This show has always been a guilty pleasure of mine. It's so ridiculous sometimes that you just have to laugh. As far as I can tell, most of the 'science' they employ is vaguely reasonable, if we assume that what takes them seconds and that they do every day, takes actual forensic scientists hours if not days and that they can only afford to do on seriously big, important cases. Also, they don't carry guns and interview witnesses. Ever. They are lab techs. Nothing more, but certainly nothing less.
However, this episode has well and truly jumped the shark for me. They actually triy to make the audience believe that they recover spoken sound waves that happened to be in the room while someone was turning a vase on a wheel. There is a brush of some kind that the sculpter uses to mark the wet clay, as far as I can tell, it's hand-held. They use a lazer to sample the grooves in the clay (dried, but not fired) and actually hear dialogue that allows them to solve the case.
Seriously, do the they think we're totally fucking brain-dead, or what? I'm not one to complain about pseudo-science in the context of sci-fi stories and shows. I'll accept a lot of nutso crap in the premise if it allows me to engage with the meat of the story. Do I complain that there's sound in space and gravity on the new Battlestar Galactica? No. I'm just fascinated by the pitting of military and political ideology against each other, and the commentary on American foreign policy. That's what I'm there for. But a show that claims some measure of realism, that is populated with characters who constantly call themselves 'scientists,' should have some relationship with reality when it comes to, oh, I don't know, the science they portray.
From now on, I will laugh at CSI only, and never with it, because if I'm watching it like it's science fiction (accept the fantasy, enjoy for the commentary), then there's no point to that awful, banal little show.
Posted by orion at May 5, 2005 10:09 PM