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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

CSI New York (spoilers)

  
 
Joetheneophyte
15:21 / 06.02.05
spoilers:


I am going to try to be very careful in my language usage here, as I have a knack of putting my size tens, fairly and firmly in my oversized gob (mouth)

I am a new recruit to CSI with William Petersen and have been enjoying the re-runs on Channel 4. Try not to miss it and besides my amazement at how tightly Catherine's face has been pulled from the early shows to the later episodes, I am blessed that Channel 5 UK is repeating the shows I missed first time around. Love the show and feel drawn to the characters

Cannot get into CSI Miami as much as I don't like the characters as much but it is growing on me and I do try to watch it but not with as much eagerness

That all said, I decided to give CSI New York a go last night (first episode I believe) on Channel 5 UK.

I was hoping that we may get through the show without mention of 9/11 ...... not out of some perverse lack of sympathy but just because it was so predictable and in my eyes, whilst honouring the dead is respectful, utilising a tired and recurrent plot device seems to me just as insensitive as not acknowledging tragedy at all. Seeing that NY was in the title, I thought and hoped that it would not be used just for usage sake

No such luck. We were led through a plot of an interesting premise but hackneyed characterisation and terrible lines

the main character fitted the stereotypical 'brilliant but distant and secretive loner' ....who just happened to mention he had been a US marine in Russia (?) in the course of the investigation

but worse was to come, at the end, after looking listlessly into the distance throughout the whole show, the reason for this tormented man's pain was explained in his confession to the dead victim

'My wife......she was killed on 9/11'

compounded by him mournfully asking a txi driver to take him to ground zero where he exhibited his pain

I thought the show was okay, not great but I could have done without the last 2 minutes, which to me , whilst probably intened to garner empathy/sympathy and interest in fleshing out the new character, personally, I found it quite sickening and exploitative

Again, it is not my intention to take anything away from anybody directly affected by 9/11 and if you were touched or moved by this portrayal, or thought it was tastefully handled, then I sincerely apologise and I hope you can forgive my outburst. I am an opinionated asshole , often wrong

Anybody else have an opinion on this show and if you have seen anymore, does it get any better?
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
14:21 / 08.02.05
Unnecessary referencing of 9/11... Twenty years ago every show had someone that had been in Vietnam, 9/11 is the new 'Nam.
 
 
electricinca
15:49 / 08.02.05
I think it is too early to tell but I too have the feeling that it was a lazy plot device. It's possible that it has some relevance or significance to the development of the character of Mack Taylor outside of the fact that he's a widower but I doubt it.

She may as well have died in a freak snowblower incident in my opinion. But I'm addicted to all the CSI's so I shall keep watching regardless. I'm not too bothered by it but it did seem like a cliche.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
15:55 / 08.02.05
Is it a cliche? Have there really been all that many series where the main character has lost a spouse in the WTC attacks?
 
 
The Strobe
16:11 / 08.02.05
I am eagerly awaiting CSI:Wisconsin. It will be awesome.
 
 
Triplets
17:54 / 08.02.05
It's tasteless and superfluous, but not clichéd.
 
 
DaveBCooper
15:49 / 09.02.05
I watched this first episode, and found it … all right, The problem I have with the CSI spin-offs is that I can’t help equating the characters with those in the original show. Oh look, there’s the man in charge of the team with more going on under the surface, there’s the insightful female second-in-command, and so on. I follow the original series, but don’t care for the Miami spin-off (Caruso feels like the same character from NYPD Blue to my probably untrained eye), and don’t know if I’ll be watching CSI:NY again, as the storyline to this one was more like a James Patterson novel than what I’d expect from CSI, really. And are we supposed to believe that he’s not once ever been to sleep for… what, three years ? That seems a bit hmm.
I think the original show benefits from the fact that it uses the setting as an active part of the action, with the casinos and the deserts and the like. I don’t see how NY can do that really, as NY’s so familiar an environment through so many films. Dunno about Miami, as I say, I don’t really connect with it.
And of course the original has the advantage of William Peterson; someone I know said he was just playing Will Graham again, which seems very wrong indeed to me, as Graham’s anxiety and intelligence are all on the surface, whereas with Grissom it’s all hidden…
I want to see ‘CSI:Wolverhampton’, meself. Time the franchise went international.

Oh, and I thought the 9/11 thing was a bit cheap, a way to trigger an emotional reaction in a hurry. Smacked rather of the creators being unsure we'd empathised with the character. Kind of like the tragedy equivalent of those films which show the out-takes as the credits play, for my money.
 
 
Foust is SO authentic
18:37 / 09.02.05
I haven't seen CSI:NY much. Does it rest on the same fascination with incest and necrophilia as the original?
 
 
gridley
20:22 / 09.02.05
CSI: NY bores me. Its character have none of the charm of the original's. And CSI: Miami at least had Rory Cochrane in it.

I too was bothered by the attempt at winning instant sympathy for the main character with the 9/11 death of his wife. But then I remembered Star Trek: Deep Space Nine began with Ben Sisko talking about how his wife died in the Locutus-led Borg attack. And oddly enough, that worked for me completely. So I had to wonder, did DS9 just pull it off better or am I just too cynical now for that sort of thing to ever work again....
 
 
Joetheneophyte
17:21 / 13.02.05
No whilst a lot of us Trek fans do spend far too much time wondering about the intricacies of this and that, (hopefully) most of us still can tell the the difference between fact and fiction.

DS9 was talking about a fictitious event and whilst it was even then a hackneyed plot device, it worked because tragedy is tragedy. Even Shakespeare probably drew from earlier sources and that is all well and good as long as the storytelling is up to the job, in this case, the subject matter was a little too sensitive and the way it was presented was (imo) poor

With CSI, personally, I found it a little cheap and demeaning. What was probably intended as tragedy, came accross as cheap exploitative television, blurring the lines between fiction and fact. I could have even accepted this but for the image in my head of marketting men, standing in front of their flow charts and whiteboards, charting the figures of how this would emotionally affect their 'chosen demographic'.

Sorry, for me as a non US citizen, it just did not work at all. It was overly sincere and (and this just might be my own weird paranoia) it fitted in with my conspiracy mindset that television is increasingly being used to get political points accross. I have no justification for this and logically, I know I am talking crap but I see patterns in everything and this was by far the most blatant example of ppor taste I have seen for sometime


Don't even get me started on the hidden meanings and psychological importance of DESTINY'S Child's song 'soldier'
 
 
Foust is SO authentic
19:44 / 13.02.05
it fitted in with my conspiracy mindset that television is increasingly being used to get political points accross.

Don't worry, that's not a conspiricy theory, it's just business as usual for the media.
 
 
Joetheneophyte
13:42 / 20.02.05
I didn't watch the second episode that aired on UK tv last week but I did watch last nights. Again, I found the idea or 'case' far outstripped the characterisation. I know I am being a bit premature but from the two of the three episodes that I have witnessed, I have gotten little about the main characters.

Like the other CSI series' the ideas and death/ investigation are pretty fascinating (though last nights was a bit obvious) and if based on fact, give me a whole new respect and awe for forensic science/ scientists.
That said, I still like to have subplots and characterisation, again something I found lacking and worse the storytelling was laboriously paced. We had several minutes of the Gary Sinise looking around a bhus station for some bones you just knew he was destined to find

the politics were also self evident again. the Sainthood of former Mayor Guiliani (sp?) was again brought to the fore and whilst I cannot comment (I have heard under his tenure New York became a much safer place and he was respected for his 9/11 work).....the politicising and hero worship was somethijng I could have done without.

If I want to view pro GOP stuff, there is plenty of literature out there for me to peruse and I have heard other matters (such as him employing his girlfriend for an astronomical fee) to make me question this man's altruism


sorry, to date this program sucks big donkey balls, especially compared to the excellent CSI investigations and the spin off CSI Miami. Too much politics, slow storytelling and poor characterisation to date. Gary Sinise is far too good an actor for this role and whilst I can appreciate his troubled demeanour, it is going to wear thin over the course of the series unless something changes.

I know I am being harsh but I have watched two out of th the three hours thus far aired and my interest is already waning. I will give two more shows a go before I abandon all hope
 
 
Haus of Mystery
15:37 / 20.02.05
CSI is the new Quincy. Only not as good.

It was just one long montage sequence of forensic examination. Boredom.
 
  
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