Patricia Arquette guest starred on an episode of CSI last year which had gotten me exited at the prospect of a new spin off. Something exciting, it was deep web crime. It was going to be about busting child pornography rings, human trafficking syndicates, sexual slavery, polish immigration and finding large terrorist encryption files on cat videos on youtube. You know, the usual high tech stuff.
The geek in me was getting excited. I was going to learn about all sorts of neat stuff. Suck it up man, I can say ‘neat’ if I want to.
So, with much googling and anticipation, I waited for the debut of this show which was going to totally kick ass. For once, we keyboard warriors were going to the heroes. And we were going to be pretty too. If you haven’t heard, all nerds are hot these days. The days of incredibly smart people looking like Erkle are over, we all look like super models. TV has taught me a lot in the last five years.
So, with excitement, I watched the show’s debut. To say “it was shit” was putting it mildly.
Where the hell were their tech advisors? Where were the MIT consultants? They obviously couldn’t even find a first year student to give them a heads up on what’s going on out there? They couldn’t find a single cyber cop to advise them? Did they spend all their money on the equipment set up? Or, did they just spend their entire budget on a stupid script writer. Whoever wrote the intro that Patricia Arquette does should be shot! “It can happen to you…” she whispers affirmatively at the end of the voice over intro. F’cuking hell man. I can’t even fathom a worse intro. Well, maybe I can, let me try, I’ll create one for Friends. Imagine Monica saying this over the visual of the group dancing in the fountain with the music playing in the background:
“Hey! I’m Monica, and these are my friends. We live in New York City. Obviously we don’t have a couch in Central Park, but we do hang out on a couch an awful lot.
That’s Rachel Green, she was my best friend in high school, then we hated each other, now we’re friends again. She’s a complete loser who is lost, but has great hair.
That’s me, I’m neurotic and an awesome chef. I have OCD, and I will clean the living daylights out of anything.
That’s my friend Pheobe, she’s a hippy. We don’t quite know what to make of her, but she once beat up my brother for fun when she was a teenager. Hey, you wouldn’t be so peachy if your mother killed herself.
That’s Joey! Yay Joey! He’s so cute, I think one of his sisters dropped him on his head when he was a baby. And that’s Chandler, he’s my brother’s best friend. I used to hate him. Now, now, I tolerate him. He’s got commitment issues.
That, well, that is my brother Ross. Isn’t he cute? We have a weird relationship where sometimes, there’s an underlying sexual chemistry, but we don’t delve into that too much.
We spend all of our time together, you would too if you were us. Woo!”
I feel as though this show has made me stupider with every minute I spend watching it. It assumes I’m a complete moron and will buy into anything. Well, this day and age, a good hacker can basically do anything they want. And in truth, they can do almost anything. I just annoys me that these tech geeks are giving textbook definitions for everything that is happening. Why do you need to explain what hacking is to a hacker? Or that having a device which transmit via wifi leaves it open to hackers? Sure, the layman doesn’t get it, but the superdooper flashy hacker would know that one. He ain’t no layman.
Another point of assumed knowledge contention for me is: why would the head of a cyber division need to have every technical aspect of the job explained to him, he’s not a moron, he got there for a reason. I get it, the guy in the field might not be so tech savvy, explain it to him. But yet, James Dav Der… Dawson, Dawson is completely tech savvy and knows exactly what’s going on. He’s no idiot our Dawson. He can sprout out tech jargon like the best of them, even giving very impressive definitions of things like he’s reading it out of wiki or a textbook. **nudge nudge wink wink Dawson**
As for the token supporting cast, I want to give a shout out to you, it’s like they’ve gone for the stereotype that isn’t quite a stereotype. We have in no particular order:
- young black hacker, because it’s just racist to have a white or Asian hacker.
- fat dude, he had to be white, because it’s racist to have any other race fat in a show, unless the show is race specific.
- hot Asian chick, she has to be a punk, because all we see are sexy Asian chicks, or nerdy Asian chicks, at CSI Cyber, they’re all class, so, the Asian chick is totally a punk.
I’m sure there’s a Latino somewhere in the mix, I just haven’t wanted to pay that much attention to it. I didn’t want to admit that the show has seeped in anymore than it already has.
The pilot was shockingly bad, the acting was atrocious, absolutely atrocious. I’ll give Dawson credit, he’s the only one I can tolerate watching and don’t want to bitch slap from here to next Tuesday at the expense of my manicure.
I don’t know that much about travelling across country in the US, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say it will most likely take you a little more than 10 minutes to get from Washington to any other state, even in your own private jet. Heck, I’ll go out on a bigger limb and say that it’ll take you longer than 10 minutes to get to the airport. Yet, they seem to do it with so much ease. They’re teleporting, obviously the FBI have invented teleportation and not given the rest of us access to it. Those bastards.
Back to this show, I’ve watched the episode about how an Uber like company is going to entrap you and basically, someone will kill you that way. And the episode about how your baby monitor will act as bidding portal for the uber rich around the world who want a baby. Your phone will act as a homing beacon, and when it’s thrown out of a moving vehicle, the lack of a phone will tell them which car you’re in as well. What? Is your mind blown? I know mine is. At this point, I stared at the screen with my “it’s my own fault” look about me.
No-one forced me to watch it, I willingly did it. Eagerly did it. I have only myself to blame. And yet, with this train wreck of a show, I continue to semi tune in, thinking that perhaps, just perhaps, it’s going to get better. Dawson, you have betrayed me. No wonder why Joey chose Pacey over you.
And you, ghost lady, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You won an Oscar, made a fantastic speech which had Meryl clapping excitedly. Now, you’ve ruined any credibility you had as an actress by whispering “It can happen to you…”
This show is laden with the bad. Let me count the ways:
- stiff, robotic dialogue;
- teleportation, without the reference;
- bad acting;
- cool technology which doesn’t get used enough;
- constant coffee drinking;
- Dawson is the only muscle out in the field;
- Dude from Ally McBeal is boring;
- Assumes I’m an idiot and tries to make me feel like I’m smart.
I have no idea who this show is targeting, but I’m not it. And I watch a lot of shows, indiscriminately. Yet, I find this offensive on so many levels. Give me Criminal Minds any day.
Ranter & Banter 