CSI Spy With My Little Eye

[shanmonster]

A couple of months ago, I started watching CSI and its various incarnations, and I'm hooked. I still don't have television, but I do have a working DVD player and a friendly neighbourhood video shop, so last week I rented the first season of CSI: NY. And today I rented the first season of CSI. I'm beginning to think it isn't a normal day if I don't see blood and semen. When I find a stray hair on something, I get the paranoid thought that I need to run it for DNA. I'm afraid I might soon believe that I can fingerprint matches in just 90 seconds. Lord help me....

A couple of things irk me about the show. First of all, I'm a copy editor at heart. I can't help it. I see misspelled words, and something catches in my mind, distracting the heck out of me. So when a popup screen happens (as in the case of a fingerprint match, or DNA test, or even a weekly schedule), I usually feel glitchy. I couldn't figure out why until I freeze-framed one of them and saw it was rife with typos. Sometimes those screens are only viewable for half of a second, but its long enough for my brain to catch the error. I'm surprised that with all the clever writing that they couldn't be arsed to run a spell check. Ah well.

The next thing that irks me is this: these people are ostensibly testing evidence to find minute particles of skin, hairs, and what-have-you. So how come they're not working in sterile environments with the appropriate clothing and hair nets? I already know the answer to this: because it's not sexy. CSI agents are supposed to be hotties, and you can't be a hottie in one of those haz-mat suits, right? So I can forgive this for the sake of the eye candy.

Some of the software is downright ridiculous. I mean, even Star Trek with all its futuristic technology can't do what the CSI labs can do with a simple point and click. But that's ok. A 3-week wait for fingerprint results would really slow the show down to a grinding halt. So I suspend my disbelief.

I just can't forgive those lousy typos. Gah!

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

And why do they then get to go out in the field with guns, kick open doors, and arrest suspects?

In the real world, lab technicians work 9a-5p in the lab. They don't carry guns and they don't arrest people, as far as i know.

-starhawk

[phil-in-a-box.livejournal.com]

I loved the bit in Superbad about how real crimes are much harder to solve than they are portrayed to be on TV, and that crime shows leave us thinking that every crime scene must be rife with bodily fluids.

I've only seen a few episodes of those kinda shows. One of them that made me laugh was an episode of CSI Miami in which they recovered a bullet and determined that "it had been shot from a .30-06." How could they know that when there are soooo many commercial and custom cartridges using the same diameter of bullet? (Probably the same weight and rifle-twist, too.)

Oh well.

[tlatoani.livejournal.com]

My folks are forensic anthropologists with decades of experience. They hate that show with a passion.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

Really? I would have thought they'd get a kick out of making fun of it. I used to hang out with pilots and air traffic controllers, and I loved going to airplane disaster movies with them just for the heckling.

[tlatoani.livejournal.com]

Apparently it gets old. ;-)

[zombienought.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing the typos come from props department
folks, and not writers.

And if you're able to suspend your disbelief with
this tripe, I'd like to recommend that you watch
24.

[tlatoani.livejournal.com]

And if you're able to suspend your disbelief with this tripe, I'd like to recommend that you watch 24.

At least CSI doesn't condition its viewers to believe that torture works. The worst thing CSI has done is condition jurors to expect DNA testing in every criminal case, including misdemeanors.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen 24 yet. Hmm.... Maybe that's next.

I like to yell "horseshit!" at my monitor from time to time.

[miami-pony.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, I was going to loan you guys my first season of '24'. (I have DivXd the first third of the first season for you guys, but I'll probably just loan you the DVDs) They didn't really get too torture-heavy until later seasons, which all have a kind of sameness about them anyway. It's a live-action comic-book, though.. so of course it's got all that believability to it. :) It's fun! Jack Bauer kicks ass, and they end every episode with a cliff-hanger, so it's just plain fun to watch even when it gets a bit silly. Just don't take it seriously and you'll be fine.

As far as typos go, there was a typo on the recent 2-hour TV movie of Knight Rider (which was a test-bed for a possible new incarnation of the series) and that typo totally pissed me off! and it was on-screen for about 2 seconds. The car can talk but it can't fucking spell.

[sageincave.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who works in a crime lab. She is a very snappy dresser, even at work.

But that show is soooo fake.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

Oooh! So maybe the wardrobe, at least, is drawn from reality. Heh....

[silverfae.livejournal.com]

CSI: Miami is terrible. But when's the last time you saw such a hot redheaded man?

I love that they use good body language, however. Notice that when he's confronting someone, he steps back one pace with his right foot and turns slightly so his right shoulder rears back. It's a full-on threat move, subliminally telling the opposition that he could just possibly come forward with a right cross to the jaw.

I learned that from a Hell's Angel.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

Meh. He doesn't do it for me. Maybe if he kept his mouth shut, I'd enjoy him more. His heavy, stentorian tones piss me off. Everything he says is uttered with a note of pompous finality. I think he takes acting cues from Shatner.

[silverfae.livejournal.com]

:bursts out laughing:

You're so right! yes, keep your mouth shut, Himbo!

[entropy156.livejournal.com]

Y'know what always irritates me about those shows? The photo and video enhancement nonsense. "Look, there's a tiny dot reflected in the chrome of that far away car in this digital photo. Let's enhance that photo by pulling in until we get a perfectly formed image of our suspect! Never mind the fact that there are only a certain number of pixels in the photo and that zooming in will eventually net you nothing but big colored squares that make everything look like it's made of out of focus Legos....ignore that! We have special T.V. and film software that adds tiny pixels until: Taaadaaaaa! Perfectly clear image! Now....go arrest this guy!"

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. My favourite was when they took some crappy video surveillance footage and got a clear profile of the perp from a reflection in the victim's eye. I yelled at my screen plenty, for that one!

[miami-pony.livejournal.com]

yeah they did that on 24 as well, but only once or twice. they only pull that gem out when they've written the good guys into an impossible situation. ;)

[harpofhyperion.livejournal.com]

I *love* that show ... anything that focuses on the drama of problem solving rulez.

That being said ... a similar gripe -- DNA results do not come back *inside* of an hour ... its more a matter of weeks or months.

The truism is that they have to compress time, for the sake of story-telling -- but why not do something like DaVinci's Inquest, where some investigations would take place, off and on, in the course of a number of weeks? *Much* more realistic ... and has the advantage of a continuing plot thread to draw people back.

But maybe, unlike Canada, the American public doesn't have that long an attention span?

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

I think the Canadian attention span is shrinking, too. But we still don't need tracers on hockey pucks for hockey matches....