Who doesn't love a bit of CSI?
The amount of stars who started out in here and are so young is ridiculous. This is the gateway show you wanna be on to become a star.
In season 1 we meet the team who we go on to love for at least the next 9 seasons if not more. But these is our introduction, this series is us getting to know these characters.
From the very first episode we are thrown into a shocking world. We follow Holly on her first day at her new job in CSI. We get to see the team through her eyes, eccentric Grissom with his bugs, stern boss man Brass, kind-but-knows-her-worth Catherine, charming Nick, and cool kid Warrick. All of them welcome her, all of them show her their support.
When Warrick leaves her on her own to collect evidence to go do a favour for a corrupt judge, Holly is murdered by the suspect who returns to the crime scene. This rocks CSI massively, Brass loses his position, Warrick is suspended, Catherine blames herself, and everyone is shocked and saddened. This tragic event is what shapes the team into how we know it. Grissom becomes CSI supervisor and takes Warrick back. After a heart to heart he finds the judge is blackmailing Warrick and helps take him down, taking umbridge at the fact one of his team are being used in such a manor, especially when said member is a recovering gambling addict.
With the team becoming closer due to this event, Grissom disrupts the new family by calling in Sara Sidle from San Francisco to join the team. Sara blames Warrick for Holly's murder not knowing the real story behind it. She just sees a black man with a gambling addiction and chooses to believe her own narrative. We see her continuously take out her frustration on Warrick due to this throughout the season while she is perfectly nice to the rest of the team, she doesn't batt an eye when she finds out Catherine used to be a stripper, but an addiction she looks down on.
With Brass moving to Homicide, the team settles into its new status quo and we see them take down many a murderer during the first season, most notable of which Paul Millander who remains uncaptured by the end of the season. This particular case is a very interesting one as the serial killer floated right under our noses for most of the episode and he continued to be quite the match for our team. He was a very good serial antagonist for the season and it made us look forward to seeing him again.
The first season also specialised in bizarre deaths. We had body parts and the hunt for the rest of the remains, hallucinogenics scaring people to death, creative murders and bodies places they shouldnt have been. But murder wasn't the only thing CSI investigated. We see Catherine take on proving a rape when her ex husband is involved. Nick resolve a prostitute/robbery case. The team foils a kidnapping when the evidence leads to the husband, and Grissom proves a man sentenced with the murder of his family innocent following an incorrect arson filing which was actually a faulty space heater.
The series is diverse, granted its 25 years old, but its a classic. We get a glimpse at how crimes were solved way almost my lifetime ago. We get to see how technology grows and killers are caught.
We also get to see a small glimpse at the people behind the crime solvers. These arent just cold collectors of evidence, while they have to act like what they see doesnt phase them, we get to see the moments it does. All the team are affected by child death and abuse and for various different reasons from their own trauma to simply having a kid of their own. We see Warrick struggle with his addiction by solving cases in the midst of Las Vegas, the gambling city of the world. We see the humans behind this team and how they gel and dont. Its a good dynamic even if this season is now a bit outdated.
I also love the acting. We've got people here from all over America so the accents are all slightly different. They all have different upbringings and that's okay. But what makes it special is how each actor really commits to their role. Jorja Fox makes Sara so hateful, but also empathetic. We both love and hate her, but more love to hate her at least in the early seasons. She plays her bias so well, but the actress in real life is just and fights for rights and charities. Marg Helgenburger makes Catherine so bold but emotional, she gets the sass just right and again in real life she's charity conscious but perhaps more like her character. Gary Dourdan makes Warrick layered. He's a hard man, a cool kid, but he's got emotions, he's got trauma, he gets discriminated against at every turn yet still tries to be a good guy. Warrick is my favourite because of Gary, he's a proper fleshed out character and that's just in the acting. Of course William Peterson and George Eads bring their own as Grissom and Nick respectively, but we don't really know them yet other than Nick is kind but quiet, reserved even, and Grissom is somewhere on the Autistic spectrum which wasnt widely explored back then. We know their quirks but dont yet know them.
I'm giving season one a 9/10. This was ground breaking stuff back in the day especially as it killed off a character we were getting to know right off the bat. It's addictive, its gruesome, its wholesome. While the subject matter is less than savoury, its the storytelling which helps separate the real stuff from the fiction and makes it bearable. I'm love a bit of true crime, but sometimes you need a reason to escape from the horrible things in the world and you wish they didn't happen. CSI is a way to explore the very worst in people while still believing there are good ones out there. Despite this it helps you hope the worst is just fiction for the moment, at least until you turn on the news.
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