Fuddland

I’m a big fan of the original CSI TV series. I like the fact that its full title is CSI: Crime Scene Investigation; I wish more TV shows would specify what their abbreviations stand for up-front—before there was such a thing as Google it took me ages to remember that CHiPs stood for California Highway Patrol, the crowbarring-in of the lowercase i to turn the abbreviation into an acronym threw me. I thought it stood for a minor word such as is or I. But that’s all in the past now.

I’ve tried to like the spin-off CSIs [Miami and New York], but their inconsistency with the titling compared with the original model irks me—they should be called something like “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation [But This One Takes Place in Miami]”—and some of the characters are just that little bit too laughable to be taken seriously. Every now and then I watch some episodes of the spin-offs to see if things have improved, but there’s always a moment where I feel like punching Horatio on the nose and breaking those stupid shades he insists on taking off in slow motion whenever he’s about to expound a theory or give an order. Last week I was treated to a double whammy of a crossover Miami-New York episode, leaving me reeling from trying to figure out which line I hated more of the following exchange:

Stella

Are you this hot on every case case?

Horatio

Well I made a promise to an eight-year-old boy, and I’m not going to let him down.

Stella

Say no more.

Yuk! Thankfully the original CSI avoids such schmaltz and always comes up with original ideas to keep the shows fresh and original. For example, after six seasons and not much main-character progression, the writers decided to give one of the characters a more interesting back-story—something not directly related to a case they were working on, but enough to make us viewers sit up and take a special interest. So did they kill the character’s wife? Kidnap their mother? Tell them they had six months to live? No.

Nick Stokes grew a moustache. And only for two episodes.

For two weeks it was there. Warrick called him “Moustache Boy” once. No one else mentioned it. And then it was gone. With no explanation. And I want to know why, so I’ll have to keep watching, waiting for the future episode when Gill finally confronts Nick on his bizarre facial hair habits. Clever writers, they know how to keep their audience hooked.