Review of C.S.I.: Season 6 Part 1 (Box Set)

Introduction

The team is back together for season 6, but things are changing as there are repercussions from the events detailed in the Tarentino denouement of the previous season. Nick clearly has some flashbacks from his time entombed by Walter Gordon, the first episode sees him recoil demonstrably from a cockroach that crawls on him in the first episode and there is more to come. Warwick realises that life is too short and get married to fiancée Tina after only knowing her for a couple of months. Katherine is a little thrown by this sudden marriage as her fantasy of getting together with Warwick is suddenly ended. And Grissom is passed a tape that survived the whole Tarentino thing and believes that Walter Gordon had an accomplice, keeping the existence of this tape a secret from Nick.

The reunification of the core team, however, makes the character of Sofia (Louise Lombard) redundant. As she has proved to be a popular character, she is taken out of the lab and made a detective, with back story emerging on how she was a detective before being seconded to the lab in the first place. This now means that she teams up regularly with Jim Brass (Paul Guilfoyle), a partnership that drops into a bucket load of trouble about halfway through this set; the stunning two-parter A Bullet Runs Through It.

Starting with a frenetic running car chase cum gun battle, Brass and Sofia join the chase as a pursuit is mounted on a car full of AK47-wielding bad guys. Halting in a slum area, a pitched gun fight leaves a cop dead and also a couple of the bad guys and a local businessman`s son. Tensions mount, not least when it becomes clear that the dead cop was a victim of friendly fire (a clear misnomer if ever there one). The unlucky shooter is not really a surprise in the end, but it`s a good piece of drama and quite emotional too from a number of angles.

CSI wouldn`t be CSI without the odd cases, this half set doesn`t disappoint either. Dog Eat Dog is about the insatiable hunger caused by Willi-Prader syndrome and Werewolves is about the werewolf-like condition called hypertrichosis. As usual the ailments look laughable but are treat with respect by the writers, the `villains` in each case made to look like idiots or prejudiced.

The set finishes off by going almost full circle with a case an appearance by Walter Gordon`s daughter that brings some kind of resolution to the after-effects of Nick`s kidnap experience.

Video

As usual, good picture. Anyone who`s seen CSI before knows the score by now.

Audio

5.1 soundtrack that is quite punchy with some neat quick cut sound effects in there that weren`t that obvious during the TV broadcasts (to my memory anyway). Nicely subtitled and sometimes even including information on the music used, which is a nice if inconsistent move.

Features

The Science Behind The Sound - a near half hour and quite substantial featurette on the sound design of the series, centred on the A Bullet Runs Through It episode which has a very punchy and chaotic opening sequence. Very interesting and I really didn`t know that most of the wound/mortuary sounds actually come from food.

The New Title Sequence - quick 5-minute piece on the new title sequence, the first time the sequence has changed according to the staff (which I find hard to believe but I have no inclination to either argue with them or go and check…).

Commentary on Shooting Stars by Danny Cannon.

Commentary on Gumballs by Sarah Goldfinger and Richard J. Lewis.

Commentary on A Bullet Runs Through It Pt 1 by Carol Mendelsohn and Richard Catalani, then a second one by Danny Cannon.

Commentary on A Bullet Runs Through It Pt 2 by Carol Mendelsohn and Kenneth Fink

I have to say that I find any commentaries with either Carol Mendelsohn or Danny Cannon involved quite interesting and so very pleased to see them on the majority here.

Conclusion

And so the splitting of the Grissom team ends and everyone`s back together after the dramatic Tarentino double header at the back end of last season. There are minor repercussions to this that crop up during the season to reflect what the team has gone through, not least the decision by Nick Stokes to audition for the Village People during the dramatic two parter A Bullet Runs Through It. Not sure what he was thinking of, and not really sure what the crew or cast thought of it either, but it was gone after three episodes. Nice to see Warrick have a little dig at `moustache boy` though…

With Greg Sanders (Eric Szmanda) now a fully-fledged CSI, the crown as the butt of jokes has been passed fully to Hodges (Wallace Langham), who is rapidly becoming one of my favourite characters. Not only does he make really bad humorous remarks but also imparts inappropriate personal information to various members of the team who can only stare helplessly in disbelief at what they`re hearing. Superb stuff.

There`s a neat little twist at the end of this season that got plenty of people talking and there are some little hints of what was to come in some of the dialogue.

As to rest, you know what you`re getting by now; two concurrent storylines, sometimes connected, most times not. Plenty of forensic babble followed by explanation and then the inevitable music-laden test sequences before the lab equipment spits out the result. Any fingerprint testing will always get a match on the third try, etc, etc. It`s set in stone, but it works as this is still one of the most popular genre series of its type. CSI also seems to have a database for just about every piece of evidence found (most of them true by the way) but this is obviously something of an in-joke as well as Hodges quips about interrogating a plastic bin liner database at one point.

My only real quibble, again, is that once more the UK gets a half season. I was hoping that the last season of Battlestar Galactica, which was thankfully a full but sadly incomplete set, might just have encouraged the industry not to try to milk the releases any more. Sadly not.