A ‘CSI’ Goodbye

When CSI: Crime Scene Investigation premiered in 2000, CBS didn’t think it would be one of the big hits of its fall schedule — nope, they were giving a bigger promotional push to a remake of The Fugitive, this time starring Tim Daly as Dr. Richard Kimble. CSI was given a 9 p.m. Friday time slot after The Fugitive: CBS thought this rookie could use the great lead-in.

Well, we know how that turned out. The Fugitive lasted 22 episodes and CSI lasted 15 seasons, and will close out its run on Sunday night with a two-hour finale that brings back core cast members William Petersen and Marg Helgenberger.

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It’s difficult to remember that CSI was once considered a cutting-edge, eccentric show, a mix of high-tech and hard-boiled mystery dreamed up by a Las Vegas shuttle-bus driver, Anthony E. Zuiker. Zuiker pitched his show to movie and TV producer Jerry Bruckheimer. I remember seeing Zuiker address the Television Critics Association the summer before CSI began, and you could see why Bruckheimer decided to take the bait: Zuiker was then a portly, heavily perspiring idea-machine, enthusiastically bouncing in his seat, yammering animatedly about how many hundreds of never-before-seen plots could be generated by focusing on how crime scene investigators do their jobs. (The pilot featured crucial evidence gathered by plucking nail clippings from a toilet bowl: yuck and cool!) Listening to Zuiker hype his show, you thought, this guy is either deluded, or he’s really onto something.

Turned out to be the latter. Not only did Zuiker birth a franchise of other CSIs, each with their own Who oldie as a theme song, but his creation entered real life as a law-enforcement tool relied upon more than ever by the judicial system — the show had made CSIs seem so infallible, it affected how trial juries arrived at their verdicts.

I really liked the first seasons of CSI. William Petersen, whom I then knew primarily from his terrific film performances in Michael Mann’s Manhunter and William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A., made his Gil Grissom a different kind of TV hero: Gruff and walled-off emotionally, Grissom drove his team hard and didn’t care that people above and below him in his unit sometimes thought he was a screwy eccentric. Helgenberger’s Catherine Willows may have had an eye-rolling film-noir background — single-mom former exotic dancer turned cop — but Helgenberger imbued Catherine with a flinty toughness that gave her a fierce individuality. Although the show would occasionally try to signal an attraction between her and Grissom, one of CSI’s best decisions was to keep them as workplace equals who respected each other’s talents.

I stuck with CSI for quite a while, becoming disenchanted as Grissom developed his kinda-squirmy romance with coworker Sara Sidle (Jorja Fox), and once Petersen took himself out of the show on a weekly basis after Season 9, I never cottoned to replacements such as Laurence Fishburne’s Ray Langston, a case of a good actor having to breathe life into a dull character.

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In retrospect, Petersen was right when he used to grumble in interviews about the franchising of CSI, referring to it as a McDonald’s of TV — after all, didn’t the countless parodies of David Caruso’s CSI: Miami sunglasses, and the mediocrity of an entry like the current CSI: Cyber, tarnish the original brand?

It’s still fun to go back and look at early seasons of CSI — anyone remember the period when Liev Schreiber did a four-episode run as an investigator who was even more moody and sullen than Grissom?

Unlike some folks, I’m saying good riddance to CSI. I have fond memories and feelings toward the show. I’ll watch the two-hour send-off. As procedural dramas go, the original, crispy CSI was very good indeed.

The CSI finale airs Sunday, Sept. 27 at 9 p.m. on CBS.