Thu 17 Jan 2013
A TV Review by Mike Tooney: CSI “Dead Air.” (16 January 2013).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[15] Comments
“Dead Air.” From the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation series. Season 13, Episode 11. First broadcast: 16 January 2013. Regular cast: Ted Danson (D. B. Russell), Elisabeth Shue (Julie Finlay), George Eads (Nick Stokes), Paul Guilfoyle (Captain Jim Brass), Jorja Fox (Sara Sidle), Eric Szmanda (Greg Sanders), Robert David Hall (Dr. Robbins), David Berman (David Phillips), Wallace Langham (David Hodges), Elisabeth Harnois (Morgan Brody), Jon Wellner (Henry Andrews). Guest cast: Alex Carter (Detective Vartann), Daniel Roebuck (Fred Paulsen), Spencer Grammer (Ella St. James), Lenny Jacobson (Denny Jones), Abigail Klein (Rainy Days), Jacob Zachar (Chad Lane), Danielle Bisutti (Theresa Shea), Tom Choi (Director), Richard Blake (Robbie), Felisha Terrell (Competitive Reporter). Writer: Joe Pokaski. Director: Phil Conserva.
Theresa Shea is a no-nonsense investigative reporter presently marking time as the anchor at a Las Vegas TV station. Until somebody murders her, she is hot on the trail of an arsonist who created chaos and death in the Vegas area seventeen years ago. As the CSI team will discover, Theresa was universally hated by everyone who knew her, meaning there’s no shortage of suspects.
And her murder is no ordinary event: During a live broadcast during a major storm, while Theresa is alone in the broadcast room with only robot cameras, there is a power transient and the lights go out. When they come back on, after a moment she collapses across her desk — “really,” as they say in The Wizard of Oz, “most sincerely dead.”
In the twenty seconds it takes to restore the lighting, somehow a murderer has crept up behind her and expertly shoved a knife blade into her neck, severing her brain stem and rendering her speechless until she dies a few seconds later. When the lights return, she’s sitting there convulsing until she finally falls over.
Belatedly the director orders they cut to commercial, too late for the viewers at home. As head CSI agent D. B. Russell characterizes it, “We have a locked-room murder with a million witnesses.”
But the “million witnesses” have really seen no more than the crew in the control room.
Suspecting the blackout was no coincidence, Russell decides to track down the source of the power outage. Not far from the TV station he finds an exploded transformer, destroyed not by a lightning strike as is usually the case but by explosives triggered by a cell phone signal. “This,” he says, “took patience.”
Add to the locked-room problem the twists and turns of lying field reporters, a brow-beaten assistant, an emotionally unstable TV station technician, and a code-breaking sequence (the code here being the outmoded Gregg shorthand system) and you have pleasant echoes of the Golden Age of Detection.
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January 17th, 2013 at 6:07 pm
Begging pardon …
The victim on last night’s CSI wasTheresa Shea, not Ella St.James.
That latter character was the suspect with the bum alibi about the “live remote”.
I realize that the younger actors on TV these days are getting harder to tell apart than ever, but still …
January 17th, 2013 at 6:33 pm
Mike – Good catch. What’s really embarrassing is that they not only spoke her name but also plastered it all over the TV screen.
Sheesh!
January 17th, 2013 at 9:02 pm
I’ll make the change in the review. Since I haven’t seen the show, if I mess it up from here, it’s my error, but do let me know!
January 17th, 2013 at 9:08 pm
For a series that’s been on for 13 years, and counting, would it be wise to confess that I’ve not see a single episode?
And with Ted Danson in the leading role, I’m not about to start now. I enjoyed his performance on CHEERS, but since then, nothing. He’s one actor whose popularity I don’t understand.
January 17th, 2013 at 10:03 pm
I actually think CSI is a pretty good show. Like probably everyone I particularly liked the early, William Petersen years, and the fascination with serial killers, like the Miniature Killer Natalie Davis, and also Paul Millander, whose work we first see in season one. What intrigued me about this scenarios was that they developed them over arcs, so they were really able to develop the story and the characters over time — much better than the one-off episodes, in general. Also, the interaction between Grissum and these two killers was fun to watch.
My favorite arc actually involved Liev Schreiber, who was guesting while Petersen was away — I believe acting on stage in Chicago or somewhere. Schreiber plays a former NJ cop with a very twisted past. I don’t want to give too much away, but he emerges a hero in the end.
January 18th, 2013 at 6:58 am
It’s on the air here, and been for years, but I have long ago stopped watching ANY series on TV.
Some episodes of Charlie Sheens’s ‘Men’, off topic here, of course,a bit of ‘Mad Men’, and some Oldies, but that’s it .
The Doc
January 18th, 2013 at 8:35 am
I wouldn’t go as far as The Doc and say that I don’t watch ANY series on TV but I know what he means. I can give my highest recommendation to such quality series as JUSTIFIED on FX and HELL ON WHEELS which was on AMC. A show really has to be very good for me to put up with commercial interruptions.
Concerning CSI, I started to watch it when it first began many years ago and William Petersen was the star. However after several episodes I developed a hatred for almost all the characters and stopped watching. Frankly I think the show is unbelievable because real CSI experts spend their time in labs. I strongly doubt they run around with guns questioning suspects and making arrests.
January 18th, 2013 at 11:06 am
I discovered CSI in syndication when my health went and I was stuck at home. I was very thankful every day for CSI and Perry Mason reruns.
I stopped watching when Petersen left, but I saw the early Danson episodes and enjoyed his character. I am just bored with the series.
#6. Doc, you are not alone. Most of TV has always been bad, but in the “good old days” you were stuck with TV or reading if you wanted entertainment without leaving your house. You are missing some great shows though. I will try most shows and hate nearly all of them, but I will find a gem or two out there.
PERSON OF INTEREST is the best network series on. I’d review it but it is a complex arc series that is constantly changing. The arc used to be in the background with the procedural case in the foreground. That has flipped this season. If you can afford it, I recommend you buy the first season now on DVD.
I currently watch POI, JUSTIFIED, ARCHER, and FRINGE (that ends this week). I am waiting for DOCTOR WHO. And that is it. The rest of my viewing is online at YouTube, iTunes, and Amazon or DVDs.
#7. Walker, as I remember the CSI people went out to do their stuff at the scene of the crime, never carried a gun, and always had armed uniformed cops or the detective whats-his-name with them. It is like all cop shows, not bothered with reality.
Funny thing about this series. It has changed real juries. Today, most juries expect the CSI work to be on the level of the series.
January 18th, 2013 at 11:46 am
Not watching the stuff, I have to be careful in judging it .
Although those shows were a minority, I honestly don’t think that today’s offers can be compared to Perry Mason, 77 Sunst Strip, Peter Gunn, The Avengers, and a host of other, REALLY good series of days gone by.
What I absolutely HATE is political correctness in ANY form, especially being built into TV series, or MYSTERY, meaning supernatural crap, of course, not our topic here.
Today, the REAL world does’nt seem to be enough, you have to have paralell universes, vampires, ghosts,and the works.
Police officers who run the crime fighting single-handed, against all odds, while being part of a team,needless heroes who go alone instead of calling SWAT,open stupidity as a staple… sorry, but that simply is not for me.
Commercials and their consequences, i.e., shortening the story,kicking good and successful shows in the Nielsen-rating for ”Reality TV”, meaning ‘shows’ where they pay some bozos a couple of bucks to act like bozos…
I don’t want to sound old, or what, but in the past the chance of stumbling upon quality entertainment on TV was higher .
The Doc
January 18th, 2013 at 1:31 pm
Michael, I thought you gave up on Fringe! Also, you can just rent the first season of Person of Interest on Netflix, though you have to subscribe to the DVD service, rather than streaming only. I LOVE complex arc stories, but gave up on PoI after a few season-one episodes because it seemed heavily one-off to me.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:52 pm
#10. David, the first half of the first season of POI was one and off episodes but then the evil American government conspiracy started to kick in and the audience has responded.
At the end of this season I plan to do a primer on POI much like I did on FRINGE.
io9.com does a great recap of each episode you might like to check out.
FRINGE’s best season was number three but I am hanging in there until the end. Tonight’s final episode will no doubt disappoint all those with their hopes up (like LOST, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA,etc), but I am looking forward to it. I hope the other Universe and Olivia are dealt with as satisfying as Nina (Blair Brown) was.
January 18th, 2013 at 6:21 pm
I watched Danson in BORED TO DEATH a cable show with Jason Swartzmann and they were pretty funny together. It was supposed to have a private eye angle to it, but it never worked for me. Three episodes in a row on a DVD were more than enough for me and I never finished watching that series. Too much 30-something angst and women-don’t-understand-me dialogue and situations lifted from old Woody Allen movies.
I’m intrigued by any contemporary locked room mystery. I’m hoping I can watch this CSI episode on the CBS website.
January 25th, 2013 at 3:00 pm
Reporting back: Blah. It was easily solved. I nailed the culprit at the first commercial break. Of course I hadn’t a clue what the real motive was and watching the episode unfold just to discover that part was really not worth it. But I stuck it out to the end to prove I was right about the murderer’s identity.
It’s not a real impossible crime at all. Then can only be one person who did it but that character is conveniently overlooked for the service of the story. A contrived and unimaginative writer’s trick, I’d say. The focus of the investigation was on all suspects *except* the most obvious person until the final two or three minutes. The fact that no one was interviewing the real culprit was just bad writing and poor plotting.
January 25th, 2013 at 6:53 pm
You’re not making me particularly eager to see this episode, John.
January 26th, 2013 at 1:27 pm
Steve – John’s analysis speaks volumes about “the TV generation,” as we used to be called. (I started watching television in 1955 – and it hasn’t helped my eyesight or IQ one bit.)
Screen writers write to the formula most appropriate to their genre, and always have.
There’s a website called TV TROPES that lays it all out, sometimes hilariously:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage
If you go to their CRIME AND PUNISHMENT page, you’ll see how some tropes have been employed so often that they’ve earned their own categories:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrimeAndPunishmentTropes