CSI:Miami-
The Complete First Season 
Boxed Set
(Paramount 1 NTSC DVD)
(2002)
review by Head Cheeze

With the original CSI consistantly topping the ratings, it was only a matter of time before CBS took a page from NBC's success with it's Law & Order franchise (four series and counting!), and branched out. The resulting series, CSI:Miami, isn't only a change in locales, however, as this new series introduces us to a team with a completely different dynamic than their bookwormish Vegas counterparts. These Dade County detectives are decidedly less concerned with labs, slabs, and procedure. The team is led by Horatio Cane (Caruso), a former bomb sqaud member whose just as handy with a gun as he is with a DNA swab. Calleigh (Proctor) is the southern belle/ballistics expert, Delko,(Rogriguez) the former police diver, "Speed",(Cochrane) the resident brainiac, and Alexx (Alexander) is the medical examiner who has an almost maternal relationship with the corpses that pass through. Kim Delaney, who was released from the show for unspecified reasons, also stars in the series' first ten episodes as the rattled Megan Donner.

The set starts off with "Crossing Jurisdictions", an episode of the original CSI (a particularly gruesome one) that involves a murderer who has kidnapped a woman and child and was last seen en route to Miami. This introduces us to Horatio and his team, as they work alongside Catherine and Warrick, and also shows us how the styles of the two teams differ (and this was actually done in a recent episode of CSI:Miami to introduce us to this fall's upcoming CSI:New York team, so the cycle continues). One of the things viewers will notice about the newer CSI is that, while it still utilises the CGI macro-photography and innovative camera techniques, the series has a look that's quite distinctive. While the elder series catered to the neon soaked night life of it's host city, CSI:Miami embraces the day, with surreal flame-orange skies, sparkling blue oceans, and white sands serving as elegant backdrops to some truly heinous crimes. In the first few episodes alone we get a near beheading, a lynching, a family massacred by shotgun, and a suspicious plane crash. This CSI is happy to serve up just as much of the gore as it's predecessor, if not more so. It's also just as ingenious and just as fun.

As a huge fan of David Caruso, I was very pleased to see him take on the role of the complex Horatio Cane. This first season really just breaks the ice with him, as, in subsequent seasons, we get a much better feeling for the character and his relationships with his deceased brother and said brother's widow (the lovely Sophia Milos). The supporting cast, especially Alexander and Cochrane, are just as likeable as their Sin City brethren, although Proctor's high pitch southern accent grates on me, and I thank the heavens that Delaney's twitchy Megan was given the boot as she served as little more than a distraction.

The boxed set from Paramount is fantastic stuff. Loaded with 26 episodes (the original CSI episode and the 25 regular season episodes) presented in gorgeous widescreen anamorphic transfer, with selected episode commentary, and five all new featurettes that take us inside the series plush digs (the Miami "Autopsy Theater" would make the Vegas criminalists cry!), give us insight into the processing of evidence, and take us behind-the-scenes.

CSI:Miami is a spin-off that's every bit as hip, sexy, smart, and fun as the original, and, with each season, has only gotten better. This franchise, in my opinion, is the best stuff television has to offer, and with CSI: New York (starring Gary Sinise!) on the way, I'm readying myself for a winter of complete and utter couch vegetation.