Cynical Cinema

The Eighth Season of CSI comes out October 14th from Alliance Films, and it’s a big one. Now that they’ve done seven years of investigating crimes, catching bad guys, and talking science, they needed to go somewhere else. And in Season Eight, that meant focusing on the individual characters in the show. And then getting rid of them. One character just up and leaves, and another is murdered, setting up a dramatic conspiracy theme for next season. Which means that CSI, while it is still good, may well have jumped the shark. The episode where Sarah Sidle (Jorja Fox) leaves is not really that bad, but it’s pretty melodramatic for this show and it IS kind of irritating. The season finale, where a major character gets brutally murdered, shot through the neck, isn’t a bad one, but the set-up for next year could prove to make for some shows this coming season that are just awful. Possibly.

But the one show that stands out for me, because it is just so irritating and terrible, is the one where the CSI crew make an attempt at comedy. It’s an episode called “Two And A Half Deaths”, guest starring Katy Segal (Married With Children) and Diedrich Bader (The Drew Carey Show). Cameo appearances are made by Charlie Sheen, Jon Cryer, and Angus T. Jones, from Two And A Half Men. There is an agent named Stuart Little. There is a rubber chicken, a “closet eater”, and a ton of product placement. Perez Hilton, Titan Springs Water, Maltesers. There are lines like “a mime is a terrible thing to waste”, “what we have here is failure to coagulate”, and “forget it Gil. It’s Burbank.” Throughout this episode, my blood boiled and my skin crawled and I cringed every time someone opened his or her mouth to speak. It was just painful, full of silly, over-the-top acting and an idiotic attempt to skewer the fakeness of Hollywood. A total miss.

A good episode, however, is the one immediately following “Two And A Half Deaths”. It brings up a bunch of questions, like “why do the CSI team members, being scientists, carry guns?” And who is that guy who plays Conrad Eckley? Is he related to John Malkovich in some third-rate way? But for all that, it’s still a pretty good episode. It’s the one where Warrick looks like he may have committed a murder. Although I still find it cheesy and a stretch to start involving the characters themselves in the crimes they investigate, at least this last episode of the season is compelling. Intrigue, emotional responses, and of course the science of CSI are combined very well, in an episode that not only kills off a major character but sets up a major conspiracy theme for the first episode of next year. When that character is killed off, it brings a merciful end to a series of melodramatic events that marred the eighth season, and a merciful end to the eighth season itself. I certainly think that CSI can regain it’s lustre for the ninth season, but the eighth is showing signs of wear.

CSI used to be an awesome show. Bad guys and DNA and blood spatter and all kinds of cool stuff. And it’s still all about that. But it isn’t that good any more. The Seventh Season of CSI shows they have run out of ideas. Two-part episodes where nothing really worthy of two parts takes place, gimmick episodes like the one where the murder victims sit up and talk to each other in the morgue, sensational episodes like the one where the Clockwork Orange kids terrorize Las Vegas. It just isn’t the same any more. But at least it isn’t boring, like CSI New York. And, best of all, it doesn’t involve David Caruso, like CSI Miami. It does, however, involve cool actors like Sean Patrick Flannery, washed-up former “stars” like Danny Bonaduce, washed-up current “stars”, like Kevin Federline, and the always-smokin’-hot Marg Helgenberger.

There are several reasons to watch CSI, the main reason being that if you watch enough of it, you will know how to get away with murders. Now, CSI Season Seven comes with a special feature that will help you learn how to do so without all that pesky episode-watching. Las Vegas: The Real Crime Solvers takes us behind the scene with real-life CSIs, who of course have a much smaller budget and far fewer resources than the TV show. Well, less than the CSIs on the TV show. Come to think of it, the TV show probably has a budget, like, two thousand times that of the actual CSI departments in police stations around the country. Think about how many crimes could be solved if those resources actually went to the police!

Well, the original, (and still best), CSI seems to have maybe run it’s course. So perhaps those resources can be appropriated for a greater cause. Like CSI: Reality, or some such thing. But for now, those resources are being used to distribute DVDs like this one, CSI Season 7, which is worth renting or buying for these three reasons: First, the episodes have deliciously clever names. Like “Fannysmackin’”, and “Loco Motives”. Secondly, Marg Helgenberger is still smokin’ hot. (Although for that, you can always rent the made-for-TV Tommyknockers or the Steven Seagal classic Fire Down Below.) And thirdly, you get to see Kevin Federline punched in the junk. CSI: Complete Seventh Season comes out today, courtesy of Alliance Films.