Review: 'CSI' - 09/25/2013

Ensembles on television are a funny thing. For all of the talk about the most successful procedurals hinging on the chemistry of an ensemble of actors, nearly all the best shows are really driven by a couple of stars surrounded by a solid ensemble of actors.

"CSI" is beginning its 14th season tonight and you can make a pretty good argument that it's in the midst of a creative second wind. The unusual thing about the show is that the creative revival is due in large part to the work of actors who would be relegated to third-tier spots on most shows.

I recently watched a few episodes of season one and two of the show and for all intents and purposes, it's a different series altogether. The show was originally designed to be a showcase for actor William Peterson and those early episodes center on him. The lighting is darker, the framing of the scenes is tighter and it's a much darker feel than later seasons of the show.

As the series became a TV fixture, the show widened its focus to the ensemble of characters working on the Las Vegas Crime Labs graveyard shift. Those characters evolved into an ensemble compelling enough to keep the audience interested despite an impressive turnover of characters. Gary Dourdan's Warrick Brown was killed off in season eight and Peterson's Gil Grissom and Jorja Fox left the following season. Marg Helgenberger's Catherine Willows left two seasons ago and the show has experimented with a few new potential "stars." Laurence Fishburne's Dr. Ray Langston spent season 9-11 on the show and Ted Danson and Elisabeth Shue joined the show in season 12.

But the remarkable thing has been how little the cast changes have affected the feel and chemistry of the show. Danson's D.B. Russell has been a welcome addition to the show, but he's by no means become the star. Shue's presence has barely been felt in most episodes and Fishburne's character ended up being more of a distraction than a net positive.

What has remained the same is the charm of the core remaining actors. George Ead's Nick Stokes has been a moral center for the show and Eric Szumanda's Greg Sanders has grown from being almost an afterthought to a vital part of the show. Wallace Langham (David Hodges), Robert David Hall (Dr. Al Robbins), David Berman (David Phillips) and the returning Jorja Fox all play important parts in the continuing success of the show.

And then there's Paul Guilfoyle's Captain Jim Brass, a character that initially served merely as the requisite police figure at crime scenes. But as the show's ensemble has grown, so has Guilfoyle's part and it's evolved into a textbook acting lesson on the power of a character actor. In even the smallest scenes, Jim Brass is a world-weary, often bitter man who still has this sad humanity buried deep inside. His onscreen time has increased a great deal in recent years and his presence in the season premiere is enough of a reason to watch the episode.

"The Devil and D.B. Russell" picks up where last season's finale ended. The team has been tracking a serial killer who has been staging bodies to resemble scenes from Dante's Inferno. They believe they have identified a suspect and CSI Morgan Brody (Elisabeth Harnois) volunteers to go undercover. Of course things go wrong and as the episode ends, she is missing. Along with Ellie Brass (Teal Redmann), the long-estranged daughter of Jim Brass.

To be blunt, most of the effort to track down the killer manages to somehow feel both predictable and increasingly hard to believe. Eric Roberts chews up the scenery like a smug chainsaw in every scene he's in and the addition of James Callis as writer John Merchiston doesn't add much to the story. But the payoff is in the final ten minutes of the episode, when the story takes a twist that is both surprising and completely in line with the characters. It ends up being a real tour de force of acting for Guilfoyle and there is a scene towards the end of the episode in which he is standing silently in a hotel room and the emotion on his face is as powerful as anything you'll see on TV this season.

And in the end, that's why I keep watching "CSI." Sure, some of the stories seem a bit frayed around the edges and the writers don't always seem to know what to do with such a large cast. But the acting from people like Guilfoyle is more than enough of a reason to tune in every week.

Sometimes, character actors are all you need