CSI - Where theatrically-challenged B-listers go to die?
It's Saturday night, and while I should be out celebrating dismal holiday retail sales figures with other like-minded cynics and permabulls, I'm at home watching a CSI Las Vegas marathon on Spike TV. If ever there was a lamer way to spend a Saturday night, it doesn't immediately spring to mind. Anyway, enough about my pitiful condition.
The CSI Franchise - is it the last stop along the Hollywood trail of tears? Actually, no--CSI is just one of several dumping grounds where floundering actors are afforded one last opportunity to cash in on the tattered remnants of their celebrity before being featured in Entertainment Tonight's "Where Are They Now?" segment. I have been able to firmly establish the existence of several other FRPs or "final resting places": NYPD Blue, ER and Law & Order to name a few. Rick Schroeder anyone??
Like many formulaic programs, CSI does have its moments, albeit it far fewer than in years past. Everyone knows the forensics side of the show is unmitigated bullshit, but Marg Helgenberger still has a great ass for her age and she bends over a lot!! Laurence Fishburne has apparently burned through his Matrix earnings and joined (temporarily I'm sure) the CSI Las Vegas cast to pay the bills. This works out nicely from a PC diversity standpoint as the only regular black character was killed off last season. Kim Delaney (also great ass) didn't last long on CSI Miami or Law & Order SVU but did have a longer stint on NYPD Blue. TV dramas are rife with actors who get booted to the curb once the novelty of seeing them as gumshoe or surgeon wears off.
Is CSI the worst you can do if your acting career is flatlining? Certainly not! If you're a washed up B-lister, then you're most likely headed to ER for career defibrillation - STAT! Almost every Hollywood drifter and vagabond has passed through Chicago General at one time or another. Some, like Clooney and Bello, moved on to bigger and better things, but most were just swallowed up by the earth never to be heard from again. And if ER isn't what the doctor ordered, you can always follow SUV 1-2-3 and find a home for an episode or two.
1. Find mutilated victim and make crass, insensitive comments intended to convey to the audience just how bitter, jaded and cynical you've been rendered after years of investigating gruesome homicides committed by the bottom 1% of humanity.
2. Interrogate suspects who are, amazingly, always available and willing to share the most intimate details of their life while painting, gardening, walking the dog, getting the kids off to school, etc. Intersperse the otherwise courteous and affable questionings with snide and condescending remarks when slimy pimp or abusive boyfriend creates opening.
3. Use your superior interrogation skills to make perp crack under pressure despite a complete and total lack of compelling evidence.
And finally, you can try your hand at carpet fibers and blood spatter if the medical and legal professions aren't doing it for you. With state of the art lazer spectrum whatchamacallits and computer mapping thingamajigs, anyone can solve a murder with as little as a speck of dust that once rested on the brim of someone's hat three states over. And those neo-tech glass brick and terrazo tile labs? Wunderbar!
