After the bad experience that was watching the second episode of CSI, I gave in after all and watched the third. It's not quite as terrible, but maintains the concept that almost every piece of information is either found through a staggeringly unrealistic forensic process, or based on plain guesswork by the investigators. While the degree of severity varies, one conclusion is part of all of my past and probably future comments on CSI episodes, but it's so blatant that it still needs to be said every time: the writing of CSI is so terribly inept, it's a guidebook on everything a writer can botch when trying to write a crime story. Episode three, however, is not the worst of the bunch, and not a complete waste of time.
Still, let's first see what I learned in this episode. Having little background noise on a phone call must mean that it was made from somewhere in the desert, because that's apparently the only quiet place in Las Vegas. I guess the soundproofing is absolutely terrible in Las Vegas construction, and there are no basements or so. I also learned that no one above the age of 19 listens to rap music – that's an actual conclusion the investigators use to progress in the case. (To make it seem even sillier, I was going to comment on how it was even an old-school track, but then realised how old CSI itself is at this point and that the track in question was actually pretty recent.)
The investigators are also trying to hear where someone is buried alive in the desert, and communicate with them by shouting, while a helicopter is taking off a few feet away. We get to see the matching of a voice profile, which on the computer screen is a very obvious mismatch, before the machine makes one of those sounds that Hollywood still thinks computers make, before it's magically a match, so perfect that I suspect the lab technician accidentally compared two copies of the same audio file. That's not to mention the magical reversal of a digital filter, and subsequent removal of foreground noise to reveal crystal-clear background sounds. This is the first instance of the hilarious CSI "Enhance!" trope, long since turned into a meme, which reveals how blatantly ignorant the show's writers are about the basics of digital signal processing.
Sara Sidle also needs to physically reenact a scene in a car to figure out where a tied-up hostage's arms could or couldn't be. This leads her to conclude that the victim couldn't possibly have been tied up because there couldn't possibly be any other way to tie someone's hands than in front, and it's also impossible to touch a car seat while being unconsciously dragged into it by an abductor. Sounds like watertight proof, Mrs. Sidle.
The cases themselves are pretty okay in this episode, although the plots and plot twists are straight out of the cliché box. I overall liked the hit & run case, especially because of some good acting on the part of the guest stars, and a well-handled side plot on the psychological toll some cases can have on the investigators, and their temptation to abuse their power. I also learned something about the use of cyanide in gold mining. It's nice to go on a little research excursion after the episode, and find out that not everything was completely made up or misunderstood.
Zooming back out a bit, what this episode also showed me once again is how early on CSI forgot what the main premise of the show was. A lot is being talked about how these investigators are not detectives, and that we're not going to see the usual perspective of a police procedural. These people are scientists, and they're supposed to focus purely on the facts and hard evidence, so that the other forces in law enforcement know what to build their case on. Yet right from the beginning of this episode, we hear how these forensics experts are going to be "in the lead" of handling an ongoing abduction and extortion, with the FBI only standing by to support. As yet more indication of how lousy the writing on CSI is, I guess this is down to the writers simply not having been up to the task that the show's concept set in front of them. They fell back into using the traditional police show template because they couldn't figure out how to tell the story from the perspective of crime scene investigators.
To end on a more positive note, there was another great Gil Grissom quote in this episode. After having described at length her theory on the events, Sara Sidle notices that Grissom hasn't been paying much attention, and asks sarcastically if she had interrupted him. Grissom assures her, absent-mindedly, that she doesn't need to be worried: "I barely heard you."
Review by DanielVIP 4BlockedParent2020-05-31T19:02:55Z
After the bad experience that was watching the second episode of CSI, I gave in after all and watched the third. It's not quite as terrible, but maintains the concept that almost every piece of information is either found through a staggeringly unrealistic forensic process, or based on plain guesswork by the investigators. While the degree of severity varies, one conclusion is part of all of my past and probably future comments on CSI episodes, but it's so blatant that it still needs to be said every time: the writing of CSI is so terribly inept, it's a guidebook on everything a writer can botch when trying to write a crime story. Episode three, however, is not the worst of the bunch, and not a complete waste of time.
Still, let's first see what I learned in this episode. Having little background noise on a phone call must mean that it was made from somewhere in the desert, because that's apparently the only quiet place in Las Vegas. I guess the soundproofing is absolutely terrible in Las Vegas construction, and there are no basements or so. I also learned that no one above the age of 19 listens to rap music – that's an actual conclusion the investigators use to progress in the case. (To make it seem even sillier, I was going to comment on how it was even an old-school track, but then realised how old CSI itself is at this point and that the track in question was actually pretty recent.)
The investigators are also trying to hear where someone is buried alive in the desert, and communicate with them by shouting, while a helicopter is taking off a few feet away. We get to see the matching of a voice profile, which on the computer screen is a very obvious mismatch, before the machine makes one of those sounds that Hollywood still thinks computers make, before it's magically a match, so perfect that I suspect the lab technician accidentally compared two copies of the same audio file. That's not to mention the magical reversal of a digital filter, and subsequent removal of foreground noise to reveal crystal-clear background sounds. This is the first instance of the hilarious CSI "Enhance!" trope, long since turned into a meme, which reveals how blatantly ignorant the show's writers are about the basics of digital signal processing.
Sara Sidle also needs to physically reenact a scene in a car to figure out where a tied-up hostage's arms could or couldn't be. This leads her to conclude that the victim couldn't possibly have been tied up because there couldn't possibly be any other way to tie someone's hands than in front, and it's also impossible to touch a car seat while being unconsciously dragged into it by an abductor. Sounds like watertight proof, Mrs. Sidle.
The cases themselves are pretty okay in this episode, although the plots and plot twists are straight out of the cliché box. I overall liked the hit & run case, especially because of some good acting on the part of the guest stars, and a well-handled side plot on the psychological toll some cases can have on the investigators, and their temptation to abuse their power. I also learned something about the use of cyanide in gold mining. It's nice to go on a little research excursion after the episode, and find out that not everything was completely made up or misunderstood.
Zooming back out a bit, what this episode also showed me once again is how early on CSI forgot what the main premise of the show was. A lot is being talked about how these investigators are not detectives, and that we're not going to see the usual perspective of a police procedural. These people are scientists, and they're supposed to focus purely on the facts and hard evidence, so that the other forces in law enforcement know what to build their case on. Yet right from the beginning of this episode, we hear how these forensics experts are going to be "in the lead" of handling an ongoing abduction and extortion, with the FBI only standing by to support. As yet more indication of how lousy the writing on CSI is, I guess this is down to the writers simply not having been up to the task that the show's concept set in front of them. They fell back into using the traditional police show template because they couldn't figure out how to tell the story from the perspective of crime scene investigators.
To end on a more positive note, there was another great Gil Grissom quote in this episode. After having described at length her theory on the events, Sara Sidle notices that Grissom hasn't been paying much attention, and asks sarcastically if she had interrupted him. Grissom assures her, absent-mindedly, that she doesn't need to be worried: "I barely heard you."