Spoilers for CSI: Miami series 6 – so hiding everything below the cut, just in case (oh, now with added swearing, so don’t read if you’re easily offended)
So I already blogged about CSI: Miami and how it’s basically jumped the shark maybe a couple of seasons back. I still think that’s the case, and for the most part we still watch it and enjoy it every now and then. However, a while back we discovered Horatio had a son who was in trouble (he was involved in a kidnapping) and then a few episodes after that the son’s mother turned up and was a murder suspect. This was a prime example of what’s wrong with CSI: Miami, the story was about the characters not the crimes and it was contrived and stupid.
But we hadn’t even begun to see the worst of it yet.
About 4 weeks back we read the description of that night’s episode, and it just annoyed the hell out of me and we never watched it. We built a few episodes up on Sky+ after that and then yesterday I was working on the One Line Movie Reviews site so mostly focussed on the computer, and it seemed like an ideal time to clear some episodes. The episode essentially involves Horatio’s son’s mother being further implicated in another murder, an ex-CSI member harassing Calleigh with an on-line website suggesting she’s incompetent and messing with evidence, Calleigh then getting kidnapped and Horatio being extradited to Brazil to face trial for a murder he committed there in an earlier season. I kid you not.
The episode ends with Horatio being released without further charge but being warned by the Brazilian Police that lots of people in Brazil who don’t like him know he’s there and leaves him with a gun.
Okay, it was frustrating, but not as bad as I feared (just mostly frustrating).
But the second episode – oh my. Oh my goodness.
It’s Horatio Gun Porn. It’s pointless, meaningless, Horatio Porn. We watch Horatio walk away from the Brazilian Chief of Police, he meets four Mala Noche gang members. Three of whom he kills in some kind of super-natural gun toting macho bullshit sequence of flashing images. The head bad guy runs. Two more bad guys on trail bikes chase Horatio but naturally through a glimmer of flashing primary colours and leafy tree shots he dispatches them. A car drives up, Horatio shoots the window out, the bad guy falls out of the door and runs, Horatio shoots him in the leg.
And then, Horatio walks over and shoots the incapacitated bad guy point blank, cold blood, with malice.
What. The. Fuck.
No really, what the fuck. Okay, there’s a slim chance they’re setting Horatio up for some kind of ‘mental breakdown going bad’ thing, but really, that sequence is everything that’s bad and wrong about Miami. If you shoot bad guys in cold blood you are the bad guy. I don’t care what city they’re in, what gang they’re in, or what they did. There is a line between right and wrong, and cops (good ones) don’t cross that line. Heroes don’t cross that line. Heroes let the bad guy live, knowing that it means more trouble, knowing that it means they’re endangering their own lives, knowing the bad guys wouldn’t give them the same mercy. But that’s what good guys do. They buy that risk, they take that chance, they don’t cross the line.
Let’s forget for a moment that this was pointless, gun toting porn for the benefit of Horatio lovers everywhere, let’s forget that it’s nothing to do with crime investigation and everything to do with pointless Horatio plot, let’s focus on the fact that it portrays Horatio as an evil, cold blooded killer.
It ruins his integrity. Every time he interviews a criminal I’m thinking ‘you’re a killer Horatio Caine, a cold blooded killer, and you’re being a hypocrite’.
And that’s the first 10 minutes of the bloody episode. After that we get Horatio getting free, Calleigh finally being rescued (by the CSI team, not by the bloody FBI or some other agency with actual resources naturally), and in the final shots of the episode we see the truth about the stupidity of the criminals. Our bad guy takes Calleigh into an illegal gambling room, he gets past the doorman by using Calleigh’s badge. He then walks up to the single table and pulls his gun, demanding the money. Behind him is the doorman he walked past. Let’s ignore that this is a trap by the CSI team, the thief walked past the doorman, pulled his gun on the poker players, and thinks he can get out with the money. Clearly it doesn’t enter this clever thieves brain that maybe the doorman might sneak up behind him and shoot him in the bloody head.
Argh.
Addendum: We just watched Tunnel Vision which wasn’t the worst episode ever although the criminals are still dumb and now we’re subjected to Rock and a Hard Place in which we get this,
A man is murdered when someone drops a piece of slate off a bridge. The team tracks the slate to one of their own and Alexx’s son becomes a suspect. Then to make matters worse Alexx finds him in a warehouse holding a bloody knife over his friend who happened to be the other suspect.
Bold emphasis mine. COME ON! NO! STOP IT. Please. Just stop. Now. You’re done. Give up. This is not a soap opera, it’s a crime program. Give. It. A. Rest.