'C.S.I.' Clicks With Its Viewers .c The Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) - To paraphrase the Bard, some TV series are born great, while some have greatness thrust upon them. And then there's ``C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation,'' which can lay claim to both a great idea and (especially thrust upon it in recent weeks) even greater timing. Make no mistake, this isn't Shakespeare. ``C.S.I.'' is a have-it-both-ways whodunit that balances a high-tech, glossy style with retro melodrama. Cool logic co-exists with graphic flashes of brutality, body parts and gore. It's goofy yet smart, earnest yet campy, oddly instructive yet utterly escapist. All in all, a pretty neat trick and fun to watch. (It airs Thursday at 9 p.m. EDT on CBS.) When ``C.S.I.'' premiered a year ago, lacking buzz from industry insiders, it immediately clicked with viewers. ``C.S.I.'' reigned as last season's surprise hit. Then came Sept. 11. In an instant, many TV shows (notably a wave of cloak-and-dagger dramas for 2001-02 including ``The Agency'' and ``Alias'') became relics from an obsolete Zeitgeist. Drama too fanciful or, conversely, too true to life seemed out of step with the public's sudden sorrows and anxieties. ``C.S.I.,'' on the other hand, has gained an even surer grip on its audience just by staying the course. (In the early weeks of its second season, it's ranked sixth among TV households.) Fortunately, staying the course is the gospel of senior forensic sleuth Gil Grissom, who heads what he calls ``the nerd squad'' within the Las Vegas Criminalistics Bureau. Under his command, the crime scene investigators keep a clinical detachment from evil and evil-doers. Each crime is a puzzle demanding a solution. In that ruminative fashion, savagery is confronted. But it's never answered in kind. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the high road traveled by Grissom's team gives the series added impact. But there's another thing about ``C.S.I.'' that recent events have reaffirmed. It's Grissom's faith in what the rest of us now desperately want to believe: that truth - absolute, inarguable truth - awaits those who pursue it with keen-eyed devotion. On, ``C.S.I.,'' a college girl has vanished from her dorm room. Foul play? A construction worker takes a tumble off a high-rise. Suicide or murder? An apparent hit-and-run victim was already dead before getting run over. Who killed him and why? Forget personalities, ambitions and assumptions, Grissom tells his colleagues. ``These things will only confuse you. Concentrate on what cannot lie: the evidence.'' Hard evidence - blood spatter, hair fibers, body decay, fingerprints - paves the way to enlightenment. And what fuels the trip? Reason. ``Our job,'' says Grissom, a mystic conjuring objective truth, ``is to think.'' In a world of relative values and crippling nuance, as we wonder not just what the answer is, but whether an answer can even be had, Grissom strikes a weekly a blow for Rational Man. Think hard enough, he argues, and we will prevail! Since Sept. 11, what more reassuring game plan could any viewer wish for? Played by William Petersen, Grissom is an intriguing blend of champion and odd duck. He has a certain blunt charm and morbid wit (``So, Watson, the game's afoot,'' he quips to an associate on finding a severed leg). In his lab or at a crime scene, he stares death in the face - a face sometimes well along in decomposing - with calm fascination. Meanwhile, he displays what he readily admits: He isn't good with people. Live ones, anyway. During office reminiscences about high school, a co-worker asks him, ``What were you - a jock or a brain?'' ``A ghost,'' Grissom replies evenly. Despite his loner status, Grissom on the job is effectively a family man. He is the unyielding patriarch to a brood of young investigators (played by Gary Dourdan, George Eads and Jorja Fox), while seasoned Catherine Willows (Marg Helgenberger) is the sexy, no-nonsense mom. They work the graveyard shift, a portentous time of day in Las Vegas when it's either too bright or too dark, too noisy or too quiet. Grissom and his team provide the fitting counter-force in a town legendary for its free-floating artiface, where what passes for truth is keno and Wayne Newton. Here in Vegas, as everywhere, the human race is an enigma. But what humans do, for better or worse, expresses itself in plain sight if you look. Or so Grissom says. Watch ``C.S.I.'' and see how. On the Net: www.cbs.com/primetime/csi/ Elsewhere in television ... `FRONTLINE': On Dec. 14, 1999, Ahmed Ressam was detained at the U.S.-Canadian border. When the trunk of his car was opened, agents discovered a powerful bomb and a plot for a millennium attack on America. Ressam said nothing at his trial but, facing 130 years in prison, decided to testify against an accomplice. His chilling testimony reveals his connection to an Algerian terrorist group that had already carried out bombings in Europe. Ressam described his training at the Osama bin Laden camps in Afghanistan. Correspondent Terence McKenna follows the trail of a terrorist on this week's ``Frontline.'' It airs Thursday at 9 p.m. EDT on PBS. EDITOR'S NOTE - Frazier Moore can be reached at fmoore(at)ap.org AP-NY-10-23-01 1440EDT Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
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