CSI:LV season 10 in the UK
- Thread starter Solitaire
- Start date
Athersgeo
Rookie
Getting in early this week (the wrap up of the Rascal Flats storyline's currently on but it is just beyond painful to watch, thus, I'm in here) because I think, ladies and gentlemen, I may just have found an episode of CSI that has thoroughly put me off.
Quite simply, I think this is THE most dreadful episode of CSI that I've ever seen. (Mascara might be worse - but I haven't seen that so I can't compare.) I don't quite know WHAT the writers were smoking when they came up with this, but I do sincerely hope that they don't smoke it again.
UGH.
I think the whole thing was silly. Beyond silly, in fact, it was more like an episode of Miami than anything which, in my book, isn't a good thing. (Not a Miami fan - as you may have already picked from when the trilogy was airing!)
And you know what bugged me most about the episode? It wasn't the bad acting, the ludicrous plots, the dire conversation between Greg and Nick on the subject of 110 or 240 [insert physics rant here] or the idea of Ray's father having been in Vietnam (according to the CIA guy) when he was a Korea Veteran [which I'm going to come to]. No. It was the colour of the German's passport!
I mean, you'd think a show like CSI that has a research department as large as CSI would have the wherewithall to figure out that EU passports are red/maroon colour, universally and without exception!
I also don't exactly go much on them randomly inventing a German election, either. Given that Angela Merkel is an Eastern German and was (if I remember correctly) largely hailed as a saviour for Germany in the same way Obama was, this DOES make me wonder how long they've been sitting on this particular story. Was it, perhaps, originally written as Grissom and Sara investigating it? Hmmmmmmm.
Moving on to the Ray/Korea/Vietnam thing: I'm letting the writers off that one because I don't think it's a goof at all. The CIA guy's line was "[Vietnam] was a strange place to go on leave with a war staring us in the face", so he's clearly not saying Ray's father served during the Vietnam war (although he might have done, come to think - at least in the early stages of it), but rather visited the country at some point during the lead up to it.
I'm also letting the writers off the Nick not liking country music thing because, as far as I'm aware, that's the first time he's ever expressed an opinion on any kind of music (singing along doesn't count - I can sing along to about thirty Disney soundtrack songs; all that proves is that I worked for McDonalds for long enough for the canned music to get ingrained. If I never have to hear 'Bear Necessities' ever again it'll be too soon...) and because he has the good taste to like The Yard Birds - though I'd argue Cream were the better Eric Clapton related super group.
Hm.
I think I know what I'm going to use to blot out the memories of the rest of this episode.
So, what did anyone else think?
*wanders off humming "Badge"*
Quite simply, I think this is THE most dreadful episode of CSI that I've ever seen. (Mascara might be worse - but I haven't seen that so I can't compare.) I don't quite know WHAT the writers were smoking when they came up with this, but I do sincerely hope that they don't smoke it again.
UGH.
I think the whole thing was silly. Beyond silly, in fact, it was more like an episode of Miami than anything which, in my book, isn't a good thing. (Not a Miami fan - as you may have already picked from when the trilogy was airing!)
And you know what bugged me most about the episode? It wasn't the bad acting, the ludicrous plots, the dire conversation between Greg and Nick on the subject of 110 or 240 [insert physics rant here] or the idea of Ray's father having been in Vietnam (according to the CIA guy) when he was a Korea Veteran [which I'm going to come to]. No. It was the colour of the German's passport!
I mean, you'd think a show like CSI that has a research department as large as CSI would have the wherewithall to figure out that EU passports are red/maroon colour, universally and without exception!
I also don't exactly go much on them randomly inventing a German election, either. Given that Angela Merkel is an Eastern German and was (if I remember correctly) largely hailed as a saviour for Germany in the same way Obama was, this DOES make me wonder how long they've been sitting on this particular story. Was it, perhaps, originally written as Grissom and Sara investigating it? Hmmmmmmm.
Moving on to the Ray/Korea/Vietnam thing: I'm letting the writers off that one because I don't think it's a goof at all. The CIA guy's line was "[Vietnam] was a strange place to go on leave with a war staring us in the face", so he's clearly not saying Ray's father served during the Vietnam war (although he might have done, come to think - at least in the early stages of it), but rather visited the country at some point during the lead up to it.
I'm also letting the writers off the Nick not liking country music thing because, as far as I'm aware, that's the first time he's ever expressed an opinion on any kind of music (singing along doesn't count - I can sing along to about thirty Disney soundtrack songs; all that proves is that I worked for McDonalds for long enough for the canned music to get ingrained. If I never have to hear 'Bear Necessities' ever again it'll be too soon...) and because he has the good taste to like The Yard Birds - though I'd argue Cream were the better Eric Clapton related super group.
Hm.
I think I know what I'm going to use to blot out the memories of the rest of this episode.
So, what did anyone else think?
*wanders off humming "Badge"*
I agree! :lol: Except I think Mascara was worse. But this one...I didn't even cap it.
I had absolutely no interest in going through it again even for that.
tootes
Rookie
I agree! :lol: Except I think Mascara was worse. But this one...I didn't even cap it.
Don't think i have ever seen Mascara, but if this episode was anything to go by.. don't think i'll be rushing off to find it
Have nothing to say other than it was completely & utterly pants !!
Well.. there was one positive, Sara telling Ray about her & Grissom's honey moon, but that is purely because i find it impossible not to love all things even remotely connected to GSR
!! But in no way did it make up for the other 58 minutes of, well.. pants-ness Here's hoping for a better episode next week !!
x
Athersgeo
Rookie
From the ridiculous that was last week's episode to the...well if not quite sublime, certainly a massive improvement of this week's episode.
It's actually almost difficult to comprehend how the two episodes can actually be the same show. It wasn't without its faults, that's for sure, but this was something that was approaching CSI's best, in that it was a complex case that made you think - and I like that.
Possibly the biggest fault was having it be an old case of Sara's that we hadn't actually seen before. CSI does this a lot, in that if they're revisiting an "old" case, it's almost invariably a case we've never heard of before - and while that makes a degree of sense (that each episode is just a snapshot of a day/couple of days in their lives), just occasionally, it would carry more punch if the villain was someone we'd seen before. This is definitely one of those times. How much more effective would it have been if Simon Rose had been someone like the killer from Empty Eyes? As it was, all Simon Rose was was a fairly cardboard cut out of an abusive husband with a spectacularly slimy lawyer.
The second biggest fault is the random disappearance of Greg. It's possibly not QUITE as random as Nick's vanishing act in Recipe for Murder ("I'll go talk to the hostess"; hostess is the murderer and Nick isn't seen again for the rest of the episode!) but "Greg and I will work on something else"? Vague much, Catherine? I can only assume that there WAS something else that got cut for running time, because otherwise Catherine's line's more or less a non sequitor.
I'm also not quite sure I can picture a 14 year old Sara Sidle going out and getting drunk to try and make herself seem older. That conversation with Steve seemed really out of place. Then again, it could have been Sara trying to empathise and winging it so...
OTOH, though, I can thoroughly see a 14 year old Nick just wanting to get to 15. And interesting that a piece of fanon (Nick being small for his age as a kid) is now officially canon - are all us Nickfic writers psychic or just darned good judges of these things? (Or have the writers secretly been prowling fanfiction.net and picking up ideas? [God help us all if they're reduced to that - then again, that WOULD explain last week...]) :lol:
Also: Nick with children. Especially with the scene in autopsy and then the scene right at the end. No dialogue; just George's expressions and gestures...:adore: (And, on a not unrelated note, did anyone else catch the similarities between the autopsy scene and Nick's autopsy sequence in 4x4?)
Okay. Few more thoughts in brief:
-Hodges! And a serious Hodges for a change - though it felt a little pod-persony. Come to think of it, when was the last time we saw Hodges have a proper snark at anyone? Odd as it sounds, I kind of miss Hodges' snark...
-Wendy! Cute scene between her and Nick and she remembered to breath, too *grin*
-Brass! Didn't quite get the full on Brass-snark going, but this was a little more like the Brass of old, which has definitely been missing this season.
-Said it before but I'll say it again: the Dr Ray epithet needs to die now. It got old extremely quickly during the Miami episode of the trilogy and it's got even older since the Vegas writers picked it up. Please to be dropping it like a hot rock, thank you.
-So old CSIs don't die or retire, they just become part of the evidence? Given how much of a moron George was, he HAS to have been part of Dayshift...
-Sacrificial sea bass :guffaw:
-Raise an appendage if you were waiting for the trojan couch line. I also have to say that LF really did rather squander it...or was Ray just assuming Nick wouldn't get the reference? (Nick, after all, didn't go for the Aeschylus [which, rather scarily, is in Firefox's dictionary!] references in The Descent of Man - on the other hand, that MIGHT have had something to do with the excruciating mangling that Ray [or LF] gave the name. I mean, I DID study the play concerned and it took me five minutes to work out what Ray was babbling about. [Yes, in addition to being a physics geek I'm also a classics geek - this always seems to confuse people...])
-Was it my imagination or did Mason's dad REALLY look like the prison guard looking after Ray during his visit with Simon Rose?
-And speaking of the visit...anyone else just slightly suspicious that Nate Haskell managed to say "Hi"?
All in all, I think this is possibly vying with Death and the Maiden for "favourite episode" this season for me.
So, what did anyone else think?
It's actually almost difficult to comprehend how the two episodes can actually be the same show. It wasn't without its faults, that's for sure, but this was something that was approaching CSI's best, in that it was a complex case that made you think - and I like that.
Possibly the biggest fault was having it be an old case of Sara's that we hadn't actually seen before. CSI does this a lot, in that if they're revisiting an "old" case, it's almost invariably a case we've never heard of before - and while that makes a degree of sense (that each episode is just a snapshot of a day/couple of days in their lives), just occasionally, it would carry more punch if the villain was someone we'd seen before. This is definitely one of those times. How much more effective would it have been if Simon Rose had been someone like the killer from Empty Eyes? As it was, all Simon Rose was was a fairly cardboard cut out of an abusive husband with a spectacularly slimy lawyer.
The second biggest fault is the random disappearance of Greg. It's possibly not QUITE as random as Nick's vanishing act in Recipe for Murder ("I'll go talk to the hostess"; hostess is the murderer and Nick isn't seen again for the rest of the episode!) but "Greg and I will work on something else"? Vague much, Catherine? I can only assume that there WAS something else that got cut for running time, because otherwise Catherine's line's more or less a non sequitor.
I'm also not quite sure I can picture a 14 year old Sara Sidle going out and getting drunk to try and make herself seem older. That conversation with Steve seemed really out of place. Then again, it could have been Sara trying to empathise and winging it so...
OTOH, though, I can thoroughly see a 14 year old Nick just wanting to get to 15. And interesting that a piece of fanon (Nick being small for his age as a kid) is now officially canon - are all us Nickfic writers psychic or just darned good judges of these things? (Or have the writers secretly been prowling fanfiction.net and picking up ideas? [God help us all if they're reduced to that - then again, that WOULD explain last week...]) :lol:
Also: Nick with children. Especially with the scene in autopsy and then the scene right at the end. No dialogue; just George's expressions and gestures...:adore: (And, on a not unrelated note, did anyone else catch the similarities between the autopsy scene and Nick's autopsy sequence in 4x4?)
Okay. Few more thoughts in brief:
-Hodges! And a serious Hodges for a change - though it felt a little pod-persony. Come to think of it, when was the last time we saw Hodges have a proper snark at anyone? Odd as it sounds, I kind of miss Hodges' snark...
-Wendy! Cute scene between her and Nick and she remembered to breath, too *grin*
-Brass! Didn't quite get the full on Brass-snark going, but this was a little more like the Brass of old, which has definitely been missing this season.
-Said it before but I'll say it again: the Dr Ray epithet needs to die now. It got old extremely quickly during the Miami episode of the trilogy and it's got even older since the Vegas writers picked it up. Please to be dropping it like a hot rock, thank you.
-So old CSIs don't die or retire, they just become part of the evidence? Given how much of a moron George was, he HAS to have been part of Dayshift...
-Sacrificial sea bass :guffaw:
-Raise an appendage if you were waiting for the trojan couch line. I also have to say that LF really did rather squander it...or was Ray just assuming Nick wouldn't get the reference? (Nick, after all, didn't go for the Aeschylus [which, rather scarily, is in Firefox's dictionary!] references in The Descent of Man - on the other hand, that MIGHT have had something to do with the excruciating mangling that Ray [or LF] gave the name. I mean, I DID study the play concerned and it took me five minutes to work out what Ray was babbling about. [Yes, in addition to being a physics geek I'm also a classics geek - this always seems to confuse people...])
-Was it my imagination or did Mason's dad REALLY look like the prison guard looking after Ray during his visit with Simon Rose?
-And speaking of the visit...anyone else just slightly suspicious that Nate Haskell managed to say "Hi"?
All in all, I think this is possibly vying with Death and the Maiden for "favourite episode" this season for me.
So, what did anyone else think?
*quietly shuffles in and flashes passport, verifying the legality of stepping foot on foreign soil*
Greetings. I figured that I should get this out of the way now in order to spare you from any future heartache and/or aneurysms. The Dr Ray epithet you despise so much will be used again and again. Sorry.
Athersgeo
Rookie
*giggles*
Greetings. I figured that I should get this out of the way now in order to spare you from any future heartache and/or aneurysms. The Dr Ray epithet you despise so much will be used again and again. Sorry.
*sigh* I figured as much. Maybe they'll forget about it over the summer instead...
Solitaire
CSI Level Two
*quietly shuffles in and flashes passport, verifying the legality of stepping foot on foreign soil*
Greetings. I figured that I should get this out of the way now in order to spare you from any future heartache and/or aneurysms. The Dr Ray epithet you despise so much will be used again and again. Sorry.
'checks passport'
That is a shame, 'Dr Ray' is really annoying. It is mainly Sara that seems to use it. Yeah, maybe after summer......
I also enjoyed this episode. The ending was done really well, and I too think George does really well with scenes with kids.
Greg? I thought Cath was punishing him for a moment. Athersgeo, I agree they must have dropped something from the episode, because it makes no sense. And he was looking super hot, so it was a great deprivation :lol:
How stupid was George? And he was a police officer? Clever kid though, coming up with that plan. If a couch had been left in the street in my parents road, some kids would have come along and set fire to it. (has happened before
)Not one of my favourites, but enjoyable all the same.
ohh- and who is Nate Haskell- I didnt understand that bit?
lal
Pathologist
*quietly shuffles in and flashes passport, verifying the legality of stepping foot on foreign soil*
Greetings. I figured that I should get this out of the way now in order to spare you from any future heartache and/or aneurysms. The Dr Ray epithet you despise so much will be used again and again. Sorry.
'checks passport'
That is a shame, 'Dr Ray' is really annoying. It is mainly Sara that seems to use it. Yeah, maybe after summer......
I also enjoyed this episode. The ending was done really well, and I too think George does really well with scenes with kids.
Greg? I thought Cath was punishing him for a moment. Athersgeo, I agree they must have dropped something from the episode, because it makes no sense. And he was looking super hot, so it was a great deprivation :lol:
How stupid was George? And he was a police officer? Clever kid though, coming up with that plan. If a couch had been left in the street in my parents road, some kids would have come along and set fire to it. (has happened before
Not one of my favourites, but enjoyable all the same.
ohh- and who is Nate Haskell- I didnt understand that bit?
I have agree with Solitaire , i didn't get that bit about Nate Haskell either , overall i thought it was a good episode , it was a shame we didn't get to see more of Greg , can't wait to see next week episode .