Couch Potato Report

The rumors are official: there will be a crossover between all three CSI series this fall.   CSI’s Dr. Raymond Langston (Laurence Fishburne)  will appear on each of the three CSIs in a single week,  wrapping up on November 12th.  I stopped reading the article in the Chicago Tribune after learning this information because I don’t want to spoil the episodes for myself.

I think when shows like the CSI franchise, or the Law & Order franchise, do a crossover it can be pretty neat.  It can be even wilder when two shows you enjoy do a crossover, such as Law & Order and Homicide back in the day.  It can also be kind of a bummer when two shows crossover, one of which you don’t watch.  (For me that was CSI and Without A Trace.)

We just started watching the original CSI: Crime Scene Investigation again this season.  In fact, we spent a lot of time catching up on last season’s episodes during a Spike marathon last weekend.  I like Langston, and he certainly fills Grissom’s shoes very well, but there’s still part of me that thinks Catherine and/or Nick should get to grace the shores of Miami and New York in lieu of “the new guy.”  Of course, the point of the crossover might be to get skeptical fans that checked out with Grissom to check back in.

I think skeptical fans will be pleasantly surprised. Langston is as cerebral as Grissom, but very different. He’s certainly not a cloned character.  On the whole, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation has done a nice job of evolving their characters, introducing new characters and retaining a familiarity that makes me want to watch it.

Last night on The Late Show With David Letterman, Dave, in a very understated way,  dropped a bombshell on his audience and TV viewers by admitting he has slept with female staffers on his TV show, and was the target of a two million dollar extortion plot hatched by a CBS staffer on 48 Hours.

Now we haven’t watched Dave in a while.  I’d say our family is probably a Conan family.  Although, living on East Coast Time by the time any of the late night shows hit the air, we’re heading upstairs, getting ready for bed and checking out the funny pics on icanhascheezburger.com.

So I wound up viewing the video on youtube here this morning.   Now,  I’ve never doubted Dave’s a pro.  He’s probably the best, most polished late night host out there.   Even Johnny Carson thought so.  But if there was any doubt about it, there wasn’t after last night.

Sitting at his desk he delivered a highly polished monologue detailing how he was being blackmailed, played up the “terrible, terrible stuff” the extortionist knew about him without revealing what it was right away,  told the audience how terrified it made him feel, talked about how he’s motivated by guilt, invoked his Lutheran upbringing, his dealings with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, talked about the phony two million dollar check his lawyer gave the extortionist, and at the end revealed that the terrible, terrible stuff the extortionist was talking about was the Dave has slept with women who worked on his late night TV show.

It was a perfect monologue.  I just listened to it again as I was typing this post, and I can picture David Letterman, as “any man”, just sitting on a stool in a bar telling the story to his friends.  All of them leaning in a little bit to make sure they didn’t miss a thing.  The writing and the delivery of the story was a grand slam.

It’s the lack of details in the admission that I think is key to Dave selling us the story.  He played it up quite a bit throughout, making us wonder what did this guy find out about Dave?  Then reveals the accusation at the end:   Dave slept with women who worked on his show.  After all the hype, that’s the “terrible, terrible thing?”

Taken at face value, the statement “I slept with women who worked on the show”  is almost a yawn inducing revelation.   It’s probably happening at workplaces all across America to some degree.   And Letterman did a great job at blunting the statement by hyping it throughout the story to somewhat mute the emotions we’d have when he revealed what he did.  In addition, he played the Letterman nerd card, joking about how we’re all surprised that Dave actually has sex.  I’m sure there’s some neanderthal guys out there that can’t wait to fist bump Dave the next time they see him because he did sleep with female staffers.

His admission left a lot of questions unanswered, and the more that gets revealed about this story will make it interesting, and perhaps sordid.   Did this happen before he was married, when he was married?  Did his wife, who was his girlfriend for 23 years and a staffer on his show, know about these relations before he married to her?  What did Dave really reveal to the Grand Jury?  Will he be getting divorced?

I know one thing, a very similar story will end up one on of the Law and Order shows before the end of this TV season, and it will be “ripped from the headlines.”

When Dick Wolf decided the world needed more than one Law and Order,  I was fairly skeptical that a spin off that closely related to another cop show would work.  I was still a skeptic when the folks at CSI decided to branch out with CSI:Miami and CSI: NY.   For the most part with these series I’ve found myself pleasantly surprised.  The producers took the formula, and in some cases key characters, and created a distinctly different world for these spinoffs to play in.

We watch Law and Order SVU and this season all 3 of the CSI shows, although I think my wife is more committed to viewing SVU and CSI: Miami than I am.  Plus, this season we’ve decided to start watching the original Law and Order and CSI after not viewing them for a few years.   I can’t speak for my wife, but I’m not fully convinced I want to commit to these shows, although I’m not ready to give up on them and go upstairs and play on the computer. ..yet.

So I think a Criminal Minds spinoff has a lot of potential.  Especially if you can get a marquee actor involved like Joe Mantegna.  I’m looking forward to seeing it.

Read the Hollywood Reporter story on the spinoff here.

Go to the Criminal Minds page on on CBS.com here.