Hodges Has His Day

Did you catch CSI tonight? Had I more faith in the North American viewing public I would venture to say that the show’s popularity is gleaned from the inventive plotlines and characterization.

Tonight’s episode did something that I don’t think has ever been done on a television drama (in my television viewing lifetime). The peripheral characters (Simms & Hodges etc.) and their plotline were brought to the forefront while the main characters (Grissom & Greg etc.) and their crime scenes were relegated to the briefest of glimpses.

The episode was akin to the brilliant Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard, a play which thrusts Hamlet’s bumbling D-list friends into the protagonistic spotlight (fully made up that word). We follow the trifling (but not inconsequential) movements of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that occur when they are not “onstage” with Hamlet. Scenes from the actual Shakespeare play that feature Hamlet’s friends are interwoven into Stoppard’s play. Tonight, CSI followed the secondary characters as they tried to solve the Miniature Killer case. The main characters’ cases, usually the focal point of each episode, served as background annoyances, slipping in and out of Hodges’s quest to find a common link between each miniature.

Brilliant.

Didn’t like the lucky day montage, though.