CSI is a well-oiled machine. Week after week the industrious CSI production company manufactures three hours of effective, highly polished crime shows that have the production values of movies and the ultimately reassuring tones of traditional television, while fitting into the CBS network’s inclination toward patriotic and conservative crime shows. With its blend of the gross and the nobly sentimental, the CSI shows follow familiar tropes in popular contemporary network shows, in which criminals are accorded little sympathy (we usually know who “did it” quite early in the hour because the “perp” is flagged with unpleasant personal characteristics), and so are the victims, with the noble officers of the CSIs toiling on with dignity but little public or familial recognition. Occasionally, though, even the CSIs are tempted to the dark side. Everyone ultimately is guilty.

The first of the batch, CSI: Crime Scene Investigations blended the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas with Sherlockian puzzles solved via clever twists. No 2 in the series is set in Miami, and is constructed around worship of David Caruso’s emotionally stoic and noble character. But show three, set in New York, has been a show in crisis. Now out on DVD (Paramount, October 17th, 2006, seven discs for $65.95), season two charts its makers attempts to shift it back to the center from its out edges of big apple sass and ethnicity.
CSI: NY was forged in the wake of 911, with its central character Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) tortured by the fact that his wife died in the terrorist attacks. This first season was considered dark, with its heroes dwelling in a dank, dark office space, and most of its cast being very New York and angry and accented. Apparently word came from the top that to go forward the series must “lighten up,” literally. As season two begins the medicals are moving upstairs to glass walled open offices, and there is also some cast housekeeping. This is the season in which Vanessa Ferlito’s Detective Aiden Burn is fired and replaced by Detective Lindsay Monroe (Anna Belknap), a wholesome girl from Montana who has some of the aspect of Pam from The Office. Later, Aiden dies violently. Also added is Hill Harper as Dr. Sheldon Hawkes. CBS shows ideally like to have both a male brainiac and a kooky female tech person, and Hawkes represents the addition of the brainiac.

CSI: NY does share some features with the other two CSIs. One is a recurrent villain, in this case one D. J. Pratt (Chad Williams), a serial rapist who was finally put away (at least for now) in the wake of Aiden’s death. The CSI team also investigates such supposedly peculiarly NY settings as cuddle parties, a doll hospital, a death by cross bow, a building climber’s fall, a quasi-terrorist bombing, an a murder of a roller derby star. In one episode, an Astor is murdered (can they do that?). There is also an in joke, when Sinise finds a suspect in line at an audition for a production of Of Mice and Men, which Sinise starred in on stage and later adapted to the screen.

The heart of the show is Sinise’s Taylor, who is an ex-military man with some remaining sympathy for the service and who is also a jazz base guitarist on his off nights. Sinise has what sounds like a great midwestern drawl, and quiet authority, the reverse of Caruso, more in the Petersen mode. Fortunately, CSI:NY spares us too much in the way of soap opera, although operating on the theory that no series character may ever be thoroughly happy, Melina Kanakaredes’s Detective Stella Bonasera, whose character showed hints of a romance, must end up discovering that he is a creep and kills him in self defense. The CSIs aren’t entirely uniform, but it would be interesting to add a fourth called something like CSI: Vancouver, showing a different nation’s unique approaches to crime solving.

All 24 episodes of season two on are hand, including one that was the part two of a particularly bloody story that began in Miami. Transfers, sound are excellent.
Five episodes enjoy straightforward audio commentaries with the likes of David Von Ancken, editor Bill Zabala, Scott Lautanen, writer Zachary Reiter, creator Anthony E. Zuiker, Elizabeth Devine, Duane Clark, producer Peter M. Lenkov, and director James Whitmore Jr. Scattered across the discs are several short making ofs, a general one on the series, “Top of the Heap: The Cast and Crew Look at Season 2”, followed by “Rolling with Jamalot,” about the episode about the roller derby, “A New Look from the 35th Floor” a tour of the new CSI: NY set, a “making of” about the episode “Heroes” which is one of the best, and “Season 2 Ends with a Bang,” about the finale.

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