About Michael Edwards
Location: Dallas, Texas
Occupation: Knife Sharpener
Bio: I was born in 1518, in the village of Glenfinnan, on the shores of Loch Shiel...and I am Immortal. (cough…cough) (You know, writing a silly origin like this makes me think of the time I was at a Star Trek Convention and saw a balding, overweight guy in a Starfleet Uniform on a stage say, “Hello, I am Captain Hochsteader from the USS Klondike.” I wanted so badly to say, “Noooo, you’re Melvin Goldfarb, Accountant from Plano.”)
Favorite movie: Hmmmm... It's a toss up between Schindler's List and Cabin Boy. (Kinda makes you wonder about my ability to review DVD’s don’t it?). Actually, if I use the criteria I used above of “never get tired of watching…etc…”: The Road Warrior, The World According to Garp, Creator, Terminator 2, Somewhere in Time (If I wanna get reaaallly weepy)
Greatest video game accomplishment: Buying and beating the first ever home PONG game. Haven’t really played much else… Well, there was the time I died on the first level of MediEvil. Or the time I died at the beginning of Resident Evil. Of, course my favorite was dying while playing Tetris.
If you could have any one superpower, what would it be?: The power of Super Speed. There just never seems to be enough time to do everything I want to get done. And I can never get anywhere fast enough. (However, this would have to be combined with certain degrees of Super Agility and Invulnerability so as not to have to wear Band-aid Brand Nuclear Knee-Pads.)
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More from this author
Like most people, I have those few favorite shows that I have to catch every week. Unlike most people I have way too many of these favorite shows. So when I hear about a new show that I “just have to watch”, I’m generally very skeptical as I have only so many hours in the day to get in some quality viewing.
In recent years I’ve shied away from most “cop shows”, because the few I had tried to get into in the 90s left me kind of cold. They were all the same, with semi-interesting characters, dull plots, car chases and shoot-outs.
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation was original in that it avoided nearly all the conventional action sequences that most police dramas need to survive. It was, and still is, a show that really makes you think. Each episode is a puzzle waiting to be solved. Some episodes have more than one plot, while others take all the members of the CSI team to solve one big crime. The pieces of the puzzle are presented in flashback version of the crimes, based on suppositions or lies. But more interesting is the way the physical evidence is shown. Utilizing creative cinematography, the camera often zooms in close to give us, at times, a microscopic perspective of the smallest items: hairs, blood drops, etc. Other times we are given a “bullet’s-eye” view of the damage that can be done to the human body.
The series became so incredibly popular that in 2002 the producers decided go the Law & Order route and create a second series with a new location, and CSI: Miami was born. This new series boasted the return of David Caruso to network television after his foray into feature films. He starred as Horatio Caine, the head of Miami’s elite CSI team. When the network figured out they might have had a real franchise in its hands, they opted to create yet another C.S.I. series, this time set in New York.
My first thought was that enough was enough. I mean how many incarnations of the same idea could you go through before they all became withered imitations of each other? Sure that the network executives really hadn’t thought this through, they moved forward with the project and C.S.I.: NY premiered. This time in the lead was veteran film star Gary Sinise as Det. Mac Taylor.
I started watching C.S.I.: NY when it began airing and found that I liked it right off the bat. What ended up really making this series work in spite of having to overcome its predecessors was the casting of Sinise. I’ve now learned, by watching each of the shows, that the lead actor really drives the tone of the series. The tone here was much darker than the previous series. Taylor had more of a past that was revealed from the beginning. His wife was killed during 9/11, and so he threw himself completely into his work. He was so focused on getting the “bad guy” that having any kind if life was unthinkable.
He originally was aided in his war on crime by his own team consisting of Det. Stella Bonasera (Melina Kanakaredes), Det. Don Flack (Eddie Cahill), Medical Examiner Sheldon Hawkes (Hill Harper), Danny Messer (Carmine Giovinazzo) and Aiden Burn (Vanessa Ferlito), who later left the series and was replaced by Anna Belknap as Lindsey Monroe. Each of these characters has their own distinctive set of quirks, and like the team in C.S.I.: Miami, it took a little while to warm up to them.
I liken this to the Star Trek franchise, where you immediately took to the original crew because nothing had come before to set up your expectations. Then as each new series aired, the new crew had to grow on you. I do wish to mention I was glad to see the return of Eddie Cahill to network television. After a short stint on Friends, Cahill starred as the lead in Glory Days, which unfortunately was canceled well before its time. Watching the first season of C.S.I.: NY, I’ll have to admit I became a fan much more quickly than I did with the middle child, but I think that had a lot to do with the writers learning what mistakes held back C.S.I.: Miami and jumping past those.
Now, I mentioned that the show was much darker. That might seem weird as each show is expressively dark due to the nature of the plots. However, the darkness doesn’t just come in tone and attitude, but in overall look. The first series is all glitz and glamour, beffitting Las Vegas. The second is much brighter, fitting in with the sun-drenched shores of Florida. But the New York we see is a dark and grimy place, which is admittedly more of Holloywood’s expectation of what the city looks like. Anyone who’s spent time there knows it isn’t that bad everywhere.
C.S.I.: NY was also able to set itself apart when it came to the crimes that it investigated. With so many C.S.I. shows out there, the first fear is duplication, but there has been little of that so far.
Paramount is continuing to follow up DVD releases of the various C.S.I. shows with the third season of C.S.I.: NY this week. I was thrilled to see this release because I had missed quite a few of them when they aired. This season was every bit as powerful as the first two and pushed the series even further up the ladder, almost topping the original series in my opinion. The transfer for all of the 24 episodes presented here share the same high quality I’ve come to expect from Paramount’s earlier releases of the franchise. The widescreen presentations offer rich visuals, in spite of the otherwise drab color palette the series uses to make New York look gritty.
They also went way beyond the call in terms of extra features. Most of Paramount’s “TV on DVD” releases don’t have many extras, but the C.S.I. and Star Trek franchises always have more than their fair share. There are six discs in the set, and special features are scattered throughout almost all of them. Included are four full commentaries, all of which are done by the creators, writers and directors of the series. Only one episode commentary includes one of the actors (Eddie Cahill). They’re all really well done, though I would have enjoyed hearing from more of the cast.
You’ll also find four separate featurettes. The first is “Breaking the Killer Code” which runs about 12 and a half minutes and focuses on the episode “Hung Out to Dry.” Utilizing a ton of interviews and behind the scenes footage, you learn just about everything there is to learn about the creation of the episode. There is also “Suicide Girls Rock CSI: NY”, which runs about 11 and a half minutes. Here we meet the uber-popular website Suicide Girls, which was part of the episode “Oedipus Hex.” These heavily tattooed and pierced girls are a little on the wild side. (OK, a lot on the wild side, and fans will definitely enjoy this nearly “adults only” featurette.” The episode “Silent Night” is also featured in its own 8-and-a-half minute making-of mini-documentary. Finally, actor Hill Harper takes viewers on a visit of the famed University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center, better known as the Body Farm. Here real bodies are kept in various degrees of decomposition, as well as in various versions of being “dumped” in order for forensics experts to learn what factors can be used to determine time and place of death. It’s pretty grisly stuff, but I found it fascinating.
Carrying forward the style of the packaging that has become the CSI tradmark, this new DVD also features a case that opens like a book, which allows you to flip through to each disc. The outer cover also has a slipover band label that looks like crime scene tape, just like the ones that have been used on all of the franchise’s releases.
C.S.I.: NY quickly became my second-favorite series of the franchise, though this in no way is meant to sell C.S.I.: Miami short. The characters just came together more quickly, and the stories were more compelling. But in the end, I’m now a fan of all three.
C.S.I.: NY (Season 3)
“People With Money”
“Not What It Looks Like” (Commentary by writers Pam Veasey and Peter Lenkov and director Duane Clark)
“Love Run Cold”
“Hung Out to Dry”
“Oedipus Hex (Commentary by creator/writer Anthony E. Zuiker and Missy Suicide)
“Open and Shut”
“Murder Sings the Blues”
“Consequences” (Commentary by writer Pam Veasey and actor Eddie Cahill)
“And Here’s To You Mrs. Azrael”
“Sweet Sixteen”
“Raising Shane”
“Silent Night” (Commentary by writers Peter Lenkov and Samantha Humphrey )
“Obsession”
“The Lying Game”
“Some Buried Bones”
“Heart of Glass”
“The Ride-In”
“Sleight Out Of Hand”
“A Daze of Wine and Roaches”
“What Schemes May Come”
“Past Imperfect”
“Cold Reveal”
“Comes Around”
“Snow Day”
