiction, has no federal law to enforce, isn't even a peace officer under state law, and would have been chased off by the proper local agency.

CSI was like a lot of shows, not bad in the beginning when they were no more silly than expected for television. Kind of like House. Okay while they had legitimate medical mysteries, but quickly becoming a soap opera. Besides, you always knew what their first guess would be. Did any of his patients ever actually turn out to have amyloidosis?

Someone tried to get me watching Dexter. I couldn't get past the first episode. Psychopathic killers are never going to adopt, as Dexter was supposed to, some moral code from his father that he would kill only bad people. That's too absurd to watch. There's nothing likable or sympathetic about these guys. They're all grossly self-absorbed and thoroughly despicable specimens. The Ewww! factor is just too much.

Breaking Bad was about the same. There's nothing even vaguely amusing about meth cooks. They're scum of the Earth. I've dealt with way too much grief they're responsible for to accept it as entertainment.

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

Bones is technically a bit more realistic, other than the expected near miraculous speed and reliability of their devices and the wholly bogus existence of a museum employing criminalists. And of course, there's the FBI agent running around investigating all sorts of local crimes over which the FBI has no jurisdiction, has no federal law to enforce, isn't even a peace officer under state law, and would have been chased off by the proper local agency.

GLC that is so spot on that I wouldn't touch it at all. You nailed it!

CSI was like a lot of shows, not bad in the beginning when they were no more silly than expected for television. Kind of like House. Okay while they had legitimate medical mysteries, but quickly becoming a soap opera. Besides, you always knew what their first guess would be. Did any of his patients ever actually turn out to have amyloidosis?

OMG I used to be a big time House fan! What finally killed it for me is all the misery House would send his patients through, drilling into their brains and all that (even one of his fellow doctors got brain drilled) until finally at :54 minutes House would rush to the rescue with the final, amazing, totally unlikely--and correct--diagnosis.

The worst thing I could wish on anybody would be to become the patient of Dr. Gregory House. I'm sorry I share my name with his character.

Someone tried to get me watching Dexter. I couldn't get past the first episode. Psychopathic killers are never going to adopt, as Dexter was supposed to, some moral code from his father that he would kill only bad people. That's too absurd to watch. There's nothing likable or sympathetic about these guys. They're all grossly self-absorbed and thoroughly despicable specimens. The Ewww! factor is just too much.

The biggest mistake you made was to watch the Dexter TV program (HBO I believe). Instead you should have read the first Dexter novel, as I did, Darkly Dreaming Dexter. The debut novel was awesome! The sequels never delivered the novelty of the debut. The TV series never came close. I don't know if reading the novel after the series would please. I'm glad I read it first when it came to print, before the screen ruined it. It was such an original concept as a novel that it broke all preconcepts. As a TV program they ruined it.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter may have been the darkest humor novel I've ever read, in fact probably is. Kudos to author Jeff Lindsay. It was deliciously, sinfully dark. It was so darkly funny that I'm almost ashamed that I enjoyed it so much! How could anybody write a novel about the humorous side of being a serial killer? And yet Lindsay did! And well done!

Breaking Bad was about the same. There's nothing even vaguely amusing about meth cooks. They're scum of the Earth. I've dealt with way too much grief they're responsible for to accept it as entertainment.

I never heard of that program, and glad of it. I can't think of anything I would find amusing about drug abuse. Perhaps it's satire. If so I'd rather watch Desperate Housewives, of which I'll admit to being a fan for the first few seasons. DH was IMO sidesplitting funny in a satirical way. Unfortunately DH got repetitive, and IMO in an unintentional way began parodying itself.

Let's not say anything nice about any TV series, okay?

 

[PrincessFiona60]

Thing with House is...I can diagnose most of his patients in the first 5 minutes and nail it 80% of the time. I'm not really a doctor, I just play one at home.

I can't watch House, it makes me angry watching how he treats people.

 

[buckytom]

i remember a few years ago a real csi investigator was interviewed about his opinion of the shows.

he responded that the part that was farthest from reality was that they have 1 or 2 people do the entire investigation, soup to nuts. they personally investigate, catch, and incarcerate every criminal by themselves.
in the real world, there are some people do the on scene evidence collection, but then they hand it off to a string of other people to complete the investigation, then it's handed over to other law enforcement and judicial agencies to do all of the crime fighting and court stuff.

but besidess all of that, the csi said that he liked the show for entertainment purposes. i feel like grabbing some people and shaking them like an english nanny until they get that idea through their heads.

it's television folks. within the tv bidness there are 3 distinct departments or categories: news, sports, and entertainment. news and sports are self explanatory, although some lines get blurred at times in news, usually by fox broadcasting.
everything else falls under entertainment. even "reality tv" shows are manipulated enough to be entertainment.

 

[PrincessFiona60]

i remember a few years ago a real csi investigator was interviewed about his opinion of the shows.

he responded that the part that was farthest from reality was that they have 1 or 2 people do the entire investigation, soup to nuts. they personally investigate, catch, and incarcerate every criminal by themselves.
in the real world, there are some people do the on scene evidence collection, but then they hand it off to a string of other people to complete the investigation, then it's handed over to other law enforcement and judicial agencies to do all of the crime fighting and court stuff.

but besidess all of that, the csi said that he liked the show for entertainment purposes. i feel like grabbing some people and shaking them like an english nanny until they get that idea through their heads.

it's television folks. within the tv bidness there are 3 distinct departments or categories: news, sports, and entertainment. news and sports are self explanatory, although some lines get blurred at times in news, usually by fox broadcasting.
everything else falls under entertainment. even "reality tv" shows are manipulated enough to be entertainment.

I do believe in the suspension of disbelief long enough to watch a show for the entertainment value. But, there are some shows where the characters are so odious that it is difficult to suspend disbelief and enjoy the show.

Personally, I'm enjoying the 136th Westminster Dog Show...now THAT is entertainment.

 

[buckytom]

hmmm, technically, that would probably be covered by the sports dept..

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

Thing with House is...I can diagnose most of his patients in the first 5 minutes and nail it 80% of the time. I'm not really a doctor, I just play one at home.

I can't watch House, it makes me angry watching how he treats people.

You're in the business, or enough related that you have professional knowledge. You fit the mold that we experts can't stand it when our TV programs are so fake and unrealistic.

The reason you can't stand House (Dr. House) is exactly why so many people watch it (him). His character infuriates us! The emotional response he evokes is what makes many of us watch the program. Many of us want to see him slapped down. Many others are annoyed by the pompous people that infuriate Dr. House the most and want to see them slapped down. Other people identify with House because they feel that they are good in their fields but don't get along with people that well, and feel that they are hampered by personal relations even though they know the best technical solutions. (I bet lots of computer experts feel that way.)

I think Dr. House is a character you love to hate. The series would be nothing without his character. All the other characters contrast with him. Thus the series name House.

Another series I don't watch anymore. I couldn't stand all the misery and then the :54 minute solution, just in time to run 6 more minutes of commercials. PF at least you had 55 minutes to do something more useful and less wasteful than watching the rest of the program.

Wikipedia says that as of Aug. 2010 Hugh Laurie (Dr. House) was the highest paid actor in a drama series on US television. (ref) I guess we know who the highest paid actor in a comedy series was on US television. (ref) I'm sure the ratings are not only in dispute but also in flux.

 

[PrincessFiona60]

hmmm, technically, that would probably be covered by the sports dept..

The Bichon Frise was such a chipper looking dog! So cute. Makes the cats mad when I watch the dog shows.

 

[Zhizara]

Thing with House is...I can diagnose most of his patients in the first 5 minutes and nail it 80% of the time. I'm not really a doctor, I just play one at home.

I can't watch House, it makes me angry watching how he treats people.

I can't watch House. He's a nasty jerk! There are already too many IRL.

Bones and The Closer get way too silly to be entertaining. I'll watch, but only if there is nothing else on.

 

[rozz]

I can't watch CSI. It's so wildly unrealistic. "Let's enhance this grainy, blurry CCTV security video to the point where we can clearly see the murderer in the reflection of the glasses the dead dude was wearing." Wait... wut? And the problem with the popularity of shows like that is that the average jury is *filled* with people who watch them, and thereby expect a standard of proof that's all but impossible to deliver.

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

I can't watch CSI. It's so wildly unrealistic. "Let's enhance this grainy, blurry CCTV security video to the point where we can clearly see the murderer in the reflection of the glasses the dead dude was wearing." Wait... wut? And the problem with the popularity of shows like that is that the average jury is *filled* with people who watch them, and thereby expect a standard of proof that's all but impossible to deliver.

That's two good points! First, the idea that you can just keep enhancing and enhancing and enhancing until you finally get the detail you need. Star Trek started that bogus idea. Now CSI is continuing it. The reality is that whatever grain your film has or whatever the pixel size of your video image has, places a limit on how much information is stored in the image. It is possible to make an image appear somewhat less grainy but it's impossible to just keep deblurring and zooming and expect to get any detail you want if you keep at it long enough. That's just fake.

And you're right that CSI and other crime shows are dumbing down the public particularly jury pools, leading them to expect impossibly perfect evidence. Real life isn't like that.

 

[Steve Kroll]

I can't watch CSI. It's so wildly unrealistic. "Let's enhance this grainy, blurry CCTV security video to the point where we can clearly see the murderer in the reflection of the glasses the dead dude was wearing." Wait... wut?

I haven't watched any of the CSI programs, but I've noticed similar things on other programs. For example, all of the computers people use on television seem to be magical wonders of technology. In fact, they almost always use technologies that haven't been invented yet. Watch Hawaii Five-O sometime for a good laugh. Apparently they are able to take a cell phone photo of a smudged fingerprint, beam it across the island into their table-sized tablet computer and, within 2-3 seconds (accompanied by a lot of high tech noises), link it to a satellite photograph of a suspect living somewhere in the jungles of Singapore.

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

I'm surprised they didn't just shoot the print from the cellphone and have an App pop up the perpetrator's picture, full biography and current location including a real time satellite image of exactly what he's doing at the present moment. With audio! (That satellite audio technology is very tricky...)

I used to watch the original Hawaii Five-O, tried to watch one of the new episodes for about five minutes and couldn't stand that. Call that five minutes of zero interest instead of Five-O. It was ridiculous to cast pretty boys as the lead characters, in this and in many shows. What are character actors doing for employment these days? Just playing bad guys? I bet if Karl Malden was alive these days and wanted a job these days he'd be stuck playing a baddie.

(In Streets of San Francisco they paired character actor Malden with Michael Douglas as the good looking young guy, giving the series' protagonists balance.)

 

[Steve Kroll]

I used to watch the original Hawaii Five-O, tried to watch one of the new episodes for about five minutes and couldn't stand that. Call that five minutes of zero interest instead of Five-O. It was ridiculous to cast pretty boys as the lead characters, in this and in many shows.

To tell the truth, I've never noticed the pretty boys on that show. I watch it mostly for the pretty (and often bikini-clad) girls.

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

That's one problem with many present day TV programs, that all the characters look like they could have been fashion models. (Probably many of them have worked as models in the past.) It's another unrealistic part of most TV programs today. They substitute style for substance, they substitute special effects instead of interesting plots. They have gloss instead of substance.

 

[rozz]

I worry about the long-term effects of hiring actors based on their looks. In 30 years, who will be our established actors, playing the post-ingenue roles? No one coming up in Hollywood seems to possess the necessary gravitas to age well and portray serious adult roles with any sense of believability.

 

[Andy M.]

I worry about the long-term effects of hiring actors based on their looks. In 30 years, who will be our established actors, playing the post-ingenue roles? No one coming up in Hollywood seems to possess the necessary gravitas to age well and portray serious adult roles with any sense of believability.

Don't worry. The public will get what they want because they control ticket sales. Pretty boys are everywhere because pretty boys sell tickets.

 

[rozz]

Don't worry. The public will get what they want because they control ticket sales. Pretty boys are everywhere because pretty boys sell tickets.

I work in a library. That's enough to worry me about the general public making important decisions like that.