And now we come to a topic very close to my heart... CSI
I have been off and on watching CSI reruns since the winter (I think), and unavoidably I have developed a few likes and dislikes about the various series. For example, I like CSI: Miami and CSI: Las Vegas the most, and CSI: New York the least. Of course, Rufus has made CSI: Miami my absolute favorite. It's funnier, and more yellow which warms my seasonally affected heart. Even further, this new favortism is due to something about CSI: Las Vegas that is starting to bother me. Almost every time I watch this show, I see at least one of the characters have a mini-breakdown over the case that they are working on. For a police show, they do this way too much. The characters on Miami and New York have their moments, but no one throws as many fits as CSI: Las Vegas. Now I am not for a moment suggesting that police officers and CSIs and everyone else is not allowed to have feelings, or be deeply affected by violent crime. However, the characters on Las Vegas seem to be consistently on the verge of a breakdown over their career. And it's not just all crime shows--the other CSIs balance their characters' feelings very well.
In other news, they have a very temporary cast. I don't watch any of these in order, but I was talking to an actual fan of the show who knew all of the characters who had left or died and I was surprised. I know it's run for a quite a while and I'm just now half-watching, but I've never seen so many characters leave and the show is carried on.
I agree on all counts! This is why House is tiresome to me. The characters act like they're in high school.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I loved about vanilla Law & Order back when I would use it as background for hours a day. The detectives didn't really care about the people they were investigating! Briscoe would snark cynically, they'd do their paperwork and go home for the evening, and the world went on.
Law & Order: SVU started bringing in all sorts of things about how their jobs affected their personal lives. I'm sure it does, and I sympathise with the real detectives who have to deal with victims of sex crimes, but it can't be as concentratedly dramatic as the television makes it seem. There are people who develop and protectively maintain professional distance.