Police Central
CSI on Video
| Crime Scene Investigation - CSI television series episodes on video. |
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| C.S.I. Crime Scene Investigation - The Complete Second Season |
| The second season of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation consolidates the show's well-deserved popular appeal, while beginning to explore (gently at first) beneath the slickly professional surface of the investigators themselves. Gradually we learn more about what makes Grissom and his astonishingly gifted forensics team tick, beyond merely that they are workaholics who seem to require no sleep at all. The show's trademark reveals of vital evidence--be it on the autopsy slab or under the microscope--add a fresh spin to what is, at heart, a good old-fashioned whodunit series. William Petersen brings the requisite air of antiquarianism to a character whose meticulous demeanor and love of order consciously inherits the mantle of Sherlock Holmes (whose vast collection of tobacco samples and bottles of chemicals are the ancestors of CSI's high-tech crime lab). This is a series in which scientific evidence-gathering is elevated to the status of a religion. "When a tree falls in the forest, even if no one is around to hear, it does make a sound," affirms Grissom with the calm assurance of a yogi on the path to Enlightenment. And just when CSI starts to seem a little too pat, just when the trail of clues seems a little too neat, the show always seems able to throw a surprise or two at us: perhaps there has been no crime after all; perhaps the evidence concerns a completely different crime altogether; or perhaps, as in one brave episode concerning brothers implicated in multiple murders, the evidence simply isn't good enough to convict the right man, even when Grissom knows which one really is guilty. As a result, every episode is simply compulsive viewing. --Mark Walker
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| C.S.I. Crime Scene Investigation - The Complete First Season |
| Murder, and its tale-telling aftermath, is the compelling subject of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Since it premiered on CBS on October 6, 2000, CSI was a ratings triumph, spawning a spinoff (CSI: Miami) and positioning itself for long-term success. As the first season demonstrates, creator Anthony Zuiker's foolproof formula was established early on, bolstered by a fine ensemble cast and requiring minimal tweaking as the season progressed; its Las Vegas-based "criminalists" eventually became "CSI" steeped in the scientific minutiae of forensic investigation, but the series arrived essentially intact, with an irresistible (and seemingly inexhaustible) supply of corpses and the mysteries that surround them. Influenced by the graphic precedent of movies like Seven and Kiss the Girls, CSI matches morbidity with dispassionate methodology; viewers are so fascinated by the investigative process that they're unfazed by intimate autopsies and internal (i.e., digitally animated) views of traumatized flesh, bone, and sinew. While keeping abreast of cutting-edge technologies, CSI combines the ingenuity (and fallibility) of villains with the appealing humanity of its heroes. CSI director and entomologist Gil Grissom (played by series coproducer William Petersen) is introverted but ethically intense; he's both mentor and moral compass for his night-shift team, including a former stripper-turned-CSI (Marg Helgenberger); a recovering gambler (Gary Dourdan); an eager ace (George Eads) with room for improvement; a workaholic (Jorja Fox) who can't always remain emotionally detached from her cases; and a chief detective (Paul Guilfoyle) who's a necessary link to police procedure. Like The X-Files, CSI supports its characters with feature-film production values, employing a Rashomon structure that turns murder into a progressively accurate study of cause and effect. Script quality is consistently high ("Blood Drops" and "Unfriendly Skies" are exceptional), direction is slick and sophisticated, and the mysteries are complex enough to invite multiple viewings. Despite a regrettable shortage of DVD features, CSI's inaugural season remains addictively worthy of its lofty reputation. --Jeff Shannon
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| C.S.I. Miami - The Complete First Season |
| As Lt. Horatio Caine (David Caruso) notes in episode 4 ("Just One Kiss"), "The evidence, as always, will speak for itself." In other words, CSI: Miami follows the same super-successful formula as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Fortunately, this instantly popular spin-off established its own unique identity from the start. Like CSI, the Dade County criminalists of CSI: Miami solve murders using forensic science. Unlike the Vegas crew, however, they're cops with the power to arrest, their coroner (Alexx Woods) talks to dead people, and almost everybody speaks Spanish. Sometimes their crime scene is a swamp, sometimes a resort hotel. Either way, the skies are always sunny--the gators always biting. Real-life Florida resident Caruso is joined by Khandi Alexander (NewsRadio) as Woods, Emily Procter (The West Wing) as ballistics expert Calleigh Duquesne, Adam Rodriguez (Roswell) as underwater recovery expert Eric Delko, and featured player Rory Cochrane as Tim "Speed" Speedle. Cochrane (Dazed and Confused) wouldn't become a full-fledged cast member until the 12th episode ("Entrance Wound"). Meanwhile, Kim Delaney (Caruso's former NYPD Blue cast mate) wouldn't join until the first ("Golden Parachute"), but left after the 10th ("A Horrible Mind"), reportedly due to a lack of chemistry with Caruso. Just as CSI has made the most of its location with stories about showgirls and casino owners, so has CSI: Miami exploited its surroundings for all they're worth. Pilot episode "Cross-Jurisdictions" (a crossover with CSI), for instance, was loosely based on the murder of Miami-based designer Gianni Versace. Other notable episodes include "Camp Fear" with Joan of Arcadia's Amber Tamblyn as a detention camp cadet and "Dead Woman Walking" with Karen Sillas (Under Suspicion) as a victim of radiation poisoning. Like its parent program, CSI: Miami quickly became a ratings powerhouse and was followed by CSI: New York in 2004. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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| C.S.I. Crime Scene Investigation - The Complete Third Season |
| Now firmly established as the top-rated television drama, by its third year CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is a show positively glowing with confidence. Even when individual cases seem either too contrived or too easily resolved, the indefatigable night shift at the Las Vegas PD crime lab always look the part, solving conundrums and discovering microscopic damning evidence while, apparently, never shedding their own loose hair or skin cells all over the supposedly quarantined crime scenes. In reality, Catherine Willows's flowing blonde locks would contaminate any evidence she collected, but in the world of CSI only the bad guys leave body parts behind--the CSIs themselves are so good they're positively pristine. The 23 episodes of season 3 on this five-disc set present more deliciously bizarre situations for the problem-solving sleuths: cannibalism, snuff movies, dwarfs, death while drag racing, bodies falling from the sky, and various dismemberments all tax the team's acumen. These are all double or multiple-case episodes, though in a characteristic trick of the writing sometimes apparently unrelated murders turn out to be connected (or vice versa, as in "Blood Lust," in which a road-accident victim is not what he seems, and the death of the driver at the hands of an angry mob is made all the more tragic). The mix of genuine forensic science with the glossiest Jerry Bruckheimer production values, plus the virtues of a good ensemble cast headed by William Peterson's modern-day Sherlock Holmes, remains as compelling as ever. --Mark Walker
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