CSI: Scripting
I like television serials. I enjoy those, comedic or dramatic, in which care is taken in characterization, plot, setting, casting and, why not, even costumes. Fortunately the United States are a place where great amounts of talent and finances go into the production of serials, which are viewed as one of the main entertainment products present on television, rather than a filler for those days without a sports game or stand-up comedy show. Alas, the desired effect is not always achieved: there is a good number of high-quality productions, no doubt, but those are accompanied by more shallow ones or ones that are overly reliant on clichés, a repetitive structure and fame inherited mostly by their cast or by previous, related shows.
In part, I have to place CSI: Miami in the third category. In part, for reasons that I will list in what follows, because somehow it still manages to be entertaining. I had previously read about the alleged weaknesses of this show, but until recently hadn’t dared to verify; as it stands, I finally got to sit down and watch a few episodes. The serial, for those who pretend not to know, is set in Miami and is one of the spin-offs from the highly successful (apparently) CSI franchise, that includes the original CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, set in Las Vegas, and the latest CSI: New York, obviously set in Tunisia. It revolves around the usual team of crime scene investigators/analysts led in this case by Horatio Caine, who is played by David Caruso, an actor not new to police-themed serials but who perhaps would prefer to do something else. The prevalent structure of an episode seems to be the following:
- Prologue: somebody somewhere shows an abnormal tendency for premature death. The CSI: Miami team is called in to investigate. One or more of the team members may present at this point one or more preliminary observations, but it’s always Horatio Caine who has the last word, offering one of many classic one-liners in his trademarked, monotonous cadence, with much sunglasses interaction and right before he walks away; at which point, the song Won’t get fooled again by The Who starts playing and transitions into the episode proper, preventing any other character from ever being able to reply or reflect on the nonsense he just heard;
- Main phase: the team members all work fervently on the case, gathering evidence, analyzing and comparing. All of them except for Horatio, who generally appears, without notice, only when a new and possibly meaningful element is found by one of the others, to confront a suspect and force him or her to confess by rubbing said new element in his or her face. If the suspect confesses, the episode ends, after an appropriate, usually short, finale. Otherwise, Horatio feel he has the right to end the conversation with another witty, grim or sarcastic (but more usually cheesy) one-liner, often packaged and delivered in a hurry, especially if one of the scheduled commercial breaks is coming, thus again preventing any kind of comeback. This phase is repeated any number of times, until the running time of the episode approaches its allotted limit;
- Finale: once the last suspect in the chain is found guilty, whether by offering a confession or admitting defeat, he or she is immediately ridiculed through one of Horatio’s impeccable one-liners (his supply seems to be endless) and then taken away. Horatio now doesn’t have much time left to force as many clever remarks he can into the rest of the episode before time runs out and we’re off to an impatient week-long wait; nevertheless, he’s often successful.
Exceptions to the above structure are usually represented by phone calls or chats among fellow team members, but they can safely be ignored without loss of generality. Other serials follow a similar, repetitive structure; but the fil rouge of this particular serial, in any case, appears to be not the improbability of the homicides or how the puzzles are solved, but rather David Caruso’s one-liner promise — and his prompt, masterful delivery. I now watch the prologue of each episode whenever possible, just to hear how much lower the script can go and how he appropriately renders it. The importance of such quick comments in the show is so apparent, and their quality so equally low, that others before, more famous than I, have reported on them, like David Spade in his Showbiz Show (unfortunately I believe the relevant video was removed from YouTube), and Jim Carrey in his parody during David Letterman’s Late Show. Nevertheless, please indulge in a taste of the best and worst of Horatio Caine’s one-liners as portrayed by the original David Caruso in the video below, and feel free to draw your own conclusions.
[However, this serial like others won't last long this year if the WGA strike doesn't come to an end; just give them what they want, and let's get on to writing more good shows already]
Thanksgiving day is a holiday created to give thanks for all the things one has at the end of the harvest season. It is observed in more than one country and stems from 
An actual message from Firefox, which popped up while browsing. What to do? For the record, none of the buttons seemed to do anything
Two posts in a day! There’s always a first time I guess. The website Haltadefinizione, which gathers very, very detailed images of important works of art digitally captured, restored and preserved by a company known as HAL9000, has made available a 
Sometimes, after seeing some of the people who participate to reality shows on television, “stranded” on a sunny and “deserted” island, or hard at work on the task to lie down on a puffy couch in an “isolated” house, I’ve been known to remark with “they should have them work in a coal mine instead, that would be a lot closer to reality”. Someone must have heard me, because 