You will never, ever escape CSI, you fools...
It happens to me every day, without fail. I hear terse and suspenseful music, hushed or whispered voices and then the sounds of a violent struggle. It seems a man or woman is in trouble, mortal trouble. An unknown assailant is murdering somebody, or raping and killing somebody; or raping, robbing and killing somebody… in the course of a burglary after driving to the scene of the burglary/rape/robbery/murder while intoxicated; you know, something serious, like that.
Whatever, it's not important, what is important is that there is a crime occurring, a horrible crime. Then, like a herald of justice to come, it happens:
YEAAAHHHHHHH!!! [Da-dun!]
The opening bars of a Who song rocks into my mind and a smile threatens to break across my pale face (as the Who are probably the greatest band of all time) only to be immediately stifled by the cold, hard reality that every CSI franchise on TV uses one of my beloved Who's songs as the opening theme. This is the auditory equivalent of getting stabbed in the balls right after the first second of sexual intercourse. This, truly, sucks.
I CANNOT FUCKING ESCAPE CSI. On every channel, at every hour, a random episode of one of the twelve CSI spin-offs is playing on TV or saved in my Tivo box, like the producers are stalking me and chipping away at the structure of my sanity. Every day an onslaught of contrived sound-bytes delivered by a nerdy but loveable fat-guy with a beard, or a slick, bespectacled white guy- who is, ostensibly incapable of delivering any scripted line in less than twenty-six minutes- assaults my very soul, sucking the bar for acceptable, believable mysteries down to floor-level.
Wow, though, does America ever love CSI because, " that David Caruso is such a hoot!" The audience relishes in the gross-out moments of the autopsies and horrific crime scenes, "eww, cool," they think, hoping for more. It's this same audience, these same people, that won't watch Deadwood because there's "too many bad words and nudity," and also "hate homosexuals." It's, incidentally, the segment of the population that thinks criminals shed fingerprints, blood (for typing), murder weapons, motives and DNA like fleas leaving a dog that's about to go swimming. Additionally, this group also believes that, in the rare event said evidence is:
A- found,
B- positively identified,
- that it will always be admitted into court because the cops on TV never make mistakes, not like that horrible man, Mark Fuhrman, who's "crime"- of saying a politically incorrect word, on a number of occasions, and having candidly expressed some ignorant and/or jaded thoughts- is far worse than the act of slaughtering two people on the steps in front of your house, leading the police on a prolonged car chase (innocent men always run from the police, right?), and lying to the faces of the entire American public in the eleven years since. We can all agree, can't we?
This may surprise you but I can't wait for the CSI spin-off starring OJ Simpson as a falsely accused man who becomes a crime scene tech to investigate his own case. Give it time, man; you know that it’s in the works. Then, next, we can have a CSI cooking show (rife with jump cuts and garish, flashing lights in the background of every exterior shot), a CSI fishing show (rife with jump cuts and garish, flashing lights in the background of every exterior shot), a CSI sports league (rife with jump cuts and garish, flashing lights in the background of every exterior shot) and a CSI morning radio show (rife with two fucking idiotic white guys who are just so OUTRAGEOUS! Oh my god, he just did a crank call to UPS and is drinking a beer at nine in the morning! I hope they play the Camel Toe Song next and then do a few Lewinsky jokes, which are just what I need to hear when I'm on my way to my shitty job in my shitty car in shitty traffic). TV is almost perfect.
Cue 5:15 by The Who. |
