CSI: Crime Scene Investigation-Season 1-Episodes 1.1-1.12 (2000)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Menu Animation & Audio Biographies-Character Trailer Booklet Featurette-Behind The Scenes Interviews-Cast & Crew
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	513:11
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered Multi Disc Set (3)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Various
Studio Distributor	Imagine Entertainmnt Imagine Entertainment	Starring	William Peterson Marg Helgenberger Gary Dourdan George Eads Jorja Fox Paul Guilfoyle
Case	Gatefold
RPI	$89.95	Music	John M. Keane

    A couple of weeks ago I reviewed Season 3 of The Sopranos and made mention of the fact that it was the most adult show on television. If that is so, and I don't wish to contradict myself (which I don't), then CSI: Crime Scene Investigations misses out by the last hair on a bald man's head on taking the title. Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, who it must be admitted is probably known more for his string of big budget movies like Top Gun and Armageddon than for anything he has tried on television, has easily created one of the best of the new generation of crime shows to hit the small screen. Using some of the same techniques used in the movies, CSI attempts to put you in the shoes of the various members of a small but dedicated group of forensic scientists who attempt to solve crime of any sort, from murder, abduction, or a simple abandoned car, following the clues whereever they might lead to find the truth behind the mystery.

    The strength of any good television show is usually to be found in its lead actors. In this case, they are a couple of veterans of the big screen in William Peterson (Manhunter) and Margaret Helgenberger (Erin Brockovich). Peterson is Gil Grissom, the dedicated scientist and typical loner in charge of the CSI team with an analytical mind that is more like a steel trap. Helgenberger is Catherine Willows, who eschews all the virtues of her chosen profession and is rather every bit the self-made woman she is with a sexy exterior and a vibrancy that once again covers up a very dedicated and capable analyst. The team is initially lead by Captain Jim Brass (Paul Guilfoyle), a hard-bitten working cop who is transferred out in the second episode. Brass is typical of the old style of policeman, but he holds the CSI crew in a little more respect than most. Also on the team are Warrick Brown (Gary Dourdan), a man with a gambling problem, but an excellent forensic specialist when he gets past his own flaws, and Nick Stokes (George Eads), the most socially rounded member of the team with an eye for the woman and an easy-going way about him, but who gets the job done, and done well. Rounding out the group is Sara Sidle (Jorja Fox), an old friend of Grissom's from San Francisco, who is called in to help out on a case and ends up staying for a while.

   There are a lot of well-rounded plots and good dialogue and this certainly adds immensely to the series. As with all first series, there are some flat spots and the characters aren't quite bedded down, but the potential is certainly there. The flat spots aren't a big problem, although some of the forensic science (if you can call it that) has to be taken with a couple of salt licks at times. The use of real scientific instrumentation certainly adds verisimilitude to the proceedings and the use of close-in and graphic representation is well done. Augmentation like the trajectory of a bullet through a body, or seeing down inside a body cavity is well presented and the producer/directors have steered well clear of anything that might lead to violent nausea but have left plenty of detail to intrigue the most discerning of viewers. This is probably why the series has been a Top 3 show for its first three seasons and has already spun off another series which we'll hopefully get to see in the near future. In the meantime, for those of you who love a good detective story that doesn't always turn out right or doesn't get solved instantly by some flaky means, this is a great series to get stuck into.

   Pilot - 43:21
Gil Grissom is called to a motel room where a suicide looks to have taken place. A man is dead in the bathtub with a taped suicide note near the body, but all is not what it seems. Holly Gribbs (Chandra West) joins CSI and is given the 3rd degree by her new boss, Jim Brass, then given her first assignment which turns into a bit of a disaster. Warrick and Catherine investigate a home invasion that has turned into a murder and they are looking for clues as to how the incident took place. Nick is assigned a robbery where the victim was knocked out by an unknown agent and he finds himself becoming involved with a hooker as things progress. After a shaky start, Holly gives the job another go and Warrick is assigned to assist her, but tragedy strikes when Warrick unexpectedly leaves her alone and she is shot while working on a case.

   Cool Change - 42:36
This episode opens with a punter winning $40m on a slot machine and ending up face first on the pavement only a couple of hours later. Grissom takes on the case and then finds 40 million reasons why someone would want to kill the victim. Meantime, Jim Brass is reassigned to Homicide and Grissom is given a promotion to head of the CSI team. Grissom decides to bring in a friend from San Francisco to aid in the Holly Gribbs' case and Sara Sidle is introduced to the team. While this is happening, Warrick is in trouble with his gambling and blows a bet placed on behalf of a bent judge. Owing $10,000, he is forced to gamble heavily, bringing him into conflict with his fellow investigators - this and being suspended for his negligence isn't helped when Holly dies in surgery bringing everyone down.

   Crate 'n' Burial - 42:37 (Produced as Episode 3/Aired as Episode 2)
A ransom demand brings the CSI to the aid of a man whose wife has been kidnapped. Since time is of the essence, Nick and Sara assist Grissom and Brass who is the detective in charge. Warrick and Catherine investigate a hit and run involving a young girl. Forensic examination uncovers a partial licence plate and an old man confesses to the crime, but there is a lot more involved here than meets the eye and it causes something of a crisis of morality between the two officers. In the meantime, Grissom's team uncover clues which lead to the rescue of a buried woman and a possible suspect - the trouble is that the evidence is telling a slightly different story to the one they seem to have uncovered.

   Pledging Mr Johnson - 42:39
The discovery of a leg floating in the water brings the CSI team a crime of a somewhat different nature. Grissom and Catherine work the case, which turns up a body to match the leg and a slightly offbeat husband who wants to know who killed his wife. Following the clues, the pair find themselves being trailed by the husband and things get messy before the end. Over on a local college campus, a young man is found hanged and dead, but an autopsy reveals some disturbing evidence. Nick and Sara take the case which involves hazing, fraternities and plain jealously, but it leads to a wall of silence. Warrick is forced to do a favour for the bent judge which includes tampering with evidence in order to free a suspect, but his head gets the better of him and with the aid of Brass he sets the judge up for the fall and does himself a huge favour into the bargain.

   Friends and Lovers - 43:12
A naked man running through some brush is later found dead. So begins this bizarre case. Warrick is brought back from suspension and Grissom partners with him and tries to determine what killed the man and why. Sara is asked to investigate the case of a woman wrapped in plastic who was found in a dumpster. She discovers a case of coffin theft and some shady doings in the funeral business. Catherine and Nick are handed a dead schoolteacher and some huge splatters of blood to contend with. Nick puts together a forensic analysis of the blood splatters and slowly a pattern emerges which shows exactly how the victim died. After that, it's up to Nick and Catherine to piece together the truth that matches what they can tell from the evidence.

   Who Are You? - 43:13
A local plumber discovers fingers sticking out of a block of concrete underneath a house and CSI are called in to solve a five year old murder. Sara and Warrick are assigned an Officer Involved Shooting and a missing bullet from the officer's gun and a potential eyewitness have them stripping the victim's car to prove who actually shot him when they fail to recover the bullet at the crime scene. Grissom calls in a top forensic artist to sculpt a face for his corpse and the name Fay Green pops up. Catherine takes on an assignment which brings her into contact with her ex-husband and a possible conflict of interest. Her ex is accused of raping an exotic dancer where she used to work and she must determine whether it was rape or consensual sex. After getting his name, Grissom tracks down her ex-boyfriend and an invited search gives cause for a warrant - when they return, they accuse him of murder.

   Blood Drops - 43:43
A young woman runs out of her house screaming and everyone is called in to investigate the mass murder of a family. Doing a preliminary walkthrough, a young rookie is taken ill by what he sees so Sara takes over for him. We have a dead father on the floor, the mother in the family bed, two young boys in their room and two young sisters outside, alive but badly shaken. CSI must sift through the evidence to uncover the truth whilst the media circus is outside baying for answers. Slowly things begin to start making sense and a suspect is arrested when a missing bike and some blood-soaked jeans turn up. Although the evidence paints a fairly straightforward picture, the true motive behind the crime proves a lot more shocking than at first thought.

   Anonymous - 42:34
The murderer from the pilot is back. Another body is found in a hotel room bathtub, a taped suicide note by his side and the scene is wiped almost totally clean. Grissom has a personal interest in this one and assigns a reckless driving case at the Hoover Dam to Warrick and Nick who end up putting money on the line as to whose hypothesis is correct. Working on the tape, Grissom calls in Disco Placid (Ricky Harris), a DJ with perfect pitch (sounds like someone who runs this web site!) to help decipher the sounds on the tape. The fingerprints come back as a match with the same prints found originally, but unexpectedly Grissom's own thumbprint is found underneath the other one, forming the message 'I've got you under my thumb', which doesn't sit well.

   Unfriendly Skies - 42:46
A plane coming into Las Vegas radios for assistance and Brass calls in Grissom when a dead body lying face down in first class is the result. Working on a tight schedule because the plane will be removed and they will lose their crime scene, the whole team is called in and they begin collecting evidence, interrogating the passengers and crew and trying to determine precisely what went on before they are forced to shut down and give up. Working under time pressure they recreate the events of the flight and discover a rather shocking truth.

   Sex Lies and Larvae - 43:01
Two campers come across a body, badly decomposing, outside of town. Taking a sample of some beetles preserved in coffee, Grissom sets about determining the length of time the body has been left out in the open, including some rather unorthodox testing procedures involving a pig and a blanket. Catherine and Warrick are sent off to investigate a Paul Sorinsen, which turns out to be a missing painting. What seems like a rather bizarre case turns even weirder when they use an ear print to match it to one of the members of the family, but when he returns the painting it turns out to be a fake. Nick is asked to check out an abandoned car at a bus terminal when a woman goes missing for a couple of days and discovers that a crime of passion is nothing more than passion without the crime. Meantime, Warrick is again in trouble when it is discovered that he has missed a court case and has been spotted, on videotape, at a casino.

   The I-15 Murders - 41:36 (Produced as Episode 2/Aired as Episode 10)
A woman shopping at a mall drops a bottle of mustard and ends up missing. On a bathroom stall door a note is written leaving a clue as to her fate and Grissom and Catherine begin to track down what has been happening along the I-15. During this, Grissom has a talk to Warrick about his suspension (remember, this episode is out of kilter - you should have been watching this after Cool Change) and brings him back onboard although the other members of the team aren't quite so forgiving. Sara is assigned what appears a simple burglary that has gone wrong and turned into murder, but money and valuables have been left lying all over the house which doesn't sit right and she turns to the evidence to find out the truth of the matter. Catherine makes a discovery regarding the message on the bathroom stall door and turns up another four doors, creating an overall picture. A handwriting expert is called in and tells them that the writing is definitely female, which is odd. Meanwhile, Nick has another run-in with the hooker with whom he got friendly in an earlier episode when she claims to have been spat on by a security guard.

   Fahrenheit 932 - 42:53
This episode opens in a prison yard, with prisoners exercising and a package marked to Gill Grissom, containing a videotaped request for help from a man who claims he is innocent. In a parked car, a young man is shot through the head and Catherine and Nick get the call which leads them into the world of sports betting, runners and people that will kill at the drop of a hat. Grissom decides to take on the case, partially out of interest and partially as a dig against a fellow CSI officer in charge of the daytime shift. He visits the prison but the prisoner's story has holes in it. Nonetheless, he decides to follow through anyway. Working the scene where a fire has killed a young woman and her daughter, he quickly comes to similar conclusions to those of his compatriot but he digs deeper and uncovers the true reason for the fire.

Video

    To say I was disappointed with the quality of the transfer for this series is an understatement. Something this good deserves better and one can only hope that future releases will be given the treatment they merit. Suffice it to say that the two major problems - grain and colour - really do impact dramatically on the overall watchability of the discs. I remember seeing this series on TV and it had neither of these two obvious flaws, although TV is a long way short on quality compared to DVD it must be said.

    No amount of research could get me the low-down on whether this was shot in anything other than 1.33:1 format, which is surprising given it was only made in 2001. The Region 1 release of this series is also offered at 1.33:1, so unless someone can give me definitive proof otherwise, this would seem to be transferred in its original aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and is therefore not 16x9 enhanced.

    From the very outset this series is plagued by grain. There's probably less grain in a typical wheat field, because this simply crawls throughout every episode. The underlying picture looks as though it has real quality but it is simply lost in the 'noise' caused by the grain. Edge enhancement is visible in various places (eg: Crate 'n' Burial: - 2:20) but isn't that bad. The sharpness is quite decent and background detail is very visible. Shadow detail is good in the more brightly lit scenes, but occasionally the brightness is simply too bright (eg: Pilot: 19:37), but the depth of field is again severely limited by the grain. Low level noise might be present - you simply can't tell.

    If there is one aspect worse than the grain on these discs it's the colour. Whoever set the calibration for this transfer needs to find a new job. There is a definite imbalance in the red hues throughout the three discs. Skin tones look sunburnt, outdoors shots look like they are set on Mars at times and only some of the brightly lit indoors shots get a chance to show any normalcy. Don't get me wrong - this isn't a case of colour bleed, just an improper colour balance introduced into the transfer at some stage along the way leading to a picture that is shifted into the red spectrum. Colour bleed was only noticed on one occasion in Farenheit 932 at 0:15 on the prisoners' uniforms.

    No film artefacts were detected in any of the episodes. Compression artefacts are visible from time to time but are mostly of the fleeting sort. Stock shots of Las Vegas, where the fly-overs were done, show aliasing on the various buildings (eg: Cool Change - 10:04). Moiré artefacts are also noticeable from time to time (eg: Pledging Mr Johnson: - 26:18) but unless you look for them they won't be intrusive. There is some evidence of 3:2 pulldown, especially when panning the stock shots over the buildings of Las Vegas and during the occasional episode (eg: Blood Drops: - 15:15). Major shimmering in Anonymous at 9:50 is the only other noticeable imperfection seen during the various episodes.

    The subtitles are very accurate, surprisingly so. Clean, clear and surrounded by a black border, they show up easily on the screen but do interfere with the action on-screen.

    No layer change or pauses were noticed on any disc.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    A surprisingly lightweight single audio track is all that is on offer on this disc, but it does a very decent job nonetheless. Presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 at 192 kilobits per second, the use of some excellent music and periods of silence work wonders in enhancing the visual fabric, especially when CGI is used. Sound effects are especially noticeable with bullets passing through flesh and bone, down past organs and nicely separate across the front speakers. The music separates out across the fronts for some spaciousness but the viewer's concentration will most definitely be in the centre channel where the dialogue takes place.

    There were no problems with the dialogue or the audio sync.

    Strangely enough, I remember the opening music for the series as being Pete Townshend's Who Are You, which also garners a mention in the credits as the opening theme. On these discs, the opening music has been changed to the series music created by John M. Keane which was a bit surprising. Still, the music used in the show is excellent with lots of familiar and some not-quite-familiar tunes popping in from time to time to add a level of musical diversity I've not heard since Miami Vice.

    Unless your system is capable, this is strictly a stereo experience, although those of you with 5.1 systems may notice some activity from the rears.

    No subwoofer activity was noted at all on any of the discs.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu Animation & Audio

Biographies-Character

Trailer

Booklet

Featurette-Behind The Scenes

Interviews-Cast & Crew

• William Peterson - Gil Grissom - 2:27
• Mar Helgenberger - Catherine Willows - 2:39
• Gary Dourdan - Warrick Brown - 1:56
• George Eads - Nick Stokes - 2:06
• Jorja Fox - Sara Sidle - 1:09
• Paul Guilfoyle - Captain Jim Brass - 1:38
• Jerry Bruckheimer Executive Producer - 4:44
• Anthony E. Zuker - Series Creator - 2:45

    CSI is a series that is both entertaining and informative It is scientific, and yet never overloads the viewer with too much verbiage or technical jargon. Indeed, the cast do an excellent job of taking the insignificant - a speck of blood, a strand of hair, a piece of toenail - and using it to put into place the last piece of the jigsaw that solves the crime in the best tradition of Sherlock Holmes. When it's all put out there for you, it seems so... (dare I say it?) elementary, yet the writers hold your attention for the entire show. Probably the best new crime show in a long, long time.

    The video is at best average, at worst dreadful. The grain diminishes both the clarity and the quality of the injury and the chroma problems just add insult to injury.

    The audio does its job, offering a nice blend of sounds and sound effects in a rather skimpy Dolby Digital presentation, but it remains polished throughout.

    After nearly 9 hours of viewing you want extras? Okay, they've added in a few, but nothing of major significance with the interviews with the cast being the best of the lot.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall