CSI: Maimi

CSI: Miami, The most popular show in world and as a friend of mine likes to say the best comedy on TV and the worst drama ever. How is it that a show this terrible could be so great?

CSI: Miami is show about how we dream things to be it can take the most complicated, convoluted situations and make them simple. It appears to generate its plots based on the random combination of possible subplots. To make sure that you do not get lost, it leaves you signs to make sure that everyone can understand what is going on, both literally and fugitively. If there was drinking game of based on the number times that they show a sign telling their location, you would be drunk before the Who “say we won’t get fooled again”. For me this is where the show usually starts to go down as the first five minutes of the show are some are the best you are going to see the whole week. Each episode starts very formulaic. They start off with somebody either getting murdered or the finding of dead body in the most unexpected of locations. This is then followed up by the best looking CSI crew in the history of crime fighting who are on vacation from their full time jobs as models. Finally when the crime seems clueless or too bizarre Horatio Caine (played by the Leprechaun, looking David Caruso) shows up to see the key clue or makes connection that no one else can make about the crime by simply removing his sun glasses and a witty phrase. In one of my favorite scenes a man appears to have been murdered by an ice sculpture and the coroner asks Horatio "what kind of cold person could have done this", to which he responds “someone who is as cold as ice," he then places his sunglasses back on. And with that another crime is going to be solved with help of the magic sunglasses. Knightrider had Kit; the A-team had BA's van, MacGyver had his Swiss army knife, Magnum PI had his Tiger’s hat, and now a new generation has a great TV prop: Horatio Caine's sunglasses. These are more than ordinary sunglasses, not only do they help solve crimes; they help protect the pale skinned David Caruso from the intense south Florida sun. You would have thought that his prop of choice would have been hat like Magnum PI. Experience shows that glass do little to protect you from the harmful rays of the sun. I was just out fishing a week ago wearing a long sleeve shirt and a hat despite the fact that it was suppose to be sunny and 95. All the tourist going out on the charter boats were looking at us kind of funny as they left the harbor wearing only shorts and sun glasses. If only they realized that they would be the funny looking ones as the easily spotted that evening with their faces looking redder than Caruso’s hair, but at least they had white circles around there eyes.

But the sun and water is why people tune in to watch CSI: Miami. The show uses the Baywatch mantra: if you give them beautiful places and beautiful people, people will watch. Not only are they the best looking CSI crew in the world there victims and suspects are too. Where else on TV can you see a common street criminal come in for a police interview in designer clothes. It is escapism at its best, Hollywood is known for creating places that do not really exist, or do they. There are places like this in the world and one can be found in the beaches of south Walton. This is where the rich spend their beach vacations and mega rich keep their 200 ft yachts. When you enter the gated part of the resort you are met by girls riding bikes in bikinis and old men driving H2 golf carts like they are late to a crime scene. Normally you have to take shuttle through the gated part to get to “village” area, but a friend does some work for a night club owner so we got drive there. As much as the drive was something out of a movie the night club was something else. Just the other day my friend let someone in the back door in exchange for dinner at Ruth’s Chris. Then you get to go upstairs were they have a table full of money counters and you half expect to see someone doing lines of coke in the corner. Just when I had thought I had seen it all, I ran into an old family friend who was telling the story of her husband, a luxury yatch captain, who had just been attached off the coast of Nicaragua by pirates. Because they had just come from Havana were weapons are not allowed, they had to make like MacGyver and improvise molotov cocktails and flare guns. This was enough to scare them off long enough to make a run for it and to call the US state department, who said that they had watched the whole event and that the pirates would not be bothering them anymore. I am sure with Horatio’s glasses you could see that far too.

We all love a good mystery; we also love things to be wrapped up quickly. Who wants to wait for lab results? Just solve the crime in day. If you watch enough CSI: Miami episodes you begin to realize that it is never night in less that is when the murder happened. The reason that it is never night is because they always solve the crime in one day. So if you see the sun going down you know the crime is about to be solved. It is too bad that the real world does not work this way. I was asked to go by the local book store to help them find out if they had been robbed, i.e. help them use their video surveillance equipment. The bookstore reminds of me of something out of the Death on Demand series of novels with about five old ladies huddled around, drinking coffee, trying to piece together the crime. Based on their summary of what had happened I was able to use the video surveillance and found that they were robbed and that they had criminal on tape stealing books and purses and then sneaking out. The only problem was that you cannot enhance the video like they do on the CSI, so the best I could for them was produce a grainy picture of the suspect and a DVD of the crime. It was probably still good enough; though I am sure they will never see the lady again.

So night began to fall As I left town the mist of the post afternoon summer shower began lifting off the bayou and settling into the trees and I began to realize just how beautiful this place was. The haze lasted longer that normal it seemed to hang on to the tree branches and the kudzu, trying to not leave. I thought I was ready to leave but the further I drove the less I wanted to leave and I began to think about something I a comment that a friend once made that you probably do not meat as interesting people in engineering as you do in liberal arts. I agreed with then and still do, but truth is everyone has a story, an angle; it is just a matter of doing a little investigating. A sign appeared out of the fog it pointed right for Tallahassee, I knew where I had to go…Cue the air boat…arhhhhhhhhhhhh…..