Let's just stretch reality that little bit more, shall we? Seriously - Puff Daddy as a lawyer?
The episode starts with a murder trial - Diddy is the defense attorney. While speaking to the witnesses, and the jury, he continually refers to his client as "my client." That might be fine and dandy, but I always imagined you wanted the jury to associate a name with the defendant. I could be completely off here - someone follow up with me on this, but I think a jury would have more trouble convicting "tommy" (or whoever) than "the client."
During closing arguments, the prosecutor points out that the defendant never testified in his own defense, and suggested that in and of itself was evidence of his guilt. Mistrial. That simple. You cannot use the fact that a defendant exercised his 5th Amendment right to not be a witness against himself as "evidence" of his guilt. The trial should have ended right then and there. Of course, it didn't. Instead, the case goes to the jury, and while they are deliberating, El Poseur is having a discussion with the deceased's father. Immediately, EP is at the CSI body bag center, where the victim is still in stasis. Odd that a murder trial could be put together more quickly than it takes a body to be buried, but, hey, it's Miami - I guess anything's possible. After all, Puffy Combs is a lawyer! As the jury renders its guilty verdict, EP is asking to see the corpse, and, amazingly, there are flies all over, which leads EP to say "this changes everything." Cut to opening theme. Someone explain to me how a body could be resting at room temperature (so that the flies could be roaming about, maggots and all), without decomposing in Miami, long enough for an arrest to be made, DNA to be extracted, a trial to begin, be conducted, and go to jury instruction and not have any sense of "you've gotta be kidding me!"
The jury of course, finds the guy guilty, just as CSI realizes that they got the wrong guy.
I miss a little bit, though I don't think I missed anything. I find it somewhat amusing that the whole point of this episode is to show how El Poseur, the Smirk, the Jaw, Doe-eyed girl, and company screwed the pooch by not considering alternative suspects when going after "the guy."
Pretrial discovery must not exist in Miami. The Smirk starts looking at some sources for some blood they found, and decides to check golf gloves. Fortunately, she finds a match. What luck! A golf glove that matches blood stains! What are the odds?! Seriously, what are the odds that they can find a glove that would match the blood pattern at the scene (and the odds that these professionals would skip such an "obvious" step in the process the first time around)?
They then decide to detain the one guy on the golf course who has that glove, though he volunteers that several people have those gloves, but they aren't suspects. He is, though, because his friend used to have relations with the corpse (before she was a corpse). Makes sense to me.
Some police brutality ensues, as they try to outsmart Attorney Diddy. Torgo stops the suspect, because he was going 36 in a 35, and is driving around with a broken taillight.
He has to surrender his badge and gun, but turns his camera over to The Smirk and the Jaw. They inspect his pictures, and see a broken tail light that was broken "from the inside." they enlarge and enhance the picture, and magically see an eye! Someone is alive in the trunk of the car! Just imagine, if this guy hadn't assaulted the driver, he never would have been in the absolute perfect spot to take a random photograph on the way out clearly showing an eye!
I just love how the CSI team is there to execute the search warrant. Now, was the warrant for the house, or the car? Apparently, doesn't matter to these guys, or Sean "Puffy" lawyer, who lets them search everything.
I just don't want to say anything about P-attorney telling CSI where to look for the allegedly kidnapped person, but at least it gives EP a chance to ride in a helicopter using IR equipment! Do they have a bold cutter to find the kidnapped girl? Yes! They do! El Poseur to the rescue once again!
Seriously, DNA from an air filter? Nobody else was in the car, ever, except for the corpse and the suspect? What a load of crap!
P-Diddlesticks should be disbarred. He's one crappy lawyer.
Ooh, a twist - the judge is dirty. We didn't see that coming. What a surprise. and now the judge, who has a brain, you'd think, is sitting here spilling it.
Now, convicted guy from the beginning of the episode is released, even though there's no evidence that his conviction's been overturned, or that he's been paroled... but who cares about that? CSI was right again! (except for the convicted guy who's been in jail this whole time).
Showing posts with label CSI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CSI. Show all posts
Monday, February 09, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
I Hate CSI Miami
My first episode of the year - maybe my last - it's as bad as ever.
Opening sequence - random young man walking down the middle of the street with random people yelling at him from his cars. Ultimately, a cop pulls him over, stops him, while he's trying to get the kid's attention, a white SUV almost hits him. The cop, of course, calls for backup - 3 cars and the SUV Hummer carrying El Poseur pulls up. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Instead of bringing the guy with the bloody shirt into the station, bring the station to him - and wait for El Poseur to ask the stupidly obvious questions like "Who are you?"
Torgo: "So what kind of victim are we looking for? A man or a woman?"
Random blonde lab tech: "Try a man and two women?"
Torgo: "So, three people?"
Glad to see No Child Left Behind is working well in Miami.
They have the suspect - send out 4 cop cars, a helicopter, and of course, CSI mobile - everyone running out with their guns drawn. No warrant mentioned. Random delivery guy there, as they look like they're going on vacation.
I love how lab work in Miami can all be completed while the doe-eyed cop girl waits. Fortunately, she remembers a land scene where the land was tainted with TNT - which they found on the guy's boots.
Ooh, bloody footprints - at least they have more than one. Still no warrant, no hot pursuit that a crime is currently being committed, but they go in - guns drawn again, El Poseur and The Jaw.
Fortunately, the FBI has some fancy brain machine that measures his brain activity, and Callie Duquesne, the smirker, calls in a favor. Even more fortunately, they already have pictures of the crime scene available to show the guy. The kid remembers when he sees the dead guy, but states he didn't kill him.
Apparently, the kid witnessed his father's murder years before. The first time he had amnesia. The question then becomes... which murder is he remembering? Classic Poseur.
They analyzed the personal effects - fortunately, there was a fiber or hair in the ring - talk about luck! To whom does it belong, though? Some random club owner - need to have more than one suspect, right?
The smirk walks in when amnesia guy says he killed his family. So, did he do it? I guess that's the real question. Well, the dad's son skipped school, talk about lucky breaks! and left a footprint in the dirt. He ID's amnesia kid - so he MUST be the guilty guy.
They even found his hat - and it's Amnesia Kid's hat - but wait! There's black particles falling from the hat that fell in the sewer - they must point to the real killer. It's GSR! Thankfully El Poseur is a lab technician, too - can't trust this to those amateur professional lab techs. Clearly amnesia kid was forced to kill his family.
They bring in military school kid again - they interrogate him, no rights, no attorney, fortunatel, just random questions.
Now they're searching for the money - they look in the grill and find the fingerprint of the guy who stole the money. One fingerprint. Back to nightclub owner. Now he's got no attorney, and he's confessing, basically. Comparing GSR while he's saying the guy had it coming. Where in the world is his attorney? He is confessing now, since a fiber from amnesia guy's hat ended up on nightclub owner's shotgun. Of course. Makes perfect sense.
The episode is over. El Poseur thinks there's hope for Amnesia Kid, who's going to be put on trial for 2nd degree murder. End scene with EP looking out the window, his back to us and his hand on Amnesia Kid's shoulder. I missed the dramatic sunglasses scene on this one.
Opening sequence - random young man walking down the middle of the street with random people yelling at him from his cars. Ultimately, a cop pulls him over, stops him, while he's trying to get the kid's attention, a white SUV almost hits him. The cop, of course, calls for backup - 3 cars and the SUV Hummer carrying El Poseur pulls up. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Instead of bringing the guy with the bloody shirt into the station, bring the station to him - and wait for El Poseur to ask the stupidly obvious questions like "Who are you?"
Torgo: "So what kind of victim are we looking for? A man or a woman?"
Random blonde lab tech: "Try a man and two women?"
Torgo: "So, three people?"
Glad to see No Child Left Behind is working well in Miami.
They have the suspect - send out 4 cop cars, a helicopter, and of course, CSI mobile - everyone running out with their guns drawn. No warrant mentioned. Random delivery guy there, as they look like they're going on vacation.
I love how lab work in Miami can all be completed while the doe-eyed cop girl waits. Fortunately, she remembers a land scene where the land was tainted with TNT - which they found on the guy's boots.
Ooh, bloody footprints - at least they have more than one. Still no warrant, no hot pursuit that a crime is currently being committed, but they go in - guns drawn again, El Poseur and The Jaw.
Fortunately, the FBI has some fancy brain machine that measures his brain activity, and Callie Duquesne, the smirker, calls in a favor. Even more fortunately, they already have pictures of the crime scene available to show the guy. The kid remembers when he sees the dead guy, but states he didn't kill him.
Apparently, the kid witnessed his father's murder years before. The first time he had amnesia. The question then becomes... which murder is he remembering? Classic Poseur.
They analyzed the personal effects - fortunately, there was a fiber or hair in the ring - talk about luck! To whom does it belong, though? Some random club owner - need to have more than one suspect, right?
The smirk walks in when amnesia guy says he killed his family. So, did he do it? I guess that's the real question. Well, the dad's son skipped school, talk about lucky breaks! and left a footprint in the dirt. He ID's amnesia kid - so he MUST be the guilty guy.
They even found his hat - and it's Amnesia Kid's hat - but wait! There's black particles falling from the hat that fell in the sewer - they must point to the real killer. It's GSR! Thankfully El Poseur is a lab technician, too - can't trust this to those amateur professional lab techs. Clearly amnesia kid was forced to kill his family.
They bring in military school kid again - they interrogate him, no rights, no attorney, fortunatel, just random questions.
Now they're searching for the money - they look in the grill and find the fingerprint of the guy who stole the money. One fingerprint. Back to nightclub owner. Now he's got no attorney, and he's confessing, basically. Comparing GSR while he's saying the guy had it coming. Where in the world is his attorney? He is confessing now, since a fiber from amnesia guy's hat ended up on nightclub owner's shotgun. Of course. Makes perfect sense.
The episode is over. El Poseur thinks there's hope for Amnesia Kid, who's going to be put on trial for 2nd degree murder. End scene with EP looking out the window, his back to us and his hand on Amnesia Kid's shoulder. I missed the dramatic sunglasses scene on this one.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
I hate CSI Miami
I tried to watch it last night, but I couldn't last more than about 15 seconds. The part I saw was where Callie Duquesne found Gunshot Residue (GSR) on El Poseur's Boss's pantleg. Apparently, the GSR transferred there from a collision between Boss Hogg's leg and the car the suspect was in - he unfortunately lurched forward just enough to make contact with the leg before he stopped and this was enough to transfer a significant amount of GSR to Boss Hogg's leg.
This was probably enough to confirm their suspicions and get their bad guy, but let's consider two things - first, Callie stated after seeing the pant leg that she needed to look over the car one more time. She did a poor job the first time and now has to see it again to find what she's looking for - real crackerjack work there. Second - would they have found their man but for this magnificent piece of luck? There are coincidences, and there are scripted acts of sheer luck that don't happen in real life, and certainly don't happen week in and week out.
This show is a pain.
This was probably enough to confirm their suspicions and get their bad guy, but let's consider two things - first, Callie stated after seeing the pant leg that she needed to look over the car one more time. She did a poor job the first time and now has to see it again to find what she's looking for - real crackerjack work there. Second - would they have found their man but for this magnificent piece of luck? There are coincidences, and there are scripted acts of sheer luck that don't happen in real life, and certainly don't happen week in and week out.
This show is a pain.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
More Hate directed towards CSI Miami
I confess. I missed the first half of the season finale. This is not necessarily a negative, though it does make it more difficult to give a complete recap. Still, let's review a few of the things I did catch last night. This may be out of chronological order, but seeing as how nothing on CSI Miami makes real sense the way it plays out anyway, we should be all right.
I think I tuned in with Adam Rodriguez's character (The Jaw) using his handy dandy computer to lift a partial fingerprint off of a spent shell casing. Fortunately, only one person has ever handled this particular casing, and therefore they were able to get a good match in about 7 seconds on their magical computer fingerprint-matching database. It takes me longer than that to open a picture from my My Pictures folder and it's located on my computer. I need some good Miami PD funded computer software and hardware. Anyway, the guy the fingerprint belongs to is an ammunition salesperson, and he just happens to have inspected that particular casing in his inspections before the bullets are shipped overseas. This was revealed after he was searched in his place of business (a Terry patdown is probably unnecessary here).
While this is going on, Callie Duquesne, the Smirker, is busy inspecting some of the bullets they recovered from the crime scene. She pours the solution to clean the bullets and just starts cleaning the first one when the phone rings. In a very believable series of events, The Smirker puts down the bullet and then places the Q-tip on the Petri dish with the solvent and answers the phone. As she is on the phone, some unseen force of nature wills the Q-tip off of the petri dish and it rolls towards the bullet, striking the bullet. This is just enough force to send the bullet rolling along the table, which apparently is on a significant enough incline to get it to roll completely off the edge. Then, the bullet completes 1.75 rotations and lands PERFECTLY on its percussion cap with enough force to discharge the bullet, which then goes straight up into the fluorescent light, knocking the light down onto the table and setting the entire table on fire. It's like the perfect storm.
After the fire is put out, The Jaw asks the Smirker how many bullets there were (3) and how many were compromised (2) and then sets out to find the missing slug. Fortunately, the third slug was found underneath the table that had caught fire, cozied up next to one of the wheels (apparently it didn't discharge when it fell off the table or when it was presumably heated by the fire). Even more fortunately, they were able (after safely discharging the bullet in their bullet discharger) to determine that the bullet was filled with black powder, but with no stabilizer, and that it was made in 1969 in a Soviet Bloc country, which is illegal for someone to own/sell.
This realization then gives El Poseur reason to execute a search warrant at the ammunition dealer's place of business. Except, instead of Knock and Announce, El Poseur stands behind our suspect with his pistol drawn and bearing straight on the back of the guy's head (the front after he turns around to see the police in his office). Lo and behold, they find the handgun, and the suspect confesses. They take him out of the building and start on their way towards the police cars to drive him to the police station when - and this is completely possible - a driver in a Lexus drives by, sticks his right hand out of the passenger window, shoots ONE BULLET from at least 50 feet away and plugs the suspect square in the heart. This bullet is no ordinary bullet, though, it's a fused alloy shell. The great thing about the fused alloy shell is that it works two different ways. If it strikes something cold, such as a bullet-proof vest, it does not break apart, rather it stays together, piercing the kevlar. However, if it hits something warm, such as a person, the bullet's alloy will split apart, operating more like a shotgun blast and creating several exit wounds. Strangely enough, though, the heat from shooting the freaking bullet does not generate enough heat (even though heat was what led the bullet in the lab to go off into the light earlier in the show) to break apart the alloy. Apparently gunfire is something slightly less than 98.6 degrees, though the shells that landed on me in boot camp felt considerably warmer.
Long story short, they track down the guy who is selling these weapons and he gets locked up. He then sends a message via phone that he wants El Poseur taken care of "just let me know when it's done." El Poseur at this time is stepping off of a small jet (maybe a Lear jet?) at the airport with his sunglasses on. As he stands on the tarmac, he takes his glasses off; I'm not quite sure why he needed the shades on in the plane but not on the runway, but hey, he's the star, so he gets to get his way. Suddenly a gunshot rings out and EP falls, a bullet hole in his shades.
Is El Poseur dead? Of course not; we're not that lucky, but we won't know until the fall, when we learn who shot EP. (Perhaps it was Jonathon Torgo, who apparently got the text message on his phone that EP was taken care of. Oooh, plot twist!)
I think I tuned in with Adam Rodriguez's character (The Jaw) using his handy dandy computer to lift a partial fingerprint off of a spent shell casing. Fortunately, only one person has ever handled this particular casing, and therefore they were able to get a good match in about 7 seconds on their magical computer fingerprint-matching database. It takes me longer than that to open a picture from my My Pictures folder and it's located on my computer. I need some good Miami PD funded computer software and hardware. Anyway, the guy the fingerprint belongs to is an ammunition salesperson, and he just happens to have inspected that particular casing in his inspections before the bullets are shipped overseas. This was revealed after he was searched in his place of business (a Terry patdown is probably unnecessary here).
While this is going on, Callie Duquesne, the Smirker, is busy inspecting some of the bullets they recovered from the crime scene. She pours the solution to clean the bullets and just starts cleaning the first one when the phone rings. In a very believable series of events, The Smirker puts down the bullet and then places the Q-tip on the Petri dish with the solvent and answers the phone. As she is on the phone, some unseen force of nature wills the Q-tip off of the petri dish and it rolls towards the bullet, striking the bullet. This is just enough force to send the bullet rolling along the table, which apparently is on a significant enough incline to get it to roll completely off the edge. Then, the bullet completes 1.75 rotations and lands PERFECTLY on its percussion cap with enough force to discharge the bullet, which then goes straight up into the fluorescent light, knocking the light down onto the table and setting the entire table on fire. It's like the perfect storm.
After the fire is put out, The Jaw asks the Smirker how many bullets there were (3) and how many were compromised (2) and then sets out to find the missing slug. Fortunately, the third slug was found underneath the table that had caught fire, cozied up next to one of the wheels (apparently it didn't discharge when it fell off the table or when it was presumably heated by the fire). Even more fortunately, they were able (after safely discharging the bullet in their bullet discharger) to determine that the bullet was filled with black powder, but with no stabilizer, and that it was made in 1969 in a Soviet Bloc country, which is illegal for someone to own/sell.
This realization then gives El Poseur reason to execute a search warrant at the ammunition dealer's place of business. Except, instead of Knock and Announce, El Poseur stands behind our suspect with his pistol drawn and bearing straight on the back of the guy's head (the front after he turns around to see the police in his office). Lo and behold, they find the handgun, and the suspect confesses. They take him out of the building and start on their way towards the police cars to drive him to the police station when - and this is completely possible - a driver in a Lexus drives by, sticks his right hand out of the passenger window, shoots ONE BULLET from at least 50 feet away and plugs the suspect square in the heart. This bullet is no ordinary bullet, though, it's a fused alloy shell. The great thing about the fused alloy shell is that it works two different ways. If it strikes something cold, such as a bullet-proof vest, it does not break apart, rather it stays together, piercing the kevlar. However, if it hits something warm, such as a person, the bullet's alloy will split apart, operating more like a shotgun blast and creating several exit wounds. Strangely enough, though, the heat from shooting the freaking bullet does not generate enough heat (even though heat was what led the bullet in the lab to go off into the light earlier in the show) to break apart the alloy. Apparently gunfire is something slightly less than 98.6 degrees, though the shells that landed on me in boot camp felt considerably warmer.
Long story short, they track down the guy who is selling these weapons and he gets locked up. He then sends a message via phone that he wants El Poseur taken care of "just let me know when it's done." El Poseur at this time is stepping off of a small jet (maybe a Lear jet?) at the airport with his sunglasses on. As he stands on the tarmac, he takes his glasses off; I'm not quite sure why he needed the shades on in the plane but not on the runway, but hey, he's the star, so he gets to get his way. Suddenly a gunshot rings out and EP falls, a bullet hole in his shades.
Is El Poseur dead? Of course not; we're not that lucky, but we won't know until the fall, when we learn who shot EP. (Perhaps it was Jonathon Torgo, who apparently got the text message on his phone that EP was taken care of. Oooh, plot twist!)
Monday, April 21, 2008
I Hate CSI Miami
Ahh, CSI Miami. Where would we be without you?
Probably a few brain cells better for the wear.
I tried to watch the episode tonight. I really did. Because I wanted to pan the whole thing. But I can't. It's just too stupid.
Let's start with the introduction. A lawyer gets out of his car; he's talking on his cell phone. As he's working on crossing the street, a Dodge Charger hits the gas, speeds down the road around a roundabout, turning to hit the lawyer square, knocking him down with enough force to kill him, and then the car immediately stops on top of him. I'm no physicist, but let's consider a couple things. First off, the car is speeding around a turn. I know tires handle well, but to turn without having to brake around even a slight turn is a bit incredulous. Second, the car hits the guy and immediately stops (i.e. within 10 feet). The car hit him hard enough to kill him and leave him bloody all over, yet it was able to stop in less space than it takes to stop a bicycle. Sure. And then, to top it off, this all happens fast enough to hit the guy square in the middle of the car's bumper even though he's walking across the street (so we're talking a matter of seconds for acceleration, maneuvering, contact, and braking).
Fortunately, the brave crew of CSI Miami shows up. They determine that the car being driven uses 100% biodiesel fuel. How fortunate. Even better - the car that hit the guy, hit him square on the briefcase he was carrying, and the license plate left a mark on the wood underneath the leather. Wow. Talk about your lucky breaks! David Caruso (el poseur) dons his lab coat in order to mix some mold to retrieve the numbers, which were too light to see with the naked eye, but which somehow come out much larger than they would on an actual license plate when imprinted and lifted on the mold. With this, el Poseur is able to give Jonathan Togo (who I'm not sure is even a human, I think he might be animatronic) a partial plate. Togo then pulls out his laptop which fortunately has not only wireless connection in the lab, but also has a database of all license plates in Florida AND is able to give them a list of 6 partial licenses that match the car that was driven AND use 100% bio-diesel. And all this happens in 45 seconds! I need a computer like that. The first car, fortunately, is a rental car from a company that lists all its cars' renters on an easy to access database for the police to recover without a warrant, and fortunately, without the company even knowing. Let's hear it for the USA PATRIOT Act!
They then interview the guy's wife (who just happens to be the person in whose name the car is rented); and she assures them that she was not the driver, as the car has been stolen. Time to find it. Fortunately, this is Miami, and the police department doesn't have to worry about any crime in the entire city other than this hit and run, so they're able to mobilize the police helicopters to go out and search Miami for a black car with the vehicle's license plate. I'm not entirely sure how they're going to check the license plates from the air, but I don't need to worry, because they very quickly find the stolen car among the hundreds of thousands of cars in Miami. Too bad they didn't kill the guy with a Chevy instead of a Dodge - Chevies have OnStar - they could have tracked it down that way and saved the taxpayers a few hundred thousand dollars.
They call Emily Procter's smug self over to inspect the car to find out who caused the accident. She looks in the open door and finds a piece of nail jewelry on the display behind the steering wheel. Just like that - looks in and takes it out. You need 4 years of college to do that.
The jewelry, Miami's finest decides, must belong to a teenager - and fortunately, the dead lawyer has a 16 year old daughter who just happens to be missing a piece of nail jewelry from her finger - talk about coincidences! Unfortunately, this turns out to be a red herring, as Togo rules her out immediately because she didn't want her parents to get divorced and she doesn't have a license, so there's no way she could have driven at all.
In the meantime, there's another murder. This time, it's a guy who's shot, but they don't know from which direction - cue the slow-motion re-enactment of him getting shot from above. El Poseur looks at him, says "see that green glass? It's not from this restaurant." He knows this because... we don't know how he knows this. He never asked anyone from the restaurant, it's not apparent that he frequents the restaurant, and I doubt he's ever written a treatise on glass shades of bottles at Miami eateries.
That was as far as I could get. This show is too ridiculous for words. Anyone who saw the last 40 minutes of the episode - let me know what happened, ok?
Probably a few brain cells better for the wear.
I tried to watch the episode tonight. I really did. Because I wanted to pan the whole thing. But I can't. It's just too stupid.
Let's start with the introduction. A lawyer gets out of his car; he's talking on his cell phone. As he's working on crossing the street, a Dodge Charger hits the gas, speeds down the road around a roundabout, turning to hit the lawyer square, knocking him down with enough force to kill him, and then the car immediately stops on top of him. I'm no physicist, but let's consider a couple things. First off, the car is speeding around a turn. I know tires handle well, but to turn without having to brake around even a slight turn is a bit incredulous. Second, the car hits the guy and immediately stops (i.e. within 10 feet). The car hit him hard enough to kill him and leave him bloody all over, yet it was able to stop in less space than it takes to stop a bicycle. Sure. And then, to top it off, this all happens fast enough to hit the guy square in the middle of the car's bumper even though he's walking across the street (so we're talking a matter of seconds for acceleration, maneuvering, contact, and braking).
Fortunately, the brave crew of CSI Miami shows up. They determine that the car being driven uses 100% biodiesel fuel. How fortunate. Even better - the car that hit the guy, hit him square on the briefcase he was carrying, and the license plate left a mark on the wood underneath the leather. Wow. Talk about your lucky breaks! David Caruso (el poseur) dons his lab coat in order to mix some mold to retrieve the numbers, which were too light to see with the naked eye, but which somehow come out much larger than they would on an actual license plate when imprinted and lifted on the mold. With this, el Poseur is able to give Jonathan Togo (who I'm not sure is even a human, I think he might be animatronic) a partial plate. Togo then pulls out his laptop which fortunately has not only wireless connection in the lab, but also has a database of all license plates in Florida AND is able to give them a list of 6 partial licenses that match the car that was driven AND use 100% bio-diesel. And all this happens in 45 seconds! I need a computer like that. The first car, fortunately, is a rental car from a company that lists all its cars' renters on an easy to access database for the police to recover without a warrant, and fortunately, without the company even knowing. Let's hear it for the USA PATRIOT Act!
They then interview the guy's wife (who just happens to be the person in whose name the car is rented); and she assures them that she was not the driver, as the car has been stolen. Time to find it. Fortunately, this is Miami, and the police department doesn't have to worry about any crime in the entire city other than this hit and run, so they're able to mobilize the police helicopters to go out and search Miami for a black car with the vehicle's license plate. I'm not entirely sure how they're going to check the license plates from the air, but I don't need to worry, because they very quickly find the stolen car among the hundreds of thousands of cars in Miami. Too bad they didn't kill the guy with a Chevy instead of a Dodge - Chevies have OnStar - they could have tracked it down that way and saved the taxpayers a few hundred thousand dollars.
They call Emily Procter's smug self over to inspect the car to find out who caused the accident. She looks in the open door and finds a piece of nail jewelry on the display behind the steering wheel. Just like that - looks in and takes it out. You need 4 years of college to do that.
The jewelry, Miami's finest decides, must belong to a teenager - and fortunately, the dead lawyer has a 16 year old daughter who just happens to be missing a piece of nail jewelry from her finger - talk about coincidences! Unfortunately, this turns out to be a red herring, as Togo rules her out immediately because she didn't want her parents to get divorced and she doesn't have a license, so there's no way she could have driven at all.
In the meantime, there's another murder. This time, it's a guy who's shot, but they don't know from which direction - cue the slow-motion re-enactment of him getting shot from above. El Poseur looks at him, says "see that green glass? It's not from this restaurant." He knows this because... we don't know how he knows this. He never asked anyone from the restaurant, it's not apparent that he frequents the restaurant, and I doubt he's ever written a treatise on glass shades of bottles at Miami eateries.
That was as far as I could get. This show is too ridiculous for words. Anyone who saw the last 40 minutes of the episode - let me know what happened, ok?
Friday, February 08, 2008
I still hate CSI Miami
So this past Monday, my wife has CBS on. I'm ok with this, because I'm a fan of the Big Bang Theory and 2 1/2 Men - while not classics of American Comedy, they are two of the best Sitcoms out there right now. Unfortunately, after those shows end, CSI Miami comes on. CSI Miami is crap with fancy cars. The show is marked by painful one-liners delivered by stiff actors complete with choppy editing and slick (useless) special effects.
This past week, someone was shot (of course). Being that it was Miami, the person was shot in the middle of the day in a busy park or beach or something, and the question is, "who did it?" Fortunately, we have the best in the business at work here. I came in a little late, but I did see a lot of the really annoying crap. I will recap.
First, Adam Rodriguez's character is standing behind a bush, and announces that this is where the bullet came from, because he can see the bullet hole in one of the leaves. Yes. He is that freaking awesome, that he can find the ONE LEAF that has a bullet hole in it, and he does this by crouching. This guy is amazing. He didn't just search around methodically looking for clues, he walked to a spot, crouched, and saw the bullet hole. We then were treated to a stop-action rewind of the bullet being shot and going through the leaf.
But his magic doesn't stop there. Adam Rodriguez also picks up another leaf from the ground. In his clairvoyance, he actually knows how to pick up THE ONLY LEAF that the guy hiding behind the bush dripped sweat on. Never mind that it's been at least a day since the leaf fell and it's been windy, and there apparently has been no ground crew to sweep up the leaves that have fallen, the fact that he can reach down and pick up one leaf out of many and have that leaf be THE ONE that has the guy's DNA on it is nothing less than miraculous. Of course, because the DNA is old and on a plant, it's nearly impossible to extract the DNA - but wait! Eva LaRue has a fancy new machine that will destroy everything from the leaf EXCEPT the DNA. How fortunate! How timely! And how expensive would that have been for a police department to get? Would that be budgeted before, I don't know, hiring more cops? I think so! It's slicker, and allows for more useless special effects. My question, though, involves how it destroys everything but the DNA. First off - I've stood in the sun - I live in Texas, after all, and I don't regularly drip sweat in the first place. But even if I did, and even if that drip landed square on a leaf that didn't blow away, and EVEN IF the cop picked that leaf to test, wouldn't the leaf have its own DNA that would screw up the test? I'm no biologist, but I understood every living thing had DNA? But I digress.
Turns out the guy that was behind the bush didn't do it. Curses!
So they have to go back to the crime scene. Here, they do some stop motion recreation of the scene, with the victim being shot and stopped as he starts to fall. Adam Rodriguez and Emily Procter then start deducing. And they deduce the hell out of this! First, they determine that the shot came from (I think they said) about 150 yards. Then they look and see a possible spot for the shooter to shoot from. But they'd already checked that and saw no GSR (gunshot residue). So Emily Procter then figures out how fast the wind was blowing that day at that time by guessing (seriously), and also remembers which direction the wind was coming from, even though she was not there when the shot was fired, and THEN is able to calculate how much the bullet (actually drawing the curve in the air, with actual dotted lines for us to follow along) would have curved due to the wind so that the shooter would have hit the victim, all in her head. So they go to the boat, which fortunately had its deck closed for repairs, and found GSR, proving that the whole ship is full of idiots who didn't see a guy carrying a 30.06 running around the deck. They also find some jelly-iodine that the hospitals use to treat burn victims (another special effect here). This leads them to the hospital, where their perpetrator has been recovering from burns (from a suicide pact because he and his girlfriend got too much debt - he shot the loan agent, because what else could he do? It wasn't their fault they signed the loans, after all), meaning that not only does the hospital have such lax care that they allowed him to leave without checking as to his whereabouts, but that even though he's too stupid to manage money or stay in college, is somehow equipped with sniper skills to know precisely how much to compensate for the wind to pull off a head shot from over 150 yards.
And I know people who live for this show, because of how well these people solve the problems.
This past week, someone was shot (of course). Being that it was Miami, the person was shot in the middle of the day in a busy park or beach or something, and the question is, "who did it?" Fortunately, we have the best in the business at work here. I came in a little late, but I did see a lot of the really annoying crap. I will recap.
First, Adam Rodriguez's character is standing behind a bush, and announces that this is where the bullet came from, because he can see the bullet hole in one of the leaves. Yes. He is that freaking awesome, that he can find the ONE LEAF that has a bullet hole in it, and he does this by crouching. This guy is amazing. He didn't just search around methodically looking for clues, he walked to a spot, crouched, and saw the bullet hole. We then were treated to a stop-action rewind of the bullet being shot and going through the leaf.
But his magic doesn't stop there. Adam Rodriguez also picks up another leaf from the ground. In his clairvoyance, he actually knows how to pick up THE ONLY LEAF that the guy hiding behind the bush dripped sweat on. Never mind that it's been at least a day since the leaf fell and it's been windy, and there apparently has been no ground crew to sweep up the leaves that have fallen, the fact that he can reach down and pick up one leaf out of many and have that leaf be THE ONE that has the guy's DNA on it is nothing less than miraculous. Of course, because the DNA is old and on a plant, it's nearly impossible to extract the DNA - but wait! Eva LaRue has a fancy new machine that will destroy everything from the leaf EXCEPT the DNA. How fortunate! How timely! And how expensive would that have been for a police department to get? Would that be budgeted before, I don't know, hiring more cops? I think so! It's slicker, and allows for more useless special effects. My question, though, involves how it destroys everything but the DNA. First off - I've stood in the sun - I live in Texas, after all, and I don't regularly drip sweat in the first place. But even if I did, and even if that drip landed square on a leaf that didn't blow away, and EVEN IF the cop picked that leaf to test, wouldn't the leaf have its own DNA that would screw up the test? I'm no biologist, but I understood every living thing had DNA? But I digress.
Turns out the guy that was behind the bush didn't do it. Curses!
So they have to go back to the crime scene. Here, they do some stop motion recreation of the scene, with the victim being shot and stopped as he starts to fall. Adam Rodriguez and Emily Procter then start deducing. And they deduce the hell out of this! First, they determine that the shot came from (I think they said) about 150 yards. Then they look and see a possible spot for the shooter to shoot from. But they'd already checked that and saw no GSR (gunshot residue). So Emily Procter then figures out how fast the wind was blowing that day at that time by guessing (seriously), and also remembers which direction the wind was coming from, even though she was not there when the shot was fired, and THEN is able to calculate how much the bullet (actually drawing the curve in the air, with actual dotted lines for us to follow along) would have curved due to the wind so that the shooter would have hit the victim, all in her head. So they go to the boat, which fortunately had its deck closed for repairs, and found GSR, proving that the whole ship is full of idiots who didn't see a guy carrying a 30.06 running around the deck. They also find some jelly-iodine that the hospitals use to treat burn victims (another special effect here). This leads them to the hospital, where their perpetrator has been recovering from burns (from a suicide pact because he and his girlfriend got too much debt - he shot the loan agent, because what else could he do? It wasn't their fault they signed the loans, after all), meaning that not only does the hospital have such lax care that they allowed him to leave without checking as to his whereabouts, but that even though he's too stupid to manage money or stay in college, is somehow equipped with sniper skills to know precisely how much to compensate for the wind to pull off a head shot from over 150 yards.
And I know people who live for this show, because of how well these people solve the problems.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Just a Reminder
CSI Miami is the worst show on television.
Every now and then I try to watch an episode, in the hopes that maybe someone who knows how to write a script, or understand the substantial unlikelihood of so much of the evidence they uncover, might have gotten hired.
Then I watch it for a few minutes and realize how wrong I am.
David Caruso cannot act.
The rest of the characters pose and grin and we are supposed to believe that they are superintelligent, smooth characters.
This past episode, I happened to tune in while Caruso and one of the brain-dead grinners were interviewing a baseball player who was hispanic. The show decided to subtitle the guy's dialog for us. This is a nice idea - if the guy was speaking spanish, or perhaps a really freaking thick brogue that nobody could understand unless they were from the same Scottish highland village. But this guy was speaking English, with a slight hispanic accent. Putting subtitles here is not cool - it's insulting to the viewer.
Maybe one of these days I'll catch on and stop watching this insult to brain cells altogether. Perhaps I'll be even luckier, and the idiots who tune in for the glitz and glamor of Forensics specialists driving in Hummers to crime scenes where the lead actor can dramatically pull off his glasses and make some corny one-liner to the vacuous character mugging for the camera next to him will realize that there's absolutely no substance to this show, and that there's maybe 20 minutes of story packed into an hour with completely unnecessary and repetitive special effects footage to flesh it out, and quit watching the show - and I'll be saved.
But I won't hold my breath. There are too many stupid people in the world who live for crap like this.
Every now and then I try to watch an episode, in the hopes that maybe someone who knows how to write a script, or understand the substantial unlikelihood of so much of the evidence they uncover, might have gotten hired.
Then I watch it for a few minutes and realize how wrong I am.
David Caruso cannot act.
The rest of the characters pose and grin and we are supposed to believe that they are superintelligent, smooth characters.
This past episode, I happened to tune in while Caruso and one of the brain-dead grinners were interviewing a baseball player who was hispanic. The show decided to subtitle the guy's dialog for us. This is a nice idea - if the guy was speaking spanish, or perhaps a really freaking thick brogue that nobody could understand unless they were from the same Scottish highland village. But this guy was speaking English, with a slight hispanic accent. Putting subtitles here is not cool - it's insulting to the viewer.
Maybe one of these days I'll catch on and stop watching this insult to brain cells altogether. Perhaps I'll be even luckier, and the idiots who tune in for the glitz and glamor of Forensics specialists driving in Hummers to crime scenes where the lead actor can dramatically pull off his glasses and make some corny one-liner to the vacuous character mugging for the camera next to him will realize that there's absolutely no substance to this show, and that there's maybe 20 minutes of story packed into an hour with completely unnecessary and repetitive special effects footage to flesh it out, and quit watching the show - and I'll be saved.
But I won't hold my breath. There are too many stupid people in the world who live for crap like this.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
I hate CSI Miami
At one point in time, I enjoyed watching it because it was bad. Now, it's just bad. The crimes are too ridiculous to consider viable, and the solutions are almost as laughable.
The dialogue seems like an afterthought, as though the producers (thank you, Jerry Bruckheimer) said "let's get some good special effects going here, oh, but they need to say something." Cheesy one-liners by David Caruso with his insanely stupid sunglasses, unlikeable characters, convenient "brainstorming" sessions, where one of the members seems to be an expert on whatever unbelievably obscure situation exists (non-native tree leaves, for example), even more convenient SINGLE HAIR OR FINGERPRINT SAMPLES that get through DNA testing or other matching in about 25 seconds, not to mention all the blatant 4th, 5th and perhaps 6th amendment violations.
I'm actually upset now, just thinking about that stupid, stupid show.
The dialogue seems like an afterthought, as though the producers (thank you, Jerry Bruckheimer) said "let's get some good special effects going here, oh, but they need to say something." Cheesy one-liners by David Caruso with his insanely stupid sunglasses, unlikeable characters, convenient "brainstorming" sessions, where one of the members seems to be an expert on whatever unbelievably obscure situation exists (non-native tree leaves, for example), even more convenient SINGLE HAIR OR FINGERPRINT SAMPLES that get through DNA testing or other matching in about 25 seconds, not to mention all the blatant 4th, 5th and perhaps 6th amendment violations.
I'm actually upset now, just thinking about that stupid, stupid show.
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