New to CSI, need some help on where to start.

[Jefferies]

Hi everyone,

Before I ask my question, I appologise if this is not the correct place to discuss CSI. However, the subforum requires an extra registration which I do not fancy. Also, I'm more interested in what my fellow TrekBBS posters think about this show rather than people on another message board.

I have never watched a single episode of this show and I would like to know as a complete newbie where would you recommend I should start? For this question please consider that I do not plan on watching all of the 100s of episodes in this series. Ideally, I would like to start at a point where you can catch up to what is going on at the moment without being left in the dark with regard to the characters, themes and major plots.

My second question is which season of CSI do you think is the most accomplished out of the 11 and a half so far?

My final question is how you rate the spin-offs CSI: Miami and CSI:NY. Are they better, worse, generally inferior/superior to the original? Basically, what I'm asking for here, in your opinion which series do you rate most highly?

Thanks for your help!

[Alidar Jarok]

I'm at most a casual watcher (and haven't watched in quite awhile). My recommendation is to basically catch random episodes as they're virtually standalone. Watch the first two episodes (not sure if it's technically a two parter, but they go together). Then you can probably get away with catching whatever episodes you want. I'm sure someone who is a bigger fan can tell you especially good episodes or especially quality seasons. However, the first few seasons were good because the show was fresh.

CSI Miami is corny as hell. I don't think it adds much besides Horatio Sunglasses Memes. CSI NY strikes me as a more depressing, less funny CSI Miami, but I've never really watched it.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.

[Defcon]

I'm pretty much only a casual viewer as well. I usually tend to watch CSI: LV and CSI:NY episodes if I happen to catch them while zapping through the channels, but I totally hate CSI: Miami: in the beginning it was kind of funny to watch it with my brother only to poke fun at David Caruso/Horatio, but even that got old after a while.

But anyway to actually kind of answer your question: The episodes are pretty standalone so you can really just watch random episodes and don't really have to fear to not getting whats going on. I think there have been some more arc oriented episodes in later seasons, but even those where only a small part of the seasons IIRC.

You might want to check out TrekBBS's sister site Talk CSI for answers by more dedicated fans.

[Alidar Jarok]

He mentioned that in his opening post (about not wanting to register there). There are a couple of crossover posters who post in both (not many, but a few). Hopefully, they'll see this thread.

[Defcon]

Doh! Haven't made the connection subforum=TalkCSI, sorry.

By the way, weren't there plans to have a unified account for both sites at one point in the past? I seem to remember Antony talking about something like that a few years back.

[Forbin]

IMHO, the original CSI is still the best. Though it's had a lot of turnover of characters, you probably don't really need to catch up on any major plot arcs, since there really aren't any that span the whole series. It's very episodic.

Of the other two, I find CSI:NY the better - it started off poorly (bad character writing and boring acting), but it's really gotten its act together the last few years.

CSI: Miami is just ludicrous. I only watched the first few before giving up.

[Roger Wilco]

Imo you can really start anywhere you want. I think Miami and NY are shit and haven't watched it in years, but I still watch the original CSI. There's some personal/office drama and stuff that you might not catch on immediately if you start watching just now, but I don't think that's a big problem, all that stuff is just tangential at best to the show imo.

[Greg Cox]

Yeah, don't worry too much about watching them in the right order. Over the course of years, yeah, there's some (sporadic) development in the characters and the show occasionally dabbles in some recurring arcs, but probably 95% percent of the episodes work fine as standalones. Most episodes don't even touch on the investigators' personal lives or subplots at all. It's very much a procedural show.

[Starbreaker]

Start at the beginning. It's actually very rewarding. Most of the best work was in the first four or five seasons.

[NCC1701MF]

There's a season 9 episode of CSI, "A Space Oddity", which definitely pays homage to Trek (especially "The Gamesters of Triskelion") and refers to new BSG.

[Worf2DS9]

I'm a regular viewer of the original CSI and CSI:NY, both of which I enjoy a lot. I watched CSI:Miami's first season, and perhaps a bit of the 2nd, but gave up afterwards. I found it just too flashy and most of the characters were not very believable.

[Enterprise is Great]

CSI New York is the more serious of the three.

CSI is serious but it does have quite a bit of more humor than the other series . They usually have a few episode a season that are more comedic in nature.

CSI Miami is a huge chesefest. It's not very serious even when it tries to be serious. It seems almost like a show right out of the 1980's. Especially with Horatio Caine being less concerned about legalities than the characters on the other series. I remember one episode that ended where it was very obvious that Caine was going to beat the living shit out of a guy as the show faded to black. Nothing really came out of it. It's just a really cheesy show. It's over the top So I enjoy it for the cheesiness.

[MLJames]

I missed the first few seasons of CSI when it came out, but I started picking it up a couple of years back when I was working graveyard shift. I got home in time to catch the show on Spike TV; they run a daily block Mon-Thur with one CSI:NY episode followed by several CSI episodes (the number of those varies from day to day). Didn't take me long to pick up who the people were and the basic relationships between them.

BTW, the "A Space Oddity" episode that NCC1701MF mentioned will be part of Spike's daily block on Monday the 5th at 3:00 PM (Pacific Time).

[Greg Cox]

I'm actually heading into Philly today to check out the CSI Exhibit at The Franklin Institute . . . .

[Forbin]

MLJames wrote:

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BTW, the "A Space Oddity" episode that NCC1701MF mentioned will be part of Spike's daily block on Monday the 5th at 3:00 PM (Pacific Time).

Liz Vassy, normally, is a stunning beauty. In a Trek uniform with her hair down, she took my breath away.