Nick Kyme

Well, another grey morning lurks overhead. I hope it’ll fine up by this afternoon for a run down the canal (not the most picturesque, us being on an industrial estate, but it’s not bad).

After yesterday’s heroics during the Heresy meeting, I am glad to be getting back to the daily grind. Synopses are stacking up on my desk, so I’d better get to them (amongst other things).

Predictably, I didn’t really get anything useful done last night – not even a lengthy blog post to speak of. Plan is still to nail Fireborn and some short story ideas tonight, though.

I returned just in time from picking Louise up from work to watch first C.S.I (Vegas – it is easily the best) and then Smallville. Thought the C.S.I episode was great. Though I must be watching too much of this stuff, as I got the root cause of the mystery in the first five minutes, before the criminalists did (Louise refused to high-five me for my detective work, though… spoil sport ).

Must confess, I felt a little let down by Smallville. The whole eighth season (which has been great -really liked all the stuff with the Legion of Super Heroes – can we have more of that please…) has been building up from day one to a confrontation between Clark and Davis (aka Doomsday). After a bit of shortsighted skulduggery by Oliver Queen (Green Arrow) and the other ‘Justice League’ capes, we finally get the moment when Clark and Doomsday meet (a block of black Kryptonite is used to separate the beast from the man, though it turns out the man is far more the monster) and there’s a very short scene in the streets of Metropolis where they duke it out (or rather, Clark gets smacked in the face a bit) only for it to wrap up with a fight off camera and an explosion in a geo-thermal energy plant. I think they must have run out of budget or something.

Anywho, there were still some nice emotive notes to offset my disappointment and the main characters’ arcs evolved quite satisfyingly.

It was widely expected that this eighth season of the show would be the last, until it turned out to be so good (and that the one WB planned to replace it, The Graysons, was so poor – a bad idea if you ask me). There was, then, several dangling threads for next season, including Lois utilising a Legion ring and ending up in the future; Clark Kent declaring the mild-mannered aspect of his persona (i.e. Clark Kent) was dead; Chloe takes up residence in a ‘watch tower’ apartment and it seems that Zod is about to return and Tess Mercer is going to welcome him with open arms (there were some mutterings about Kandor, too, so it looks like we’re getting the whole gamut of Kryptonian lore).

With all these threads, as cool as they are, I only hope they don’t blast through them and re-establish the status quo too soon. I think my biggest criticism of the show to date (and season seven was particularly guilty of this) was that some of the side story crises were wrapped up far too soon, without time to care or get used to the conflict at hand. Often, they’re wrapped up in one episode and any tension or drama is lost.

So (with time running out for this blog), I hope they allow subplots to linger and develop a little more. In my opinion, all the best shows are the ones that don’t really too heavily on the stand-alone episodic formula and build an arc week by week, every week, foreshadowing, layering and building to a great finale.

Channel 5, around 9.56pm GMT was a sad place to be yesterday evening. It was the day when C.S.I’s Gill Grissom left for good at end the conclusion of an excellent two-part episode in this superb series.

Looking back over the eight (nine?) years of the show’s run (and counting, by the way, a new man will step into Grissom’s shoes, if not his role directly – more on that in a short while), I can safely say that C.S.I (aka Crime Scene Investigation) has been one of the most consistent shows on TV during its esteemed tenure.

There’s a lot to be said for the original often being the best and in my opinion C.S.I does not buck that trend, it merely reinforces it. Resisting the urge in the face of its lesser spawnings, C.S.I Miami and C.S.I New York, to re-label itself C.S.I Vegas, the show that’s set in the city of vice has gone on from strength to strength.

It was always a danger to introduce two new spin-offs; the chance that they might dilute the purity of a show that has gone on, in its way, to define and focus American crime drama for a new generation, was always possible but after some initial interest the latter shows eventually waned, establishing the original C.S.I as the daddy.

It’s true, the story lines set in Vegas had to up the ante beyond the remit of the casino glitz and corrupt mob bosses that started to become overly prevalent in the mid-seasons. The writers achieved this spectacularly with the Miniature Killer, a bizarre and disturbing serial murderer case in which the aforementioned killer made miniature crime scenes depicting precisely and in exacting detail the position of the victim in their surrounding and their cause of death, that strung itself out wonderfully over an entire glorious season that culminated in one of the best TV cliffhangers of all time when fellow C.S.I Sarah Sidle was left injured and trapped underneath an overturned car in the desert, the capricious rains of Nevada falling and flooding the ground ominously. Couple this with the anguish of the nascent relationship between Gill and Sarah, and this was emotional drama at its height.

There are dozens of other highlights that preceded and followed, even if the Miniature Killer season (number seven and well worth watching, if you haven’t already done so)was a defining mark in the C.S.I chronology (even better than the double episode where Nick Stokes gets captured and buried alive -dangerous work this crime scene investigation lark). Who could forget the dramatic and heart-wrenching death of Warwick Brown, one of the most emotionally invested characters in the show. His murder at the hands of the then under sheriff sent shockwaves throughout the team and the series that had already seen Sarah Sidle burned out and forced to hang up her luminol – it was inevitable, given the clever aftermath, that Gill would follow. Even if, as fans, we wanted to deny it.

Denial is said to be one of the stages of grief, and it feels a little like grief (albeit TV loss) as I wake up to a grey day and the rain-soaked tarmac outside my door. Of course, the world that Grissom once walked in, its cracks papered over with gaudy glitz and ephemeral glamour of Elvis’s ‘bright light city’, is far from light and airy. It was brooding and dark and vicious, and it took its toll on a man who’d found something worth living for beside the evidence and his esteemed collection of bugs.

I will miss Grissom dearly, with his quirky manner, ferocious intelligence and fatherly mien. He’s one of those characters that will be remembered and huge props must go out to the excellent William Peterson who played him so well for almost a decade. Who’d have thought he’d return to his criminalist roots (fictionally speaking) after playing the lead in Manhunter?

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Presaged in the double episode was a guest star destined to be Peterson’s (and Grissom’s) replacement. Step in Laurence Fishburne, who provided a quiet intensity the studious air that allowed him to fit right in with the rest of the team. It’s unknown yet how Fishburne (playing Dr Raymond Langston) will fare and what kind of C.S.I he’ll be (the character has a background of being a medical doctor and university professor specialising in serial killers – good credentials methinks…) – I look forward to finding out. I feel it’s a good choice and while Fishburne’s turns in the Matrix trilogy might not filter through into the show (no bullet-time, please), the charged performance he gave in the excellent Event Horizon probably will.

But this day and C.S.I, for now at least, belongs to Grissom. I’m heartily pleased he got the happy ending he deserved – it has been a long and oft trying road for him. You made C.S.I great and helped usher in an era of crime drama that has thrilled and disturbed me for almost ten years. Gil Grissom, I salute you; you’ll be sorely missed.

Viva Las Vegas.