Telly Talk: Bye bye CSI

So this is it. The final season of CSI: New York. After seeing its happy birth, difficult competition with its older brother CSI: Miami, and then final embrace state-wide as Mac joined the chase with Horatio and Ray for a serial killer on the run, it’s now time to witness its demise. Boo! But at episode six out of a total of seventeen, the indications are that this team are going out determined that we care about them goddarnnit.

“Where are we heading in this swan song of a final series?”

So, Mac started off the series on the mend but now he can’t identify the colour red, and other useful things. Lindsay was knocked out with a serious head injury, almost killed by a very cross teacher, and my hasn’t little Lucy grown! By the way, the fact that they bottled out of having the entire Lindsay-injury episode sans dialogue felt like a bit of a shame. They made it to the halfway point, which seemed to prove the point that they could most likely make it wordless for an entire episode. What happened? Did the writers run out of time? Such a shame. Clearly they didn’t remember the triple Emmy nomination Buffy The Vampire Slayer picked up for its mostly mute episode, ‘Hush’. But that’s beside the point. We’re on episode six, and where are we heading in this swan song of a final series?

Actually, I think what they’re trying to do is make this the best series ever of individual odes to the characters and city. Like last week’s was all about getting to know Flack and his family better, this week’s sees Adam telling the show’s main murder-tracking storyline as a fairytale to a couple of bored kids waiting while their mother is off picking the best criminal person in a line-up. Indeed, great plot-turns and princess story keypoints – who doesn’t like being led to a crime scene next to castle by a solitary shiny shoe? But really? Adam? Do you really want to let them know that nice ladies who pull themselves up by their bootstraps die once violently once they’ve sorted their lives out? Think of the children!

I am enjoying this series of CSI: NY, and although I was there at the beginning I must admit to having drifted away as Channel 5 began to be awash with specialist crime series taking their names from their initials. Mac started off nine years ago broken by the death of his wife in the World Trade Center disaster. It would have been ridiculous to have an emergency services drama series set in New York in 2004 without making some nod to that huge event. But now, like New York, Mac may have other bumps and bruises but he’s found a new love – not to usurp the old but to help him through the now and to warm his grizzly cockles more than that old bass guitar ever did.

I do think this might be the best series yet, and we’ve still got eleven more episodes to come. Plenty of time to get to know the crime-fighting guys and gals better, as well as quite possibly risk life and limb. If they’ve got nothing to come back for next season, whose to say they’ll wait until the final episode to say their goodbyes?
CSI: NY, Channel 5, Tuesday 3 September 2013