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C.S.I. New York - The Third Season DVD Release Date: 8th October 2007

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C.S.I. New York - The Third Season DVD Review:

There have been so many CSI and Law and Order spin-offs that it seems futile to even attempt a comparison between any of them. We all know that the original is always king, but since the formula essentially remains the same it is inevitable that there are elements which remain great. In other words, it isn’t CSI, but it is as close as you can get without being the real thing. Gary Sinise leads as Mac Taylor, who heads up the New York division of CSI. The underrated actor also acts as a producer for the show as well, season three bringing as many new elements as it can think of for a show varying only slightly from the others, with the obvious exception of cast and location.

There are plenty of special guest stars, but often attention is not given to the actor as much as a topic. Immediately in season three there are several episodes that seem more intent on getting an agenda across than they are with the suspense or the mystery of the show. Although a sequence on conflict diamonds is understandable, because awareness about an issue such as this is extremely relevant and the knowledge is not as widespread as it should be. At the same time, the same distracted and agenda based methods are used when the Suicide Girls guest star. The rock-bottom acting by these gothic burlesque dancers isn’t nearly as bad as the bland way we are told about the organization, as if dressing in black underwear and getting piercing tattoos is nearly as socially relevant as conflict diamonds. It is distracting all for the sake of having the group of girls on the show, who obviously have their own reasons for appearing as murder suspects. Other guest stars in season three include Nelly Furtado, John McEnroe and Joey Lawrence. The guest stars and the script often fail to meet the level of talent that the actors in the Forensics Team are capable of. The casting for the show was great, but the casting of the guest stars is getting out of hand, mostly because of the writer’s dependence on these superficial moments.

Although the editing can sometimes be so high-paced that it is often jarring and overwhelms the senses. This is to keep the show moving between the two separate cases each episode features. Often the use of music and montage sequences while the tests are completed is heavily relied upon, and often the high energy music choices are the strong points of the episodes. The stories behind the murders are usually clever enough to live up to CSI standards, and there is the same witty humor involved, but sometimes the dialogue is far too bad to take seriously. Puns are often delivered just prior to what would be a commercial break, or at least the close of a scene. I can see the writers chuckling to themselves, but when the writers also expect us to take the melodramatic moments seriously, there seems a contradiction. The humor and the melodrama seems to come with too much effort, and most of the time it falls flat no matter how suspenseful the murder mystery itself actually is.

Season three has twenty-four episodes on six discs. There are commentaries on some of the stronger episodes in the season, oddly all in the first half of the season with two of the four commentaries are on the second disc alone. There are also several featurettes spread out amongst the discs. There is a making-of featurette for the episode “Silent Night” which also has a commentary track. The featurette for the episode guest starring the Suicide Girls is mostly focused on more promotion, which inevitably leads to behind-the-scenes footage of the episode as well as their own personal addition. Oversexed for obvious reasons, this featurette will only appeal to fans of the burlesque group since it has very little to do with CSI.

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C.S.I. New York - The Third Season DVD review written by: Ryan Izay