Looney CSI

A couple of weeks ago, I complained about the selection of television DVDs I was scheduled to watch this month. It really felt like I had taken from the bottom of the barrel. Well, while things aren't that great, they are better than I imagined they would be.

First up, Looney Tunes: Volume 2. As a latchkey kid, I spent a lot of my early years watching Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, the Road Runner, and, one of my favorites, Pepe Le Pew. I have a fond place in my heart for the opening and closing music of all those cartoons. Less than two weeks in, and I have completed watching two of the four discs. My review: definitely mixed.

The biggest problem this DVD set has is that each disc is dedicated to one cartoon character, or pair of characters, like Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. Do you have any idea how boring it is to watch an hour and a half of nothing but Bugs Bunny cartoons? This is really too bad. I think that if each disc had a mix of all the different cartoons, this set would be epic in its greatness. The other problem is that this is Volume 2. As I wrote, I grew up watching these cartoons. I've seen a ton of them. Yet, out of the 30 I've watched so far, at least 20 were brand new to me. I have a suspicion that the first volume has some of the more well-known cartoons. I guess I will find out when it comes time to watch that one. In the end, though, these are still Looney Tunes cartoons. Individually, they are great. There was one Wile E. Coyote/Road Runner episode I had never seen before that made me laugh loud and hard.

Second, CSI: Miami Season 1. While I did not think this would be the worst television show to watch this month, I didn't really expect great things from it. 10 episodes in, and I am fairly impressed. Though, perhaps not for the intended reasons. The entire show seems to live and die by David Caruso (shout out to all the NYPD Blue fans). If you don't like him, you will not like the show. At all. I have never seen anything like him on television before. I spent most of the first couple of episodes just laughing every time he showed up. Caruso is like William Shatner speaking in monotone; he's almost campy in his delivery. Yet, after those first few episodes, he started to grow on me. After about five, I had to admit: I like David Caruso in this show. A good thing, too, because the rest of the show would be absolute torture if I did not. The rest of the cast is fairly good, though I am glad to see that Kim Delaney is about to disappear. She is incredibly boring and doesn't fit with the rest of the cast well. In some ways, this cast seems to have gelled more quickly than the cast on the original show did.

There are a few things that have annoyed/disturbed me about this show, though. First, I found it jarring to hear the characters say the same lines to describe their jobs as the characters on the original CSI did in the first season. Second, this show is ridiculously violent, even more than the original series. Third, this show preys on the audience's sympathies way too much by making so many victims children. Killing children in order to gain the interest of the audience as often as this show does is cheap and tawdry.