CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (usually referred to as CSI) is a popular Alliance Atlantis/CBS police procedural television series, running since October 2000, about a team of forensic scientists. It is set in Las Vegas, Nevada in the present. (The choice of Las Vegas is not just for show: the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department's crime lab is the second most active in the nation, trailing only the FBI's lab in Quantico, Virginia.)

The unit investigates mysterious, unusual, and sometimes gruesome deaths to determine the circumstances. They also investigate other serious crimes, but death by foul play is the major staple of the series.

The main characters include:

• Gilbert (Gil) Arthur Grissom (played by William Petersen) is the night shift team supervisor for the Las Vegas CSI unit, and a forensic entomologist with a degree in biology from UCLA. Nicknamed "The Bug Man", Grissom knows sign language and has inherited his mother's otosclerosis, a disease which was causing him to slowly go deaf which developed into a major plot thread throughout the third season. The surgery (and subsequent recovery) required to correct this onset of otosclerosis symptoms occurred in the unshown period between the third and fourth seasons. His hobbies include his work, cockroach racing, reading and roller coasters. His team is made up of four main CSIs, with assistance from a team of technicians. During the first four seasons, his team included Catherine Willows, Nick Stokes, Warrick Brown and Sara Sidle. With the creation of the swing shift team in the middle of the fifth season, his team now consists of Sara Sidle, Greg Sanders and Sofia Curtis.
• Catherine Willows (Marg Helgenberger) was second-in-command of the nightshift for the first four seasons, assuming command when Grissom was out of town or otherwise on leave. She recently moved teams to become supervisor of the new swing shift team. Willows, a blood spatter analyst from Bozeman, Montana, first worked as a stripper, in order to pay her way through college at UNLV where she studied medical technology. She has a young daughter, Lindsey. Tragically, after her ex-husband's murder, she was unable to find evidence to assist in convicting his killer. In the episode entitled Inside the Box, Catherine discovers that her biological father is shady casino owner and murder suspect Sam Braun.
• Sara Sidle (Jorja Fox) is a materials and element analyst. A physics major at Harvard University, Sidle previously worked for the San Francisco coroner and crime lab. She was recruited by Grissom, a man she sees as more than just a boss. Sidle sometimes takes her assignments a bit too personally, especially if the victim is a woman. She was raised in a violent and abusive family, and lived in foster care after her mother killed her father. The details of this unpleasant past only started to be explictly revealed during the latter part of the fourth season with a pattern of alcoholism seen to emerge. This culminated in a somewhat fortuitous escape from a driving under the influence (DUI) charge. As the fifth season developed it became increasingly obvious that this was not the extent of her problems as she began to diplay instances of insubordination and open hostility to witnesses.
• Warrick Brown (Gary Dourdan), a Las Vegas native and a chemistry major from UNLV, is an audio/visual analyst. A major theme of the first season (and especially the pilot episode) was his addiction to gambling and his subsequent attempts at recovery. He was part of Grissom's team for the first four seasons, but was transfered to the swing shift team under Willows in the middle of the fifth season.
• Nick Stokes (George Eads), an easygoing and friendly ex-fraternity brother with a degree in criminal justice, is a hair and fiber analyst from Dallas, Texas. When he was 9 years old, he was sexually abused by a female last-minute babysitter. He was part of Grissom's team for the first four seasons, but was transfered to the swing shift team under Willows in the middle of the fifth season.
• Jim Brass (Paul Guilfoyle) was the head of the CSI unit until he was moved back to the police homicide division in the pilot episode. He's now Captain in the homicide division and works usually with the CSI team. He's divorced with a daughter named Ellie who was revealed in a later episode as not biologically his.
• Greg Sanders (Eric Szmanda) is a young lab technician who idolizes Grissom and became a CSI during the fifth season joining Grissom's night shift team.
• Al Robbins M.D. (Robert David Hall) is the coroner. Married with three children, he's often the only one who understands Grissom. He has two prosthetic legs and likes playing in rock bands for fun.

The series' recurring characters include Archie Johnson (Archie Kao), a computer and technical expert; Assistant Coroner David Phillips (David Berman); former dayshift supervisor turned Assistant Director of the Crime Lab Conrad Ecklie (Marc Vann) and lab tech David Hodges (Wallace Langham).

The series is known for its unusual camera angles, high-tech gadgets, detailed technical discussion, and graphic portrayal of bullet trajectories, blood spray patterns, organ damage, methods of evidence recovery (e.g. fingerprints from the inside of latex gloves), and crime reconstructions.

Although real-life criminal science investigators hardly leave the lab other than to conduct field tests and rarely (if ever) interview criminal subjects, CSI is acclaimed for portraying a little-known aspect of police procedures. Without dramatic embellishment in showing the responsibilities of the investigators, the show might not be as great a success. However, real forensic experts have complained about those embellishments. For instance, they have noted that the forensic examinations are unrealistically swift in coming to conclusions with equally fanciful tools. One example is the fictional computer databases the characters use to examine trace evidence like fingerprints against records in seconds, when the actual analysis is a long and meticulous process. That in turn has led to real police detectives making unrealistic demands on the experts. There are also concerns that such TV shows cause juries to have unrealistic expectations about forensic evidence presented in court. This has come to be known as the "CSI effect" (see External links for further description). Another problem of CSI is not its falsities but it's accuracy. Some FBI agents and police detectives have expressed distress at what CSI does to criminals. The more intelligent felons, says a FBI SAC are starting to get more clever with the dawn of forensics shows like CSI. In shootings, more and more often shell casings have been removed from the site of the crime. Stabbings sometimes have no prints, and criminals have just generally found a way to be smarter at what they do.

The show's characteristic gadgetry and occasional use of yet-to-be-invented technology has moved the show nominally into the genre of science fiction and garnered it with a 2004 Saturn Award nomination for best science fiction, fantasy, or horror television series.

A spinoff series, CSI: Miami, began in 2002; this stars David Caruso. A second spinoff, CSI: NY, starring Gary Sinise, premiered in fall 2004. Meanwhile, similar shows, such as NCIS (formerly Navy NCIS), Crossing Jordan, and Medical Investigation have appeared on both the CBS and NBC networks.

As of the 2003–2004 season, the series was the #1 popular show in the United States according to the Nielsen Ratings. It has also been credited for a large increase in college applications to forensic science programs. It has been speculated that the show's popularity, especially after 9/11, is partly due to its underlying theme of skilled experts solving problems. The show's storylines reiterate that there are people working to expose both criminals and conspiracies, seeking justice no matter how these threats elude pursuit.

In July 2004, George Eads and Jorja Fox were briefly fired by CBS, allegedly over contract disputes. Eads had been hours late for work on the first day of filming for the fifth season, and Fox had allegedly not submitted a letter demanded by CBS confirming that she would be on time for shooting. The disputes were resolved in just over one week, and the two were rehired by CBS.

Although the show is set in Las Vegas, the production is actually based in Santa Clarita, California, and most scenes are filmed in or around Santa Clarita. The cast and crew do occasionally travel to Las Vegas to film on location.

History of the show

Originally, the show was to be broadcast on ABC. At the time, ABC was the number two network, behind NBC, and CBS was on a decline which was becoming difficult to reverse. However, when previewed to ABC reviewers in 1999, the show was rejected as being too confusing for the average person. CBS quickly picked up the show for its Friday slot, and the show and the network shot to the top – CSI regularly averages 25 million viewers for new episodes and a remarkable 15 million for reruns. ABC fell in the ratings so far that it is in competition with Fox for number three.

The show was moved to Thursdays in 2000, in a successful attempt by CBS to challenge NBC – a line-up which included Friends, Will & Grace, and ER. CSI maintained its ratings in its new timeslot, and when Friends came to an end in 2004, CSI's ratings continued to strengthen, putting pressure on NBC's new Thursday shows.

CSI syndication rights were purchased by the Spike TV network in 2003 for a then record price of US$1.6 million per episode. The nightly reruns quickly became that network's top rated show.

CSI is sometimes credited with the resurgence of American crime dramas, although earlier shows like Law & Order had been strong for years and had already spun off a successful series before CSI premiered. Along with spin-offs CSI: Miami (2002-, CBS) and CSI: NY (2004-, CBS), the show is credited with reviving the genre. Shows launched to try and siphon off some of CSI's ratings included Crossing Jordan, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, and Medical Investigation. Also, in an effort to increase ratings further, CBS has introduced other shows in the same genre, including Cold Case and Without a Trace.

Notably prevalent among most of them is a focus on the forensic aspect of criminal investigations. Physical clues are intensely scrutinized, and nearly invisible evidence is often emphasized, such as a tiny piece of thread or a dandruff flake.

Awards

• 2005 Screen Actors Guild Award – Best Ensemble Cast in a TV Drama
• 2005 People's Choice Awards – Choice TV Drama
• 2005 People's Choice Awards – Choice TV Actress – Marg Helgenberger

Trivia

• You often hear the characters referring to a four-nineteen (4–19,4/19, etc.) or sometimes a 4–45. These are the Las Vegas Metro 400 Event codes. The often-used 419 stands for 'deceased person,' while the less-used 445 is 'explosive device threat'. Please see External links for more examples.

• CSI theme song is Who Are You by The Who (Pete Townshend & Roger Daltry)

• Episode 223: The Hunger Artist – Title (and plot somewhat) taken from a short story by Franz Kafka called A Hunger Artist.

• Episode 508: Ch-Ch-Changes – The outlaw doctor who performs "benevolent" sex reassignment surgery goes by the name "Dr. Carl Benway." Dr. Benway is the name of "an amoral physician" in much of the writing of William S. Burroughs. "Ch-Ch-Changes" is a variation on the song "Changes" from the David Bowie album Hunky Dory. (The lyrics[1] to "Changes" could be interpreted as Bowie's mediation on physical and emotional metamorphosis in a time of questioning one's true gender.)
  • The original showing of this episode closely coincided with Transgender Day of Rememberance

• Episode 524: Grave Danger- This season finale episode directed by Academy Award winner Quentin Tarantino shares a very similar situation from Tarantino's second Kill Bill film: CSI Nick Stokes is captured and buried alive in a wooden coffin while an Internet camera broadcasts the whole thing to CSI headquarters. In Kill Bill, the Bride (Uma Thurman) was also captured and buried alive in a coffin.

External links

• CBS' official CSI website
• CSI Files – unofficial news website
• CSI Guide – unofficial guide to all of the CSI shows
• CSI Recaps – unofficial reviews and spoliers to all CSI episdoes at Television Without Pity
• The "CSI effect" described at BBC News
• CSI: Crime Scene Investigation at the Internet Movie Database
• CSI: Miami at the Internet Movie Database
• CSI: NY at the Internet Movie Database
• Examples of Las Vegas Metro 400 Event Codes: Example 1 and Example 2