A great game would be to take turns making up more of these one liners while putting on a pair of sunglasses.
This show is a guilty pleasure of mine. It's so supremely ridiculous that it's hard not to smile when you're watching it. The CSI's in this show, pretty much all of whom work dressed to the 9's and could easily moonlight as underwear models, work as brilliant scientists in the most colorful, glitzy, crazy high-tech office I've ever seen, full of glass walls and neon oranges and blues (and that's about as well lit as a jazz club or a nudie bar). They solve every crime that crosses their path with indisputable certainty (as of course they would! After all, duh, it's science, dude!) and the perp always confesses at the end, almost always with that self-satisfied "yeah, you got me. Now let me tell you all about my brilliant diabolical plan!" schtick reminiscent of 1980's TV villains. Horatio is never wrong, never fooled and always a step ahead of everyone. In fact, he never even has to chase anyone; he's always already figured out whether and where they're gonna run, and has secretly positioned himself to intercept them without even his fellow CSI's any the wiser!
And the dialog... oh sweet Jesus the dialog... the very epitome of assuming the worst of your audience's intelligence. My favorite part is when they stop to explain the most painfully obvious ramifications of evidence they find, where it sounds about like:
"We got a return on those fingerprints you brought us from the murder weapon, Horatio. They don't match Jones."
"So Jones didn't kill him... someone else did."
or:
"The police didn't apprehend anyone at the scene."
"So then the killer must still be at large."
It's pretty much the exact opposite of The Wire, which is realistic, clever, grungy, centered on the poor, low tech, and expects a lot from its audience in the sense of being able to make connections not explicitly made on camera.
2 comments:
sublime absurdity of David Caruso's
Not only the one-liners are sublime absurd - David Caruso and his acting are as well. he is a joke.
I used to watch this with my roommate every Monday night... I even recognized some of those famous one-liners. How can television get away with that kind of cheesiness? Perhaps because some of us -- who otherwise like much sophisticated television -- harbor shows like this as guilty pleasures. Shear Genius, anyone?
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