OMG, CSI goes QT

Maybe last night’s episode of CSI: wasn’t the best episode of the program I’ve ever seen. But, if so, I think that’s only because last night wasn’t so much an episode of CSI: as it was – despite the commercial breaks – the first CSI: movie.

I’m neither a Quentin Tarantino fan nor a hater. Some of the scenes in his movies are among the best and most memorable I’ve ever watched. In the end, however, I’ve never found any of his movies to be truly great (to be fair, I have never watched Kill Bill, though both parts have been waiting for me on the DVR for months). I’ve always gotten the feeling he tries to do just a bit too much, to be too great, or just too too. But I think he did a marvelous job with CSI:. The first hour of last night’s show was right up there with the best network TV I’ve ever watched. Tarantino left a definite stamp on almost every scene, but it was still CSI:, with only a handful of exceptions (the early conversation between Nick and Warrick being the main example).

I am not sure the second half lived up to the promise of the first, but such is the curse of great ideas – the more impossible the situation you set up in the first act, the more the second act will have to cheat to resolve it.

Also, some of the more overtly Tarantino bits worked better in the first half than they did in the second. The scene in which the team first watches Nick on the computer while the Walkman plays the Turtles’ “Outside Change” was brilliant. Sure, it was a blatant rip off of the ear-cutting scene from “Reservoir Dogs,” but it worked. It was completely unlike any moment CSI: has ever had and one of the few times I’ve been happy to dwell on the characters as people. On the other hand, Nick’s hallucination of his autopsy at the hands of his father and the coroner didn’t work for me at all – it was pointlessly gruesome and sort of killed the suspense that had been building before the commercial break. That kind of thing might have worked better earlier on.

It did lack a lot of classic CSI: stuff. I know Diana was disappointed at the lack of triumph at the end – her favorite moments from the show are those scenes when the bad guy finally realizes he’s been caught. I missed that as well, although it would have been inauthentic for the female prisoner at the end to show such remorse. What really bothered me was the relative lack of a villain. The episode was built around a great idea – let’s put Nick in a box! – but never was able to justify the situation. They needed a bad guy but had nothing to do with him – so they blew him up. It might have been more powerful if it was someone from a CSI: past – an old villain who’s grudge against the department would have made more sense to us as longtime viewers of the show.

Still, and here I quote Lani, who had the decency to send only this even though she was finishing the episode just as we started it: “OMG … CSI … just … wow.”