article

This article is about the television series. For the computer game, see Crime Scene Investigation (computer game).

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (commonly referred to as CSI) is a popular, Emmy Award-winning CBS television series that trails the investigations of a team of forensic scientists as they unravel the circumstances behind mysterious and unusual deaths and crimes committed. In addition to the original CSI program, which is set in Las Vegas, the franchise includes two spinoffs--one set in New York City ( NY) and another in Miami ( Miami). Ranked first in the June 2005 Nielsen Ratings with an average viewership of 16 million a night, the show serves as the backbone of CBS's leading Thursday lineup. The 2004-2005 season finale, directed by Quentin Tarantino, was watched by over 40 million viewers, making it one of the most watched shows in history. The show averages 30 million viewers every week and as of February 2006, CBS reported that over 90 million viewers have tuned into the series this year alone. The show is produced in partnership with the Canadian media company Alliance Atlantis.

On June 9, 2006, episodes of CSI, along with other episodes of CBS television shows were made available for purchase at the iTunes Music Store *.

Style

Stylistically, the show has drawn favorable comparisons to Quincy and The X-Files. The show's character gadgets and occasional usage of yet-to-be-invented technology has moved the show nominally into the genre of science fiction and garnered it with a 2004 Saturn Award nomination for best science fiction, fantasy, or horror television series.

The series is known for its unusual camera angles, percussive editing techniques, hi-tech gadgets, detailed technical discussion, and graphic portrayal of bullet trajectories, blood spray patterns, organ damage, methods of evidence recovery (e.g. fingerprints from the inside of latex gloves), and crime reconstructions. Many episodes feature lengthy scenes in which experiments, tests, or other technical work is portrayed in detail, usually with no sound except accompanying music — a technique reminiscent of Impossible. Often the lighting, composition, and mise-en-scene elements are heavily influenced by avant-garde organ.

Characters

Main characters
Role Actor Description
Dr. Gilbert (Gil) Grissom William Petersen The night shift team supervisor for the Las Vegas CSI unit, and a forensic entomologist with a degree in biology from UCLA.
Catherine Willows Marg Helgenberger A blood spatter analyst. She was second-in-command of the nightshift for the first four seasons, assuming command when Grissom was out of town or otherwise on leave. She recently moved teams to become supervisor of the new swing shift team.
Sara Sidle Jorja Fox A materials and element analyst. A physics major at Harvard University, Sidle previously worked for the San Francisco coroner and crime lab.
Warrick Brown Gary Dourdan A Las Vegas native and a chemistry major from UNLV, is an audio/visual analyst.
Nick Stokes George Eads An easygoing and friendly former college baseball player and fraternity member with a degree in criminal justice from Rice University, is a hair and fiber analyst from Dallas, Texas.
Captain Jim Brass Paul Guilfoyle Brass was the head of the CSI unit in Las Vegas until he was moved back to the police homicide division in the pilot episode. He was originally from New Jersey. He's now Captain in the homicide division and works usually with the CSI team.
Greg Sanders Eric Szmanda The newest field worker on the CSI team since the season 5 episode "Who Shot Sherlock". He idolizes Grissom, and is known for his "wacky" behavior.
Dr. Al Robbins, M.D. Robert David Hall The head county coroner. Married with three children, he's often the only one who understands Grissom. He has two prosthetic legs, and it has been implied that he lost them in an accident while trying to dig up a floor at a crime scene.

Spinoffs

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation which is set in Las Vegas has two spinoffs: Miami and NY. These two spinoffs are set in Miami and New York respectively.

Controversy

CSI has often been criticized for showing what is believed to be gratuitous amounts of graphic violence, gruesome images and sexual content, more than what is normally acceptable on network television and the limits of the television rating for certain episodes. The show also seems to focus on sexual fetishism and other forms of sexual pleasure. However, spokespeople for the show state that the content is not meant to be gratuitous at all and that it is necessary and relevant to the plot of episodes. For example, if a woman is killed in a ritualistic fashion after consuming illegal drugs at an adults-only nightclub, it would be necessary to show some of that content.

DVD releases

R1 DVD releases

DVD Name Release Date
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 1 March 25 2003
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 2 September 2 2003
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 3 March 30 2004
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 4 October 12 2004
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 5 November 29 2005
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 6 October 10 2006

R2/R4 DVD Releases

Region 2 and 4 DVD releases have followed a pattern whereby each season is progressively released in two parts (each of 11 or 12 episodes, with special features split up) before finally being sold as a single box set. The region 4 releases are, inexplicably, almost a year behind region 2, with no planned changes in the release schedule apparent at present.
DVD Name R2 Release Date R4 Release Date
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 1 Part 1 July 1 2002 October 21 2002
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 1 Part 2 October 7 2002 April 9 2003
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Complete Season 1 December 8 2003 November 27 2003
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 2 Part 1 July 28 2003 October 27 2003
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 2 Part 2 October 6 2003 March 30 2004
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Complete Season 2 March 15 2004 October 28 2004
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 3 Part 1 April 5 2004 March 18 2005
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 3 Part 2 July 5 2004 September 13 2005
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Complete Season 3 July 26 2004 October 4 2005
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Complete Seasons 1 - 3 August 23 2004 Not released
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 4 Part 1 May 9 2005 May 12 2006
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 4 Part 2 July 11 2005 August 17 2006
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Complete Season 4 November 21 2005 TBC
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Complete Seasons 1 - 4 December 12 2005 TBC
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 5 Part 1 April 24 2006 TBC
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 5 Part 2 June 14 2006 TBC
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Complete Season 5 June 26 2006 TBC
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Grave Danger - Tarantino Episodes October 10 2005 TBC
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 6 Part 1 TBA TBC
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 6 Part 2 TBA TBC
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Complete Season 6 TBA TBC

Broadcasters

Episode list

Awards

Trivia

  • CSI comic books are produced by IDW Publishing. The comic books feature two different art styles throughout with a conventional style for the bulk of the story and a darker and more abstract style for the investigators' imaginings of how the crimes occurred based on the evidence they find. So far there have been more than half a dozen mini-series based on CSI, CSI Miami and CSI NY.
  • CSI is the most watched American TV show in the Netherlands, with over a million viewers tuning in every week.
  • It was William Petersen's idea to have his character be named Grissom, as Petersen is a devoted fan of the US space program (in particular, astronaut Gus Grissom).
  • Six years before CSI premiered, Marg Helgenberger and Gary Dourdan starred together in a TV pilot called "Keys". The premise of that pilot was very similar to the current premise of CSI.
  • A scene showing Willows and Stokes "making out" was filmed for the first season, but was never aired.
  • There were rumors of a fourth CSI series, to be set in London and using "Eminence Front" as its theme tune, but the show never materialized and there are not presently any plans for such a spinoff.
  • You often hear the characters referring to a four-nineteen (4-19,4/19, etc.) or sometimes a 4-45. These are the Las Vegas Metro 400 Event codes. The often-used 419 stands for 'deceased person,' while the less-used 445 is 'explosive device threat'. See External links for more examples.
  • CSI's theme song is "Who Are You", written by Pete Townshend of The Who as the title track of their 1978 album. The show's spinoffs also use Who songs as their theme songs, "Won't Get Fooled Again" for Miami and "Baba O'Riley" for NY, both recorded by The Who in 1971 for their album Who's Next.
    • However, the UK DVD release of the first season (split across two volumes) used an alternative track to "Who Are You". The reasoning behind it is unclear. Subsequent seasons on DVD in the UK contain "Who Are You". Five's original broadcast and repeat showing of season one always had "Who Are You" as the theme song.
  • The theme song, Who Are You, is often confused with episode #108, Who Are You?
  • The show is also known to use Radiohead's music in many episodes; a total of four Radiohead songs appeared in the span of three episodes at the end of the show's third season.*
  • Another frequently used musical artist is Marilyn Manson, who is also friends with CSI actor Eric Szmanda. Szmanda appeared in the video for Manson's song "sAINT.".
  • Anthony E. Zuiker chose to set the series in Las Vegas because - as mentioned in the pilot episode - that city's crime lab is the second most active in the United States, after the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia.
  • The show utilizes a wide array of tactical flashlights; the most often-used light is the Surefire M4 Devastator.
  • Episode 1.20: Sounds of Silence - At the end of the episode, Grissom talks to Dr. Gilbert in American Sign Language. What he is saying is that his mother lost her hearing when she was eight years old. He once asked her, 'What is it like to be deaf?' and she told Grissom, who loved to swim, that it was like being underwater. She also taught him that being deaf does not make one inferior and that deafness can be a blessing.
  • Episode 3.5: Abra Cadaver - This episode features a guest appearance by Tom Noonan. Noonan and series star William Petersen played villain and hero, respectively, in the film Manhunter.
  • Episode 3.15: Lady Heather's Box - In this episode, Lady Heather tells Grissom that she runs and owns a pornographic website. She informs him that the site is located at http://www.ladyheather.com/. Any attempts to visit the site in reality will be met with redirects to the official CSI site.
  • Episode 202: Chaos Theory - This episode may have been at least partially inspired by Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey which contains at least similar themes and philosophy.
  • Episode 223: The Hunger Artist - Title (and plot somewhat) taken from a short story by Franz Kafka called A Hunger Artist.
  • Episode 406: Fur and Loathing - While many people comment that this episode is everything from "really weird" to "the funniest episode ever!" and "one of the best!!!!" those in the furry fandom tend to feel that the episode, which involves the murder of a fursuiter caught in a tryst, lacks research and focuses mainly on the more sexual, yiffy aspects of the fandom, despite rumors that the producers had consulted a member of the furry community on the creation of the script; the original script was reported to have been far more degrading to the fandom than the actual script used. According to the listing at Wikifur, the episode was written with the help of some people in the furry fandom (and actually appearing in the episode as some of the convention goers), and has garnered a mixed rating in the fandom.[http://furry.wikia.com/wiki/CSI
    • Of note is that this particular episode is one of the top contenders for CSI to attain a possible jump the shark moment.*
  • Episode 419: Bad Words - One of the two cases in this episode involves the death of a champion word game player. The word game involved is Logos, a Scrabble-like game which uses circular tiles and no board. It also involves the word exvins, a plural of exvin, defined by the victim to his opponent (the suspect) as a "wine aficionado who no longer drinks". Both words are correctly regarded as phonies (fake words) as both the American and British Scrabble lexicons (Official Scrabble Players' Dictionary and Official Scrabble Words respectively) do not list them. Furthermore, Sara said to Gil that the word EXVINS is not even "in the OED."
  • Episode 508: Ch-Ch-Changes - The outlaw doctor who performs "benevolent" sex reassignment surgery goes by the name "Dr. Carl Benway." Dr. Benway is the name of "an amoral physician" in much of the writing of William S. Burroughs. "Ch-Ch-Changes" is a variation on the song "Changes" from the David Bowie album Hunky Dory. (The lyrics to "Changes" could be interpreted as Bowie's meditation on physical and emotional metamorphosis in a time of questioning one's true gender.)
  • Episode 524-525: Grave Danger: Vols. I & II - This season finale episode directed by Academy Award winner Quentin Tarantino has a very similar situation to a part of Tarantino's second Kill Bill film: CSI Nick Stokes is captured and buried alive in a Plexiglas coffin while an Internet camera broadcasts the live entombment to CSI headquarters. In Kill Bill Vol. 2, the Bride (Uma Thurman) was also buried alive in a coffin. In addition, Grissom and the Bride say the same phrase, "on any other day, you'd be one hundred percent right. But today, you're one hundred percent wrong" when asked if there were police outside a building and if she was lying about pregnancy, respectively.
    • Also, this episode was postponed by Five when it was due to be shown in the United Kingdom as it featured a suicide bomber. The episode was planned to be shown on 12 July 2005, just days after the London Bombings. However, the day it was planned to be shown, it was revealed suicide bombers committed the atrocities in London. Five quickly pulled it from schedules and showed it the next week instead.
    • Tarantino has stated that this episode was heavily inspired by the 1972 made-for-TV movie The Longest Night where a woman is kidnapped and buried alive for ransom.
  • Over a dozen cast members from 24 have made guest appearances on the show.
  • Marg Helgenberger, Jorja Fox and George Eads appeared on the show ER prior to CSI. Marg Helgenberger appeared in 5 episodes in 1996 as the partner of Doug Ross's dad, who steals $50,000 from her. Jorja Fox was a recurring character from 1996-1999, playing medical intern Maggie Doyle. George Eads was Greg Powell in 3 episodes in the fourth season, a paramedic who kisses Carol Hathaway while she is engaged to Doug Ross.
  • Episode 615: Pirates of the Third Reich - At the end of the episode, Grissom says "I'm saying 'stop'!" to Lady Heather. This recalls episode 315, when Lady Heather says that Grissom could always say stop. This is a safe word.

See Also

External links

USA & Canada
Brazil

Europe

Asia

2000s TV shows in the United States | Alliance Atlantis | CBS network shows | Crime television series | CSI | CTV network shows | Drama television series | Nielsen Ratings winners | Running television shows | Spike TV network shows | Television shows set in Nevada

C.S.I. (tv-serie) | CSI – Den Tätern auf der Spur | CSI: Crime Scene Investigation | CSI | Les Experts | CSI | CSI과학수사대 | CSI: Crime Scene Investigation | Helyszínelők | CSI: Crime Scene Investigation | CSI:科学捜査班 | Kryminalne zagadki Las Vegas | CSI: Crime Scene Investigation | CSI | CSI: Crime Scene Investigation | CSI: Crime Scene Investigation | CSI犯罪现场

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation".

Home Page • arts • business • computers • games • health • hospitals • home • kids & teens • news • physicians • recreation• reference • regional • science • shopping • society • sports • world