We made it to another week! And a very eventful one at that, with CSI airing its 200th episode last night. So, this week’s case file includes the show’s executive producers talking about the show’s impact despite having run for nine years, and the cases getting more ridiculous, if you look at it one way. (You might also want to read what the director of last night’s episode, William Friedkin, had to say.) Also, to keep things rolling, a couple of spoilers for the teams in Las Vegas and Miami.
Item one: Executive producers talk about the show’s impact. First, the obvious reasons for the CSI franchise’s success: “People have a morbid fascination with death,” said executive producer Carol Mendelsohn. “You die on the show, we cut you open … we take out your organs and stuff ‘em in plastic bags and then stuff the whole thing back inside you. So, I think there is something about an audience being able to see that. You don’t need a word of dialogue to understand that that canoed body is no longer Mr. Sam Jones.”
Fellow executive producer Naren Shankar adds: “We do shows that are blackly comedic and overtly comedic, and just by changing it up that way, sometimes you can turn a fact of life, which is death, into something that’s something to laugh at and not be scared by. That’s a great way to do it because the extremely dramatic true crime, truly moving stories about loss, that’s sort of our bread and butter.”
Something else that CSI has changed? The way people look at anything on screen that relates to crime. “Go back and watch a detective movie or a crime movie that was made in the 70s or in the 80s,” Shankar said. “I guarantee you, if the detective is looking at something and making an observation, you’re going to be sitting there going, ‘Snap zoom to it, get in there, show it to us.’ And it won’t come, and you’ll feel like something is missing. People expect to be taken to places where the human eye cannot go, to be shown the way things work at an intricate, even sometimes on a molecular level.”
Item two: a pretty short CSI spoiler. Entertainment Weekly’s Michael Ausiello revealed plot details for the Las Vegas team’s season finale, and it’s obviously murder. How it happens? A batch of vintage casino chips, each worth a thousand bucks, lands on the wrong people. Go sing the theme song. Whoooo are you?
Item three: a not-so-short CSI: Miami spoiler. If you watched the last two episodes of Miami—with the Russian mob getting a grip on the team, to the point of squeezing out Ryan (Jonathan Togo) and making him do things—then that’s not the end of it. If you’re wondering, like me, why he somehow got away with compromising the case, then you might speculate after hearing this on a different direction.
“All of the Russian mob stuff that they’ve been building in the last few episodes is going to come to a head,” series star Eva La Rue told E! Online. “They’ve seemed to be picking off one member of the team at a time, and they’re trying to kind of break everybody up so they can take them all down. So we’re going to see how that plays out in the last three episodes.” Start wondering, then, who Sarnoff’s men (definitely, unless there’s another explanation) will target next. Delko (Adam Rodriguez) and Calleigh (Emily Procter) being broken apart, perhaps?
We are also looking for a CSI Guest Blogger! Know a lot about CSI? Like to give your thoughts on each episode? Apply by e-mailing us at: [email protected]
-Henrik Batallones, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Sources: MediaWeek (via CSI Files), Entertainment Weekly, E! Online
(Screen capture courtesy of MediaWeek)
Staff Writer, BuddyTV
