[Infowarrior] - CSI: Cyber takes stupidity to a new level

[Richard Forno]

(c/o EP)

CSI: Cyber takes stupidity to a new level

Last updated 12:27 06/03/2015


http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/blogs/couch-potato/11334366/CSI-Cyber-takes-stupidity-to-a-new-level

Once upon a time - when I had virtually no taste in television shows - I used to watch CSI and CSI: Miami. Always against my better judgement, of course.

As a former scientist I would scoff at laboratory results in seconds that would normally take hours or days to obtain.

And the zooming in on low resolution photos and using the magic 'enhance' function that only television writers seem to think exists in order to get a number plate? Cue bashing of head against the wall.

But despite all that I held out some hope for CSI: Cyber, the latest spinoff of the tired old franchise. An interesting cast, led by recent Oscar-winner Patricia Arquette and Dawson himself, James Van Der Beek could surely make the fascinating world of cybercrime relevant and engaging.

Unfortunately they only succeeded in making the worst pilot since Dads, and a show so bad it will surely kill the franchise stone dead.

To suggest Arquette was phoning it in is something of an understatement. A mannequin shows more depth and range than she did during the first episode, although to be fair the script didn't particularly help her.

And Van Der Beek was as lifeless as his forehead. And that doesn't even begin to describe the massive problems of this show.

The dialogue was something I'd have been embarrassed to read in a 10-year-old's homework book, like this for example:

"I know how hard this must be," Arquette says to a kidnapped baby's mother.

"Do you have children?"

"No."

"Then you don't know."

It had the emotional depth of a sociopath's convention. And if the dialogue was't bad, at other times it was beyond laughable.

In one scene Van Der Beek runs after a bad guy escaping on a trail bike. Realising he can't catch him, he withdraws his gun, shoots once and kills the guy.

He walks up to the body and phones in that an agent has been involved in a shooting.

"Yes, I'm okay," he says. "But the other guy's going to need a body bag."

BOOM! All it needed was David Caruso to appear in the background, removing his sunglasses and the ridiculousness would have been complete. 

I've written before about the dumbing down of television shows but CSI: Cyber took it to a completely new level.

The most egregious example was when Van Der Beek walked around to the back of the property and we see an electricity box with a red wire being but hanging out of it.

He walks up, picks up the wire, examines it and utters the priceless "Hmmm, security wire's been cut".

And then there was the lying of the mother of the kidnapped baby. She clearly has something to hide and Arquette's on the case. She asks a question - and the camera zooms in on the eyes and they're a bit shifty.

"Ah", says everyone. "She's lying. I wonder what she's got to hide."

But wait. What's this? Another question? Camera zooms in on her mouth and she's biting her lips. "Okay, she's definitely lying. We've established that. Move on!"

But no! Another question! Zoom in on her hands. She's gripping herself weirdly after a question about breastfeeding. BURN THE WITCH! LIAR!

There's spoonfeeding your audience, as many shows do to ensure important plot points aren't missed, and treating them like imbeciles. The writers for CSI: Cyber clearly feel the majority of their viewers have the brain capacity of an amoeba.

And so to the technology. Surely that would be at least realistic, right? Computers are so ubiquitous and capable that they couldn't screw it up. Oh, how little faith I had in the writers' ability to get it so wrong.

The cry of 'MALWARE' was accompanied by green letters on the screen being overwhelmed by animated red characters. The virtual autopsies were cring-inducing. And the hacking of a gaming console that ended with one of the techs, in seconds, tracing a console to a specific address? It's as real as my hopes of winning the Booker Prize.

And if that wasn't quite enough, there was the moment that Arquette says the magical line "Someone's got some peepee". It's to a baby, thankfully - but I had to double check. Where could this possibly be going?

Ah diaper edges trap fingerprints, Arquette tells the urine machine. Cue black dust - and a bad, smudgy fingerprint of one of the kidnappers. A quick snap of the fingerprint and, real time, on Van Der Beek's phone a picture of the woman appears.

Now all of this is bad. Actually beyond bad. Appallingly awful. Embarrasing in fact. But there was one moment that was so much worse that I still don't quite believe it was real.

Having found the bad guys who were auctioning off kidnapped babies the CSI team couldn't shut the system down because they didn't have the 20-digit password.

But Van Der Beek is on to something. He notices a new tattoo on one of the bad guys - a large portrait of someone with a date underneath it. Dawson rips the shirt off in one swife movement and there are other tattoos over the guy's body.

The whole team realises it at the same time - all those dates underneath ARE THE PASSWORD. Queue some guessing in which order it needs to go and they crack the password first time!

Yep, the bad guy spent hours in pain and thousands of dollars on fake portraits and dates all over his body - TO REMEMBER A 20 CHARACTER PASSWORD.

I hope none of his co-bad guys ever needed the password while he was out getting groceries. Imagine the scene in Whole Foods as he strips off and tries to read the numbers backwards in a mirror?

Actually, don't. If you want a laugh at just how appalling a show can be, then the resourceful amongst you will be able to stream it easily enough.

The rest of you? Try and find an easier way to remember a password and avoid CSI: Cyber like the plague.

Me? I'm off to scrub my hard drive and hope they don't trace my IP address and make me watch the rest of the season as punishment.

--
It's better to burn out than fade away.