Crime Shows and Their Spin Offs

I'm not exactly what you'd call an "avid TV watcher". In fact, I only spend about an hour on average in front of a TV each day - and most of that time is spent dozing off. Truth be told, TV may entirely be losing out on the "sitting in front of the tube" crowd who now favor TIVO, other DVR systems, and the methods employed with them that create TV shows on the internet (commercial-free, just like the DVDs) or just being able to fast-forward the commercials with the recording.

That in mind, I DO watch a lot of downloaded/recorded TV shows - and have some theories on the differences between a few crime shows and their respective spinoffs.

The originals: humor, suspense, twists.
The spinoffs: emotional, personal, intricacy.

The two shows I'll be comparing are Law & Order and CSI. Each started off as just those shows, and after several successful seasons, they branched off with new casts and taking new spins on things. With Law & Order, they created the "Special Victims Unit" (which was originally to be titled "Sex Crimes", but they nixed that idea and went for SVU) to deal with crimes that weren't purely homicide cases like the original series tackled. With CSI, they expanded to the tropical Miami locale, with hotter temperatures as well as tempers, to deal with a more racially diverse crowd in an area with sexier apparel and dealt with new things not found in Las Vegas (like hurricanes and Cuban immigrants).

For the Law & Order series, the differences are primarily evident in the title itself. After all, these are "special victims", and deal more with live people than cold corpses. Every episode of the original L&O used to be classically known as having an "Oh my God" moment before the credits rolled - that moment where the scene goes from something totally irrelevant to having the first witnesses discover the body. Their common utterances of "Oh my God" upon stumbling across the dead body was how the 'moment's came to be. This isn't really the case with the SVU spinoff - they deal more with the original crime and the actual victim.

With Law & Order, tensions may run hotter depending on the nature of the victim. A dead child found at a park usually has a more personal feeling in the episode than your average foreign delivery guy found dead in an apartment stairwell. Even so, they rarely let this personal feeling interrupt the classic storylines. Occasionally the parents/siblings/children of the victim will get in the way and provide a little emotion, but none that overpower the nature of the show. The LAW and the ORDER - police and lawyers struggling to bring justice to the crime and prosecute the criminal.

With SVU, it can often become the opposite. Many times I find myself staring at the screen saying "We get it! You're upset! Now can we please get back to SOLVING THIS CRIME??" The characters show way too much emotion and wind up becoming victims to the emotion themselves. Everyone is a victim. Everyone is "special". Also, they get to focus more on the interpersonal relationships and storylines for all the characters and how they interact with one another with the emotions and the caring and the worrying and the NOT SOLVING THE CRIME! I frequently want to throw a tissue box at the screen and say "THERE! Now get back to finding that kidnapper!"

CSI, Crime Scene Investigation, takes place in Las Vegas and features an array of interesting scenarios. The mystery in the crime/murder is often as intriguing as the episode unfolds and we get to figure out HOW the crime happened, and eventually WHO did what to WHOM. Even as the seasons went on and we got to delve into the characters, their vices and interests and occasionally love lives - it never detracted from the episode at hand. The evidence is all they need - the crime scenes tell the story and they just have to read between the lines. With this formula, they've been able to tackle more and more interesting cases. They've had midgets, BDSM, lycanthropy, chimaeras, and even an episode devoted to large women and "chubby chasers". They get to look at society and evaluate it in interesting ways with science and evidence. There are humorous twists and dialogues, as well as shocking ones.

With their spinoff, CSI: Miami, so much gets changed. Everything becomes personal. One CSI member is Cuban, so he gets all emotional about the immigration episodes and racial tension scenes. There's always new sexual tension in the lab, between agents, FBI personnel, lab technicians, and the main character with his "dead" brother and the widow and son and illegitimate child and new boyfriend rival and... it's too much. And then you get the medical examiners. In CSI, you've got Doc Robbins and his assistant, "Super" Dave. They find interesting things and almost make it an enjoyable game, spitting out wicked puns. In the Miami spinoff, you've got Alexx Woods, the woman who refers to just about EVERY corpse as "baby" or "sugar" or "honey" and practically compromises every investigation with the teardrops you suspect her of bawling out in each episode. And if that weren't enough - all of the Miami guys get guns. And USE them. A LOT. As if the improved estrogen levels with the emotions weren't enough, they needed to keep male attention with random gunfire and shootouts. Which causes more problems for the team and more casualties, which everyone cries over and feels emotions and needs a box of tissues and years of psychotherapy. Oh, and sometimes there's also a murder investigation.

The original series played on interesting twists and turns of events, so each episode was its own adventure, rarely playing on the "To Be Continued" game, other than crossover episodes with other crime shows. They had an hour to solve the crimes and deal with them as necessary, sometimes learning a lesson - or at least imparting wisdom to would-be criminals watching the show. I've learned that asphyxia due to strangulation causes petechial hemorrhages in the conjunctiva of the eyes. With each of the spinoffs, if you haven't watched every episode, you likely have NO CLUE what's going on with everything aside from the case and investigation at hand. And sometimes even THEN you have no idea, because it's a two-parter or a returning criminal, or it has to do with someone's past which was mentioned last season. This is especially evident in CSI: Miami, which features season-long cases bit-by-bit involving the main character's brother and his death/disappearance, or the case in New York the main character was involved with that spans half a season mostly in passing until the episode it all comes together. Most recently, it was the 4th season and the "mole" in the lab who was leaking information - which was on everyone's mind in the lab and if you didn't watch the last episodes, you might not know what anyone's referring to.

What it all boils down to is that the original series dealt with crimes, science, law, and order. Facts are as cold-cut as the corpses involved in the investigations. The only tears shed are those of joy when the killer is found and/or prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Each episode is an individually-wrapped chunk of goodness - the only times they affects things outside the episode are usually the result of actions on the characters (when it's time for new actors to enter and old ones to leave). The spinoffs pander to the emotions. They're more of the page-turning cheap romance novel than the cold and factual encyclopediae of their original methods. You have to watch them all if you want the full story, and better bring a box of tissues if you have all those emotional hormones to which they like to pander.

If you want fun and interesting, watch the originals.
For emotional rollercoasters, watch the spinoffs.

Just wait until I've seen more of "CSI: New York" and "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" to provide insight on the spinoff THIRDS.