It’s 3:33 and I need a wee, just like Gary Sinise
Insomnia, depression and CSI: NY
The first time I watched CSI: NY, it was because I couldn’t sleep. It was around 15 years ago — you know, when CSI was really big — and my chosen method at that time for coping with being unable to sleep was to get really annoyed for a while, before eventually storming downstairs muttering something along the lines of, ‘Right! Well, that’s fine! If I’m not going to sleep, then I’m not going to sleep!’ to watch whatever kind of great TV they put on at 2am on a weekday.
One night, I found myself watching an episode wherein the lead character, Detective Mac ‘Mac Taylor’ Taylor, played by Gary Sinise, was having trouble with a stalker who kept calling him at 3:33am and then immediately hanging up.
Mac was incredibly distressed by this, although I later came to realise this was only because the story required it, and otherwise his main character trait was to have no real reaction to anything, except to maintain a weird half-grimace as his junior colleagues attempted a long-winded scientific explanation for why a particular kind of plastic was only used on a particular brand of skateboard wheel (or whatever).
(I mean, I hate to do material about ‘men of a certain age’, but I imagine Mac would have had to get up at 3:33am most nights anyway, and maybe also at 1:11am and 2:22am, particularly if he’d had a glass of water after 9pm.)
The 3:33 storyline was one of those lesser-spotted multi-episode arcs in a ‘crime of the week’ police procedural like CSI, and to be honest this was the main memorable moment from it: otherwise, brief 2-minute reminders were drip-fed into standard episodes, as a yawn from Mac might prompt a question from a colleague about how he was sleeping, or he’d get calls on his mobile from the number ‘333’, prompting him to experience a short and containable meltdown about seeing those numbers everywhere, before getting on with the case at hand.
Watching this episode was the beginning of a mild-to-moderate obsession I had with CSI, which started with CSI: NY and led to the original (and best) series (but never to the slightly preposterous CSI: Miami, starring the slightly preposterous David Caruso). In the middle of the so-called ‘golden age’ of television, I ignored all those critically acclaimed shows that everyone told you to watch1 in favour of a largely unchallenging cop show available in multiple flavours.
During a run of poor physical and mental health, a symptom of which was failing to eat any lunch except for a chocolate bar at about 3pm, I attempted to force myself to leave my work building each day and take a proper break. This meant that I found myself in CEX most lunchtimes trying not to buy old computer games before walking out with one of the many CSI box sets that they would inevitably have in stock.2
I had quite a long commute in those days, but this was before streaming apps or indeed widespread smartphone use, and so I would have to rip the video from the discs and convert to a format suitable for my tiny and primitive handset. I watched about 10 years’ worth of TV on that diddy screen; at least it wasn’t one of those ‘golden age’ shows, I guess.
Police procedurals are the antithesis of prestige TV, and rightly or wrongly seen as a steady payday for fading movie stars who don’t mind a rough shooting schedule in exchange for a good salary. Until I actually watched CSI, I had always been put off by the weirdly airbrushed faces of the cast on the DVD box art, which may well have been rooted in the showbiz belief that no-one must ever be seen to show any signs of physical ageing, but — like many cosmetic procedures — seemed to have the opposite effect.
It wasn’t until I eventually watched a procedural show that wasn’t CSI that I realised it was a cut above the usual fare. I once fell asleep on holiday watching one Hawaii-based cop show and woke up struggling to follow the story for some considerable time before realising I was now watching an episode of a completely different series, also set in Hawaii.
And recently I started watching a few old episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: a bleak and ultra-serious take on the genre, to the extent that I found it impossible to take even remotely seriously, particularly when you throw into the mix the much-parodied introductory announcement, a sprinkling of dubious takes on 00s moral panics, and special guest stars who seem far too good for the material (and invariably end up being the killer).
On this basis, it’s no surprise that the original CSI was seen as a refreshing twist on the formula, diverting focus onto scientists following a process (or ‘THE EVIDENCE’ as repeatedly emphasised in the show) from maverick cops, who are reduced to clueless wallies tagging along for the ride because they’ve got guns and handcuffs to be deployed when the CSIs tell them who to arrest. Character development was fairly minimal, but all of the main players still felt human and distinct from each other, especially the original line-up: Grissom, Willows, Sidle, Stokes and Brown. Borrowing some intro music from The Who was a good move, too.
Then came the spin-offs: Miami, which I could never quite get onboard with, and then NY. (I can’t find the exact quote, but I’m sure I remember seeing an interview with series creator Anthony E. Zuiker in which he justified their existence by saying that he knew someone else was going to rip off the idea, so he decided to do it himself.)
All three shows were successful, although the two spin-offs did suffer slightly from watering down the original concept by just making the CSIs cops who could also use guns and handcuffs. NY started as a slightly grim and gritty affair with a post 9/11 focus, but by the second series had been swiftly retooled with brighter colours, perkier characters, and sexy young trendsetters getting up to sexy antics in sexy New York! And it had the best The Who track as its theme music, too (until they pivoted to a slightly odd remix in the fourth series: why mess around with Baba O’Riley?)
Revisiting it now makes its appeal seem slightly less than fathomable: in particular, Gary Sinise is an odd presence, and doesn’t seem to have got the note about the show becoming a bit more light-hearted, his commitment to which appears to be limited to wearing coloured shirts. (His character would never wear coloured shirts).3
At least as Mac Taylor, Sinise does genuinely look like he’d be baffled by some of the modern trends and escapades of hip young New Yorkers; the rest of the incredibly photogenic cast have a hard time pretending to be baffled by fashion shoots and catwalk models when they themselves appear to have been dressed and styled to within an inch of their lives in mid-range smart casual attire before heading down to the lab for a day of sawing through bone and sifting through guts.4
Mac, though, appears authentically incredulous during episodes which require him, for example, to create an avatar for the online game Second Life. (‘THIS IS DETECTIVE MAC TAYLOR, I’M LOOKING FOR INFORMATION’ snarls Sinise, through a Bluetooth headset, wearing an even sterner facial expression than usual.)
The other main distinguishing feature of Mac’s backstory is that his wife died in 9/11, which in this show means that he’s shown to be a grieving workaholic who inexplicably gets loads of attention from female characters who are far too young for him, leading to some hyper-awkward romantic storylines. (His series 3-4 relationship was with Dr Payton Driscoll, an English medical examiner played by an English actor, Claire Forlani, in a manner that suggests she received some clear direction to give it ‘more English’).5
I think it was this element, as well as a general increase in silliness, that led to me abandoning the show. Maroon 5 turned up in a fifth series episode about radiation poisoning, which is when things arguably started to turn, and there followed a slightly nonsensical storyline involving a recurring villain the following year.
Still, I retain a bit of a soft spot for it. And however much I might mock poor old Detective Mac Taylor and his phantom late night phone calls, the joke is arguably on me, as to this day, I’m unable to wake up in the middle of the night (usual reason: I had a drink of water after 9pm) and look at the clock without immediately thinking of Gary Sinise, of me watching Gary Sinise being unable to sleep, or of me watching Gary Sinise being unable to sleep while I myself was unable to sleep.
Mad Men is the one that sticks in my mind, because a particular group of friends were particularly insistent about it, which of course meant that I specifically avoided Mad Men until ten years later, by which point we were no longer in contact. (Did I like it? Yeah, it was pretty good, like they said at the time!)
When my CSI years ended, I found myself back at CEX buying old computer games, before I gave myself a severe talking to and rerouted my lunchtime walks in the direction of the nearest Superdrug, which led to a period of stockpiling bathroom essentials on the basis that they were ‘in a deal’. I then had to give myself another talking to, and ended up spending my lunchtimes in a big Waitrose instead and spending 15-20 minutes trying to decide whether buying a multipack of crisps was really a sensible money-saving endeavour or likely to end with me stress eating one bag after another in my office. It was shortly after this point that I realised that my job might actually be making me depressed and perhaps it was time to do something else.
I remember thinking at the time that Gary Sinise was quite a big movie star to be on TV, on the basis that he’d been in Forrest Gump and Apollo 13 in the 90s. But I’m not sure that I’d seen him in anything else in the subsequent decade leading up to this show.
I mean, one of the characters is played by Eddie Cahill, who had a brief recurring role as Tag, Rachel’s hot young boyfriend in Friends. At various points he appears to be wearing lip gloss.
Like the airbrushed box artwork, this direction — for English viewers at least — has the opposite effect from the one intended.