I haven’t posted in this section for an awful long time, but some of the reviews I read in this thread were interesting enough for me to want to take a look at the premiere of this season – hence me having a look.
I have no idea what happened in Season 7, so why Eric was wandering around the marshes with a head wound and how Horatio and any other member of the team could have so misplaced him is beyond me. Perhaps there’s a logical explanation, but it seems pretty much contrived to me without knowing the how and why to be honest.
A sad occurrence was having a horrible giggling fit when I saw Frank harbouring such a ridiculous moustache with his hair kind of fluffed out at the sides because he looked like (and I’m really sorry about this) a clown to me. I’m really glad they didn’t give you a shot of his shoes because I had already imagined them to be size twenties and flat for the majority of them. Sorry...
Aaanyhoo, my likes were:
I liked how some shots were filmed and disliked intensely the way others were shot. For instance, I really liked how the beginning was shot, but hated the shuddering/shaking of the camera in the ambulance and when Eric was being wheeled into the emergency room.
It was great to see Calleigh and Horatio together in a scene and that scene not have me shivering and diving beneath a blanket because the chemistry between them was sooooo cold and detached. There seemed to be genuine feeling between the two at the beginning and it was really nice to see. It seriously gave me a bit of hope. Having said that though, their scene after coming out of the gun room was somewhat puke worthy. It really made me cringe because it seemed so false. Sadly right there and then I resigned myself to the fact that the wonderfully
natural and easy going chemistry these two actors/characters shared in Seasons 1-3 is now firmly lost.
I loved Horatio’s scene in the hospital room. Huuuuge, huge, huuuuuuge Kudos to DC for such a wonderful piece of acting. I’m not ashamed to say that I shed a couple of tears. The sad thing is, it now seems evident to me that Horatio has somehow forgotten about Madison, Ray Jnr and Yelina. Still, even though after the fact it annoyed the hell out of me when realising that, it did not spoil my enjoyment of the scene at the time. Still a massive dip of my hat to DC.
I really liked the scene between Horatio and Eric at the end. It was good chemistry between the two and it was a really nice lead in to the end scene.
My dislikes were:
A complete and utter lack of character continuity. I imagine the beginning was set before Eric goes into the Crime Scene Investigation scene, however, to go from Truck Driver/Scavenger to an LEO of such a high degree I think is completely and utterly ludicrous. If it isn’t so far fetched then it seriously felt like it was. I had always assumed that Eric had trained as an underwater diver and came into the CSIs through that avenue and not from simply watching Horatio work a scene.
They also showed Eric to be a bit of a dum-dum, a little slow on the uptake of things and that rankled me a bit. I have always had the impression that Eric was an intelligent person and the only time he regressed a bit was when he was recovering from being shot in the head. *sigh*
Also, I was under the impression that Eric and Speedle knew each other waaaaay before Horatio knew either one of them. Goes back to the, weren’t Calleigh, Speed and Eric on the team before Horatio arrived to take it over?
Um, the flashback was completely and utterly confusing, firstly, because who exactly was having the flashback? Horatio or Eric? Still, on that front, I came to the conclusion that it was Horatio’s flashback because the only time you ever saw Calleigh, Eric and Tripp was when he was around... but then that does beg the question, why on earth would Horatio be having such a flashback?
Also, Horatio in charge of the CSI team back then? I was under the impression he came from the Bomb Squad, to Detective, to the CSI, and that Megan was in charge when he made that final transition – and that he only eventually took over the team when Megan went walkabout because she was finding it hard to work after the death of her husband.
The flashback also made me wonder just how much pulling power Horatio had before he’d even joined the CSI team (when we first see him on-screen) because wasn’t Calleigh, Eric and Speed already on the CSI team before Horatio joined them in 2002? *shrug* Either way, the flashback still remains confusing, simply because the character continuity was completely skew-whiff, off kilter... um, actually non-existent.
My nitpicks which annoyed me:
One minute at the secondary murder site, Horatio is touching the body without gloves, perhaps destroying what little evidence there might have been, and then we see him putting on the gloves to touch the body in the ME room – a time when any and all evidence should have already been garnered from the body, thus making the putting on of the gloves completely irrelevant to me. They got that the wrong way round for me.
I’m afraid Calleigh did grate on me in the flashbacks. She was more like the Wide-Mouthed frog on a permanent high, than the Calleigh I knew and adored in the first three seasons. And she was soooo green that it hurt to see. Surely she would know if she was out of order or not. It seemed a blatant way of fishing for the compliment Horatio gave her and I really don’t like that in a character – and the look she had on her face when Horatio walked away had me reaching for a sick-bag (I imagined violins and a speech bubble with “My hero” stamped inside of it –UGH!!!)
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Still, all in all, I think I liked it – insofar as to say that I didn’t grind my teeth and I never felt a rant coming on. Yes, there were some major things that annoyed the hell out of me, most especially the lack of character continuity and that it once again seemed more to be a massive, and somewhat erroneous, pat on the back for the Horatio character for getting together such a team, but, all in all, I have to say that the episode has left me with a feeling that it showed promise, far more promise than last seasons premiere.
I’m gonna give it a go this season, and hope my subdued feelings that this incident with Eric will eventually bring Horatio closer to his team again.
