News flash: CSI to be entirely cast with morons. Because what could be better than trusting bedrock criminal investigative principles like the chain of evidence and scientific objectivity to COMPLETE IDIOTS?
Next up, Jurisprudence for Dummies.
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I’ve always thought the “X for Dummies” series to be a clever marketing ploy, exploiting the tendency of amateurs to underestimate their ability for developing acumen. It’s sort of a cop-out, however, to read in public a Dummies book. I mean, it’s almost as if you are intending to send the message “I don’t know anything about this subject, so don’t hold me accountable.”
Would be awesome if someone crafted a site wherein you could enter your subject matter and print a realistic looking book jacket that aped the Dummies look. That way, I could play jokes on people cheaply – e.g., pick up new members of my carpool driving while referencing “Driving for Dummies” or reading “Cryptic Corporate Mumblespeak for Dummies” at monthly department meetings.
This is not a knock against the actual actors who portray characters in CSI * , Bones, and other forensics shows, but in terms of forensic science, they are morons.
Forget for a moment that it’s always H and his crew of scientists with guns who are first in the door at, well, every bust scene. Forget all the improbable glass walls and tens of millions in computer equipment. The very basics are wrong, every episode. And I’m just a guy who reads good forensics crime novels, such as Patricia Cornwell’s well-researched Kay Scarpetta series; I recall Patricia spent time at the (in)famous body farm in research for her novel of the same name. (Ironically, Kathy Reichs, a real forensic scientist whose life parallels that of her main character Temperance Brennan, is a producer of the equally abusive-to-forensics show Bones.)
What are the basics they ignore? In nearly every episode, the CSI team walk right up to yet-another-body, set down their big cases, open it up and start putting on gloves, while crouching to give the body a once over with their ubiquitous flashlight. Check out an actual novel from Cornwell or Reichs; the crime scene and a huge area around it are treated very carefully. Investigators suit up in Tyvek before carefully walking the grid toward and around the body. Stuff like that.
Seven out of ten CSI: Miami openings are Horatio Caine striding up to the body, crouching to give it a once over with his all seeing eyes, and making the pre-commercial declaration. “We’ve got a new bread of criminal in Miami.” More like a new breed of moron.
OK, yeah, I’m just a bit of a mystery story/forensics geek, and I watch as much CSI as I can stand. It’s like poking a sore spot to see if it still hurts.