...Oh wow what a great, great question... Woo Hoo!
In my opinion, CSI Miami now gives me the feeling that you can’t have both within a program, that you have to have one
or the other, whereas the best shows for me manage to incorporate both character and crime in one episode.
For instance, in CSI Miami there have been countless episodes which have stuck to the main concept of the show, it being a Crime Scene Investigation, and yet also managed to inject a huge amount of character establishment and character development as well. Such as in
“Under the Influence” where we had Calleigh’s father enter her place of work and confess that he may have committed a murder while driving under the influence of alcohol.
During this entire episode we had Ryan investigating the forensics of the site of the murder and so on, and yet we also got to see how Calleigh deals with her father’s drinking, how she has had to deal with it in the past and how that has affected her, her father and her family life and how it still affects her.
Then there was
Witness to Murder which, for me, above all other episodes of CSI Miami, was saturated in the character development and establishment of the Horatio Caine character on a personal level, but that it also still kept firmly to the concept of the show. ...And so on and so on...
I mean, I could list a heck of a lot more episodes, but I think it would save me time if I said, “Just view the first three seasons of CSI Miami, because that’s how this show managed to give us both in an episode and in equal quantities too.”
On that, in my opinion, I don’t think you can have one without the other, so for me, it’s not a question of what I want to see more of – because if I look at Season 4 of CSI Miami I’m still getting the crime related episodes and I’m still getting the character episodes, but what I think is missing is a lovely mergence of the two in an episode.
Also, in CSI Miami, there now seems to be a complete ignorance of what has been established in the past concerning the characters, (I don't know if that's out of sheer laziness or that it is to do with ignorance), and that all of the storylines are being shown for the sake of the storyline and not from a credible character POV. It's like the PTBs think of a storyline and then mould the character involved to fit that storyline, which is why I think there has been an abundance of some awful,
awful out-of-character occurences in CSI Miami of late and some unbelievable, horribly conceived storylines to boot.
So, anyway, all in all, I would like to have my cake and eat it and be able to watch an episode that has the Crime as the focal point, (because that is essentially the concept of the CSI franchise), and one which also manages incorporate some character development/establishment as well.
In all honesty, I don’t think that’s too much to ask for because, in my opinion, that’s exactly how CSI Miami started out.
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