The cases this week are okay. We get to follow the investigations into a female body found with a severed leg in Lake Mead, and a university student found hanged in a dorm room after not having been accepted into a fraternity. However, the episode illustrates two major problems that, in my recollection, have plagued CSI for the rest of its history: deaths that don't really make physical sense, and an almost complete absence of forensics or crime scene investigation.
I've mentioned the second problem in earlier CSI reviews, but it's never been as blatant as it is in episode four. Like a mantra, the main characters keep repeating that they're scientists, not police officers or detectives. You certainly wouldn't be able to tell it from the events in this episode. We see them taking witness statements, interviewing suspects, and even notifying relatives of the deceased, none of which a CSI should be doing. No previous episode has demonstrated so obviously that CSI only pretended to be different from other crime procedurals on the surface, while in fact telling the same old detective stories from the same old perspective. If the show didn't keep insisting on its purported premise, which was obviously more than the writers could chew; if it just gave in and called its main characters "detectives", not pretending that they're forensic experts or lab technicians, the plots would start to make more sense. But as it is, the plots and characters just keep contradicting themselves.
Two quotes of this episode exemlify this. When a CSI says "We should talk to the family" after a victim has been identified, or "Don't release anyone downstairs, we want to talk to them – all of them" at a crime scene, I wonder how this script could ever have passed review. Obviously, the writers once again forgot who their characters are, or how the show was supposed to work. This is not what I was told these characters' job is, so my reaction as a viewer to those lines of dialogue is complete confusion. How come nobody in the writer's room saw the problem there?
The little actual crime scene investigation we get to see is a mixed bag. The floater case doesn't do too badly in this regard, although we get another reenactment with a high degree of silliness. The other case, though, shows why ultimately, it's maybe better that the writers ended up not actually writing a show about crime scene investigation, because often, they are really bad at it. We have two CSIs looking for nondescript "fibers" in a dorm room, while moving across carpet, moving piles of laundry… what's going on here? The riddle is finally, and also not for the first time, resolved through a level of carelessness by the suspect that is hard to believe. Dropping a piece of evidence with the victim's blood still on it in the waste basket of his own dorm room, and not even emptying that waste basket, makes me doubt that the suspect was accepted to university on academic merit.
Apart from CSIs doing a detective's job, both cases are really solved through the autopsy, and not anything CSI does. Maybe the creators should've written a show about medical examiners instead? Although that involves a lot of science and lab work, things the writers have shown they do a very poor job at researching, so maybe it's for the better they didn't.
I'm also starting to see the pattern that deducing the actual events of a murder are not as much based on the evidence, as the show so often claim it is. More often, CSIs develop a number of theories, and interpret the evidence to fit the one they like most. In the floater case, the plot doesn't really explain why suspects end up being considered innocent. The incriminating evidence is still there, just not being examined further, and the potential motives also still apply. It's just that a newer theory comes along that the investigators, for reasons not really explained in the plot, seem to think is more likely – and that's the end of that, case solved. As a true fan of crime fiction, I once again feel cheated. At least give me some semblance of a possible trail of deduction. At the end of this episode, I don't really feel like the case has been solved, I'm just being told that the final flashback was the correct version, and I just have to accept it. And once more I'm baffled about how writing this bad makes it to the stage of shooting.
The second problem I mentioned in the lead is what I most remember from watching CSI all those years ago, when it was still running: that the deaths themselves often don't make much sense. This is not the case for the frat boy, whose case is actually based on a true story from the 1950s. But the circumstances of the Lake Mead victim's death seem very strange. First of all, we're lead to believe that she died before falling into the water, because of the lack of water in her lungs. However, the reconstruction shows how she falls into the lake just moments after the blow that supposedly killed her. I don't know enough about the subject to be sure that it couldn't happen that way, but what definitely doesn't make sense is the explanation for the severed leg. The fisherman was trying to pullstart the outboard motor, but he wasn't successful. Yet we hear that the victim's femur, the "strongest bone in the human body", was sliced clean through, and there is no epidermal brusing. I'm sorry, CSI writers, but there's no way an outboard propeller turning a few ticks while failing to start has that much cutting power.
We also get to see another one of Gil Grissom's experiments, which seem to become sillier by the episode. This time, he's trying to find a lost boat by recreating the winds and currents at Lake Mead from the night in question, in a circular water tub, using such precise lab equipment as a desk fan. Given that he has the necessary information about wind direction and currents, looking at a map might have been a simpler and more efficient way of getting the same information. Not to mention a much more precise way, given that his approximation of the area as a circle seems more likely to lead him down the wrong path, with all the wave reflections. Of course that would've been a less screen-effective method, as the music and editing of the scene try to make it look like a very impressive scientific experiment. But a MacGyver he is not – his methods are so naïve that it feels like the writers tried to make him look like he's very bad at his job. He definitely should take Sara Sidle's hint and start looking into computer simulations.
I'll come to some of the positives of this episode now. We're getting more scenes about investigators getting personally involved in their case, or sympathising with the victims and their relatives – including the problems that can lead to. I feel like CSI handled these topics pretty well so far, and this episode is no exception. It does seem a bit concerning that the behaviour of the main characters has led to the second avoidable death in just four episodes. They have to be careful not to catch up to the body count of the killers they hunt. I do hope that Warrick's and Catherine's mistakes will have further repercussions, and are not just brushed off because they're the "good guys", like so many U.S. crime procedurals do.
What makes me hopeful in that regard is that Gil Grissom and Catherine Willows are really fleshed out as characters in this episode, among other things by fighting about just that issue. Peterson and Helgenbeger are the clear highlights of this episode. Both the mutual respect and disagreements of their characters come across very well. Grissom accuses Willows of letting her personal experiences cloud her judgement and impact her work, with Willows' response being that the solution also can't be to just not have a personal life in the first place. Ouch! Peterson once again gets the best moments of the episode. My favourites are his little smirk at Sanders asking for a raise, and his reassurance that CSI works as a team and not competitively, while his face clearly shows a man upset at not having been the one to find the next crucial clue first. But Helgenberger gets into her own as well. While Willows came across as unlikeable in previous episodes, I wasn't sure if that was a conscious writing decision. Her ways and demeanor are starting to make more sense now, and her cheeky attitude is refreshing. Out of all the main characters, she is closest to a traditional detective working the streets, but at least for her it seems like a deliberately added character trait.
Pledging Mr. Johnson has very weak investigative plotlines, but does a good job at developing the show's characters. I guess the point at which I will finally grow tired of watching more of this series is when those characters start to become boring or implausible. There isn't really much appeal in watching more murder mysteries where the deaths don't make sense, the investigation is implausible, and the solution is not explained.
Review by DanielVIP 4BlockedParent2020-06-01T08:59:03Z
The cases this week are okay. We get to follow the investigations into a female body found with a severed leg in Lake Mead, and a university student found hanged in a dorm room after not having been accepted into a fraternity. However, the episode illustrates two major problems that, in my recollection, have plagued CSI for the rest of its history: deaths that don't really make physical sense, and an almost complete absence of forensics or crime scene investigation.
I've mentioned the second problem in earlier CSI reviews, but it's never been as blatant as it is in episode four. Like a mantra, the main characters keep repeating that they're scientists, not police officers or detectives. You certainly wouldn't be able to tell it from the events in this episode. We see them taking witness statements, interviewing suspects, and even notifying relatives of the deceased, none of which a CSI should be doing. No previous episode has demonstrated so obviously that CSI only pretended to be different from other crime procedurals on the surface, while in fact telling the same old detective stories from the same old perspective. If the show didn't keep insisting on its purported premise, which was obviously more than the writers could chew; if it just gave in and called its main characters "detectives", not pretending that they're forensic experts or lab technicians, the plots would start to make more sense. But as it is, the plots and characters just keep contradicting themselves.
Two quotes of this episode exemlify this. When a CSI says "We should talk to the family" after a victim has been identified, or "Don't release anyone downstairs, we want to talk to them – all of them" at a crime scene, I wonder how this script could ever have passed review. Obviously, the writers once again forgot who their characters are, or how the show was supposed to work. This is not what I was told these characters' job is, so my reaction as a viewer to those lines of dialogue is complete confusion. How come nobody in the writer's room saw the problem there?
The little actual crime scene investigation we get to see is a mixed bag. The floater case doesn't do too badly in this regard, although we get another reenactment with a high degree of silliness. The other case, though, shows why ultimately, it's maybe better that the writers ended up not actually writing a show about crime scene investigation, because often, they are really bad at it. We have two CSIs looking for nondescript "fibers" in a dorm room, while moving across carpet, moving piles of laundry… what's going on here? The riddle is finally, and also not for the first time, resolved through a level of carelessness by the suspect that is hard to believe. Dropping a piece of evidence with the victim's blood still on it in the waste basket of his own dorm room, and not even emptying that waste basket, makes me doubt that the suspect was accepted to university on academic merit.
Apart from CSIs doing a detective's job, both cases are really solved through the autopsy, and not anything CSI does. Maybe the creators should've written a show about medical examiners instead? Although that involves a lot of science and lab work, things the writers have shown they do a very poor job at researching, so maybe it's for the better they didn't.
I'm also starting to see the pattern that deducing the actual events of a murder are not as much based on the evidence, as the show so often claim it is. More often, CSIs develop a number of theories, and interpret the evidence to fit the one they like most. In the floater case, the plot doesn't really explain why suspects end up being considered innocent. The incriminating evidence is still there, just not being examined further, and the potential motives also still apply. It's just that a newer theory comes along that the investigators, for reasons not really explained in the plot, seem to think is more likely – and that's the end of that, case solved. As a true fan of crime fiction, I once again feel cheated. At least give me some semblance of a possible trail of deduction. At the end of this episode, I don't really feel like the case has been solved, I'm just being told that the final flashback was the correct version, and I just have to accept it. And once more I'm baffled about how writing this bad makes it to the stage of shooting.
The second problem I mentioned in the lead is what I most remember from watching CSI all those years ago, when it was still running: that the deaths themselves often don't make much sense. This is not the case for the frat boy, whose case is actually based on a true story from the 1950s. But the circumstances of the Lake Mead victim's death seem very strange. First of all, we're lead to believe that she died before falling into the water, because of the lack of water in her lungs. However, the reconstruction shows how she falls into the lake just moments after the blow that supposedly killed her. I don't know enough about the subject to be sure that it couldn't happen that way, but what definitely doesn't make sense is the explanation for the severed leg. The fisherman was trying to pullstart the outboard motor, but he wasn't successful. Yet we hear that the victim's femur, the "strongest bone in the human body", was sliced clean through, and there is no epidermal brusing. I'm sorry, CSI writers, but there's no way an outboard propeller turning a few ticks while failing to start has that much cutting power.
We also get to see another one of Gil Grissom's experiments, which seem to become sillier by the episode. This time, he's trying to find a lost boat by recreating the winds and currents at Lake Mead from the night in question, in a circular water tub, using such precise lab equipment as a desk fan. Given that he has the necessary information about wind direction and currents, looking at a map might have been a simpler and more efficient way of getting the same information. Not to mention a much more precise way, given that his approximation of the area as a circle seems more likely to lead him down the wrong path, with all the wave reflections. Of course that would've been a less screen-effective method, as the music and editing of the scene try to make it look like a very impressive scientific experiment. But a MacGyver he is not – his methods are so naïve that it feels like the writers tried to make him look like he's very bad at his job. He definitely should take Sara Sidle's hint and start looking into computer simulations.
I'll come to some of the positives of this episode now. We're getting more scenes about investigators getting personally involved in their case, or sympathising with the victims and their relatives – including the problems that can lead to. I feel like CSI handled these topics pretty well so far, and this episode is no exception. It does seem a bit concerning that the behaviour of the main characters has led to the second avoidable death in just four episodes. They have to be careful not to catch up to the body count of the killers they hunt. I do hope that Warrick's and Catherine's mistakes will have further repercussions, and are not just brushed off because they're the "good guys", like so many U.S. crime procedurals do.
What makes me hopeful in that regard is that Gil Grissom and Catherine Willows are really fleshed out as characters in this episode, among other things by fighting about just that issue. Peterson and Helgenbeger are the clear highlights of this episode. Both the mutual respect and disagreements of their characters come across very well. Grissom accuses Willows of letting her personal experiences cloud her judgement and impact her work, with Willows' response being that the solution also can't be to just not have a personal life in the first place. Ouch! Peterson once again gets the best moments of the episode. My favourites are his little smirk at Sanders asking for a raise, and his reassurance that CSI works as a team and not competitively, while his face clearly shows a man upset at not having been the one to find the next crucial clue first. But Helgenberger gets into her own as well. While Willows came across as unlikeable in previous episodes, I wasn't sure if that was a conscious writing decision. Her ways and demeanor are starting to make more sense now, and her cheeky attitude is refreshing. Out of all the main characters, she is closest to a traditional detective working the streets, but at least for her it seems like a deliberately added character trait.
Pledging Mr. Johnson has very weak investigative plotlines, but does a good job at developing the show's characters. I guess the point at which I will finally grow tired of watching more of this series is when those characters start to become boring or implausible. There isn't really much appeal in watching more murder mysteries where the deaths don't make sense, the investigation is implausible, and the solution is not explained.