Crime Drama TV

Four months after being introduced on CSI as the new lab head, has Ray Langston, Lawrence Fishburne’s character on CSI, receive the approval of the show’s loyal followers?

The New York Post takes a look at how he is doing after taking over in January…

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Lawrence Fishburne, who recently joined the cast of CSI and became the replacement to William Petersen’s character, Gil Grissom, revealed that he nearly was not going to be part of the cast for the very reason that — he hates to see blood.

His character, the lead in a forensic investigative team, has to deal with dead bodies, blood, grime and gory details thorough out the show and the actor had some reservations.

He reveals in an interview “I’m not good with that stuff. They gave me a few books at the outset and I opened one of them, saw some pretty intense photos and immediately closed the book.”

In order to learn more about his character, Lawrence Fishburne had to learn from real-life crime scene investigators. The experience, he says, wasn’t agreeable with him —  “I have had an invitation to ride along with some CSIs in Los Angeles, but I need time to prepare myself mentally and emotionally for what those experiences will be because it’s not something that most human beings do see.”

Source: WENN

Buffy alum Charisma Carpenter has been signed to guest star on CSI, TV Guide reports the other day.

The episode she will appear on is scheduled to air much later this season (or three episodes following the one for this week), but it seems the actress has apparently finished filming her scenes and has called the experience “fun and memorable.”

Charisma’s role is that of a skydiver in the episode Descent of Man.

The actress, of late, has been keeping herself very busy with guest appearances. She is expected to also be seen on Dollhouse and Private Practice this season but has also worked on a project where she is a star herself in the Sci-Fi Channel original movie, House of Bones, which is still unaired.

Teen sensation Taylor Swift will be making a cameo appearance on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation this coming March 5th. The episode will be entitled Turn, Turn, Turn.

The young singer has revealed in an interview that she is a big fan of the show and actually dreams of appearing on it as a character who dies.

Here is a video preview:

The departure of one of TV’s well-loved characters in a crime series drew big numbers last Thursday. Some 24.25 million people watched as Grissom leaves his lab in Las Vegas, bids a polite farewell to Catherine, his partner at work, and rushes South America to be with the one he loves, Sara.

Did you watch that episode and did you love the way they put closure on Grissom’s character?

According to CBS, this episode drew the highest in any scripted show for this season.

William Petersen, who plays Grissom, has been replaced by Laurence Fishburne, who has been working in the lab with him for a while now. And he isn’t exactly a so-so actor.

Will Fishburne draw the numbers week after week, much like how Petersen and the original cast did for the last nine seasons?

Agent Grissom’s final appearance on CSI will be this coming Wednesday, January 15th. It should be an episode to watch for, especially with CSI being the most watched series on the planet. Curious fans would wanna know how the acclaimed character, much loved (and will probably be missed a lot) by its audience, would do his exit.

But even with all the anticipation, there is one person who says he won’t be missing Gil Grissom. In an interview with EW, William Petersen, who plays the character, said:

• “The reason I’m leaving is because I’m afraid I’m becoming too comfortable. It’s ‘CSI’ — they pay me a lot of money, and I don’t have to work very hard anymore. I’ve got it all figured out. And I just realized, God, as an artist, I’m going to atrophy. You do anything for nine years, it becomes somewhat rote. I didn’t want to be on the show because they were paying me money and I liked the money. I didn’t want to be on the show because it saved me from having to go look for other jobs. Just didn’t want it. It was too safe for me at this point. So I needed to try and break that, and the way to do that, for me, is the theater. I won’t miss Grissom, It was a complete life for me that’s reached its end, and it’s reached it in the right way, I think. So I won’t miss Grissom. And I hope that the audience won’t miss him either.”

Source

This was a pretty interesting episode of csi. Basically this chubby boxer makes many enemies who all wanted to kill and while they all may have tried the thing that killed him was a freaking lawn chair. The irony is resounding. He was shot with a crossbow, Injected with rattlesnake venom and fed food he was allergic to. He survived all that just to die because of a lawnchair. Im not saying he didnt deserve it but damn. I’m speechless…

The original CSI is by far the best out of the CSI’s. Although it’s not the most believable of shows, I think that with any show on television there is a required suspension of disbelief. Method man makes another guest appearance as “drops” showing off his sizable acting abilities. This week there was a man shot in a limo and a girl thrown from/dragged by a car. As usual somehow the crimes are linked together. Why can’t they just be unrelated murders. Do all csi murders have to be in pairs? But at least there were a couple of twists and turns like the fact that the brother of the guy greg ran over in “self-defense” was involved in the murders. (By the way I don’t think you have to run over a guy who is going to throw a rock at your car, sounds like excessive force to me) I do have to say though that tying these characters from other episodes gives it more of an authentic feel. The history between greg and the family kept the drama interesting. It is always interesting to me to see the imagined racism by minority victims on these shows. Basically it all boiled to the dead guy in the limo killed the girl and the friend of the guy the girl turned down at the bar killed the guy in the limo. Oh and drops killed that guy in “self defense”. Grissom finishes it off with a question of greg’s morality and we all go home happy waiting for next weeks episode. P.S. The dead guy in the limo was the haitian from heroes. Click here to see what the real csi do.

Wow. This one was a little weird. This week’s story revloved around a cult of believers in lizardy aliens and the dead cult leader’s wife. Enrico Colantoni from Veronica Mars plays the cult leader, who has conned the believers into killing his wife and covering up the crime.

but let’s talk about what was really important this episode - Grissom. We get another Grissom/Sara scene in which they watch a Godzilla movie in bed and Sara discovers the letter Grissom wrote to her while he was at Walden Pond. Some people are acting like Grissom/Sara is finally canon. To those people, I say; It’s been canon since the last season finale. Where have you been, my friend? Also? Grissom has a dog. Just thought I’d throw that little tidbit out there.

Anyway, that’s not even relevant compared to the last scene, in which we see Grissom constructing a miniature room. OH NOES! Could Grissom be the Miniature Killer?!?!

My money’s on “no”. I think Grissom’s just trying to get in the killer’s head and see what it takes to build an exact 1/2″ scale model of a room.

Comments? Theories? Leave ‘em in the comments.

The screencap above is not from CSI. It’s from the short-lived sci-fi series Firefly. I just want you to have this image of a grown man playing with dinosaurs in your mind, so you might begin to understand why “Burn Out” makes my soul weep.

In “Burn Out”, two boys are missing and the team is in a rush against time to find them. Nick works an arson that happens to be connected; the victim is a convicted pedophile (played by Alan Tudyk) whose house was set on fire by a neighbor who suspected him. The CSIs are a little suspicious of this story and when they dig further, the truth is revealed.

The boys were hanging out with Alan Tudyk’s character because the one boys’ gandfather, who watched them after school, was a strict man. The night they went missing, the grandfather had knocked the other boy around and hit his head on a wall. They ran away to Alan and since the boy’s concussion went untreated, he suffered a seizure and died. Knowing that this looks really bad, Alan hid the boy’s body and the other boy ran away. He’s found safe and sound, but Alan’s character goes to jail.

Make no mistake; Alan Tudyk is an amazing actor. In fact, this episode really showcases his range really well. But in my mind, he is Wash from Firefly. So seeing him talk about seducing young boys? More than just a little disturbing to me. This is a fantastic episode, but it’s one that I would really prefer not to see again. I’ll stick to watching my Firefly DVDs.

Last night’s episode was a repeat, as was much of television programming. This episode a woman was strangled with a rosary and crucified in a church and the team unravels a love triangle between the woman, a car salesman, and a priest. The priest and the woman, who was pregnant, were in love. He was leaving the church for her and everything. The car salesman killed the woman, Charlie, in a jealous rage. Except, oops, the baby’s his.

I don’t know why, but for some reason my television wants me to see all my TV boyfriends in pain this week. Greg’s back in the field trying to work through the trauma of being beaten up by Kevin Federline and his posse in “Fannysmacking”. He still has huge bruises on his face, although I imagine the bruises to his ego and soul due to being beaten up by Fed-Ex are much larger. Oh sweetie, come here and let Lindsay make it better.

I wasn’t really impressed with this episode. The surprise ending of finding out the baby was the car salesman’s is extremely similar to “Feeling the Heat” and “Primum Non Nocere”.

That’s all I got. Numb3rs is a repeat tonight, but I’ll still be back with a recap on Monday.

It’s the middle of the regular TV season, so I thought I’d give a brief overview of my thoughts on the shows I will be covering and their current plot lines. FYI: A brief review of each episode will be posted the day after the epiode airs with the exception of Numb3rs, which will be posted on Mondays.

Veronica Mars
Veronica Mars is the only linear drama I will be covering. All the rest are your standard procedurals. I really like how the three mysteries formula is working; it keeps the show fresh and we don’t get any filler episodes. My suspect for Mystery 2: The Return to O’Dell’s Cave is Tim the TA. Also? LAMB IS DEAD. I’M GOING TO GO CRY IN A CORNER NOW, THANKS.

Bones
Bones isn’t a great procedural - in fact, one might even call it mediocre - but it’s entertaining nonetheless. I like that they’re going somewhere with the whole Booth/Brennan romance thing and adding some non-crime-related drama to spice it up a little. Although the therapist thing has got to stop. I don’t like the therapist and I think he’s crap at his job. I will elaborate on Thursday.

Criminal Minds
I. Love. This. Show. One of the things that first got me into procedurals is my personal interest in criminal psychology; I’m really more interested in the why than the how when it comes to crime and Criminal Minds is where I get my fix. My only problem with the show is that the writers have so many characters to juggle that we often get short-changed on character development with the more minor characters like J.J. and Garcia (who is my BFF). The addiction storyline with Reid bugs just a little, mostly because he’s my TV boyfriend and I can’t stand to see him hurt, but I’m waiting until this week’s episode to pass my judgement on the storyline as a whole.

CSI
Where it all started. CSI was my first crime drama. I’ve been watching it - no lie - since I was 12. Listen closely, y’all, ’cause this is the only time I’m going to say it: this is the only CSI I will be covering. Miami and New York? Crap. I will not have their sub-par excuse for crime drama taint this blog as long as I write it. That said, I like that the Vegas writers aren’t hitting us over the head with Grissom and Sara’s relationship. They’ve been very subtle and I applaud them. Greg’s civil suit makes me a bitter, angry person. He’s another one of my TV boyfriends. I would really like the writers to give Catherine, Warrick, and Nick (THANK YOU, George Eads for getting rid of that very sad pornstache and 70s hair) something interesting to do. They really feel like they’re fading into the background.

And last but most certainly not least, Numb3rs
I hate math. I really do. And yet I cannot seem to tear myself away from the adorkable math genius Charlie Eppes and his scrumptious, FBI agent brother Don. The cases are interesting mostly because you wonder what else they can solve with math. One of these days Charlie’s going to bust out an equation to find out who ate the last cookie or something. Where Numb3rs really excells is with the balance of crime and personal moments. I look forward to the Eppes family moments, which never feel gratuitous or out-of-place.

So there you have it - the line-up for the Crime Drama TV blog. I’ll see you tomorrow with some thoughts on Veronica Mars.

The Law and Order and CSI franchises have certainly made their mark on Crime Drama TV. While Law and Order is the older of the two, CSI continues to outrank Law and Order in the ratings. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation holds the number 2 spot for the week of December 18-24 and CSI: Miami and CSI: New York come in tied at fourth. My favorite (and far better show) Law and Order SVU is 19th.

law and order svu, csi, crime drama