Culture Blues

Tortured by Television: The CSI Trilogy: Night 3 – CSI

Every so often, one of our illustrious contributors can’t come up with something to write about. When this happens, we strap them down in front of a television and force them to take notes. The results are Tortured by Television:

The CSI Trilogy Night 3: CSI

[Pre-show] This is it. This is what it’s all been leading up to. Miami sucked. NY showed some promise. Now, Laurence Fishburne is hot on the trail of a girl he’s pledged to find, and he’s looking to take down the vicious Zeta gang (or fraternity). Let’s revisit my questions:

1)   How integrated are the episodes going to be? The first one seems inconsequential at this point. But NY and tonight’s episode appear to be nicely connected.

2)   Are they going to try to make this story more significant through some contrived device? Barring a last minute reveal, the answer is no. They banked the whole trilogy on their sadist viewers feeling for some white slaves.

3)   Are there any actors/characters that I will really find worthwhile? Not really, and I highly doubt tonight’s episode is going to change things.

Well, I just switched over from my normal Thursday pleasure viewing for you ingrates. Let’s end this!

9:00 And we’re starting off with some skanky looking girl trying to escape from something at a casino. It seems they are once again starting the episode with no reference to what else has happened in the trilogy.

9:02 Fishburne’s search for the girl has been reduced to standing on the strip showing her picture to people who come by. Oh how far the high tech CSIer has fallen.

9:03 They just revealed he’s been back for 10 days. I’d like this scene much more if he was sporting a week’s worth of beard and an untucked shirt with stains on it.

9:04 They just reintroduced us to the girl from the beginning. She’s on the ground with a vicious neck wound and huge pool of blood. Henceforth, she shall be referred to as the dead girl.

9:05 Strange phrases I’ve heard on CSI so far: Ho-vine, Frog Skins. I could tell you what they mean, but I think it would be more fun if you just invent your own definitions.

9:09 How can they examine a body in this low light? I bet real labs have much brighter lights, and less of a blue tint.

9:10 And the dead girl was an imbecile weatherwoman. And probably a hooker (aren’t they all?).

9:11 “It’s good to wish for things.” Has this week’s CSI writing hit a new low?

We'd like you to come downtown, Mr. Beautiful. We have your DNA.

9:14 SWERVE! The dead girl has the missing girl’s blood on her!

9:18 “I think I know where we can find a lot pimps tonight.” Fishburne is still recycling dialogue from Deep Cover.

9:19 They appear to be at the Hater’s Ball.

9:20 Taking a girl into custody because she has a bill with cocaine residue on it? That’s cold, CSI. Also, no one would be dumb enough to think that was going to get them in trouble.

9:26 Well, we’re at the halfway point and basically, the other two shows had nothing to do with this one. Yes, the missing girl from the other episodes is involved, and they’re still on the human trafficking trip. But nothing in this episode really follows from the other two. We don’t know any more about the gang from Miami or the prostitution, organ harvesting, forced surrogacy ring of NY.

9:30 The whole franchise is big on padding thin stories with montages of people taking pictures and lifting fingerprints and doing other crime scene investigative stuff that doesn’t offer any insight into the process and is really not necessary for us to see.

We're about 3 minutes short... so eyedrop really slowly.

9:31 This old guy likes to say “banging” and “playa.” And I like him.

9:35 They’ve been using the livestock comparison for white slaves all week. We get it. Why don’t you just say they were treating them like slaves? Oh, right. Because CBS viewers don’t care about black people.

9:37 The bad guy is a Literature professor! Education is evil!!!

9:40 Two thirds of the way through the episode and we finally get a decent scene. Fishburne and the old guy try to rattle the Lit professor pimp played by the lawyer from Battlestar Galactica (aka Badger from Firefly). Understated fireworks ensue.

9:45 And they follow that scene up with a commercial break and then a montage of Laurence Fishburne shining an “investigative” light into the pimp’s Cadillac and a woman studying security footage from the show’s opening.

9:49 The acting in this murder flashback is terrible.

9:53 Text messages from Caruso and Sinise. Don’t you see? It’s all connected!!

9:55 After all this, all Fishburne had to do to bring her back was send a Twitter saying that her mom loves her (I’m not actually sure what he did, it was some sort of e-bulletin that went to all the hookers in Vegas, but you get the idea). Don’t you see? Love is the answer!

Post-Show:

You're all right, Guilfoyle.

Thoughts: I knew going in that this was a sweeps stunt. And I suspected that the “trilogy” title might have been a stretch. But I never suspected that I would sit through 3 separate CSI shows that only shared superficial connections and the participation of Laurence Fishburne. Now it’s time for my questions, the bitter lightning round:

1)   How will the stories be integrated? Horribly. Pathetically. Miserably.

2)   Are they going to make the case more significant through contrived devices? Only if we’re counting a final message right out of an after school special. And we’re not.

3)   Any worthwhile characters or actors? No. Fuck them all (to be fair, I kind of liked Paul Guilfoyle’s character. But when I looked up his name, I realized that CSI lists 10 cast members. It seems a lot smaller than that. They’re all so interchangeable).

How Torturous Was It? This one was worse than NY but not as bad as Miami. The trilogy on the whole was a complete waste of my time. Did I mention that the three episodes had nothing to do with each other?

Would you watch again? Absolutely not. Not any of them. Three reasons. 1) They suck. 2) I’m super bitter about watching 3 episodes of CSI this week. 3) I find there to be something nefarious about these shows reinforcing the idea that every case gets DNA testing mid-investigation and that police forces are magical places with limitless funding. Not to mention the fact that this Trilogy ended with one girl coming home and they made no mention of the fact that 9 other girls died during the course of Fishburne’s passionate investigation. That’s depressing isn’t it? Well, so is watching the CSI Trilogy.