I am growing more and more convinced that the CSI franchise is the worst thing to happen to television since the A-Team. Why do people swallow this steaming load of horse excrement?

I’ve mocked the lousy acting and cheesy one-liners of CSI:Miami for quite some time. And I’ve always thought it was funny how productive the CSI crew manages to be in a city as corrupt and useless as Las Vegas. But the true gravity finally hit me during last night’s episode of CSI:NY.

Never mind the bad dialog and the overly dramatic acting gestures before key lines (like the coroner, who violently disassembles his eyeglasses before alerting the investigators to the cause of death). And I’m going to ignore the “cosplay dance club”, where people were just a little too normal, danced a little too well, and there was no Hello Kitty, or Han Solo, or Pink Power Ranger. And I’m even willing to overlook the fact that the NYPD crime lab — a small division of a taxpayer-funded public service — has a three-panel CISCO videoconferencing room.

World’s greatest hacker
The suspect is a computer super-hacker who is also a contract killer, and she drums up business by running a packet-sniffing spider that grabs key words and phrases from emails. The logistics of such a technological feat are mind-blowing at the ISP-level, yet nobody seems bothered by the crime lab’s inability to trace any of this.

They are, however, quite impressed by her ability to create and use an untraceable email address! And then, in spite of the seeming impossibility of creating an untraceable email address, the very next scene shows the lead investigator ordering a CSI to create six of these impossible to trace email accounts!

A really keen sense of smell
Even with their technical ability to deduce mind-blowing things from a vial of trace chemicals, the biggest break comes from a hunch about a gun being hidden in a speaker at a public speaking event.

So how do they find the hidden weapon? With a gun-sniffing dog! Are you kidding me? I’ve heard of suspension of disbelief, but are we seriously supposed to buy this crap? Dog’s can’t sniff for guns!

Who’s in charge of whom?
And now, with the evidence and the motive established through extended use of Deus ex Machina, the forensics lab (after all, that’s what CSI is) sets up a sting operation. The forensics lab! And the lead forensic investigator is barking orders at uniformed cops, undercover cops, a SWAT team, and even FBI agents!

Worse than Charlie’s Angels

Now, with the sting in action, the suspect catches on and runs away (in four-inch stilleto heels!) and not a single one of the officers surrounding the area is able to catch her.

This isn’t a problem, though, because the lead investigato, who is orchestrating the operation from atop a building while watching through binoculars, manages to get down to the ground and is the only person who is able to catch up to the suspect, who has deftly stripped off her outer garments to foil the description they’re looking for.

And now, while outrunning everyone in four-inch heels and stretch pants, she reaches into the back of her pants and pulls out an enormous gun, complete with silencer attached. Where the hell was that hiding? And worse, when she fires it, it makes gunshot sounds, not silencer sounds.

It’s all a bunch of crap
Week after week, all of these shows depict city police crime labs using technology that is more advanced than NASA to create holographic reconstructed faces. They use computers more impressive than the fiction in Minority Report, capable of doing face-recognition from a database of millions of people in mere seconds.

The characters know everything. You casually mention a rare, complex chemical and they’ll smugly ask you, “oh, you mean that rare, untraceable nucleotide used by midget amputee sherpas to regulate the glucose level in their yak milk at high altitudes?”

The CSI franchise takes the ridiculousness of A-Team, mixes in the foolish sagacity of MacGuyver, adds the writing talent of Star Trek, shoves it all into the south end of a north-bound cow, and then craps it out all over your television screen.

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