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Worst TV Show of the Week Brought to you by the Parents Television Council	Share |
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CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on CBS

Halloween season is definitely here, with theaters being inundated by this year’s crop of horror films. But viewers who dislike graphic violence will find no respite by staying away from the multiplex – because the same kind of gore is coming right into their living rooms in prime time. The October 7^th episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (Thursdays, 9:00 p.m. ET) contained the same extreme, grotesque violence normally reserved for "torture porn" movies like Saw. For showcasing an excessively brutal murder, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation has been named Worst TV Show of the Week.

The episode begins with scenes of a man running through the woods, interspersed with a steamy love scene between Detective Vartann and Catherine. Near dawn the following morning, the couple arrives at the murder scene and makes a grisly discovery. They find the victim propped up against a barbed wire fence, while his decapitated head sits atop a wooden post a few feet away. The camera lingers on the still-dripping hack marks at the base of his shredded neck, and focuses on his startled visage. “You can see the terror in his eyes,” Langston intones. “This man knew he was going to die.” Catherine notices the large amount of blood pooling around the carcass. Langston deduces, “He was alive when his head was chopped off.” The position of the body suggests a ritualistic sacrifice.

When the investigators examine the body more closely, an insect suddenly slithers out of its mouth. They also pluck a knot of hair from behind its teeth. Deep ligature marks around the victim’s wrists suggest that the murderer bound the victim to the fence before decapitating him. Abrasions on his chest show that he ran into the barbed wire fence, and that his attacker turned him around to look him in the face before killing him.

Back at the lab, the investigators examine the severed head more closely. They shine a light into the gaping hole at the base of the neck where the head was driven into the post. “The post went through the trachea,” Dr. Robbins explains, “and all the way into the brain.” Robbins proceeds to peel the flesh off of the scalp and extract the victim’s brain.

Eventually, the victim is identified as an adherent of a vampire cult engaged in an age-old rivalry against an opposing werewolf cult. The supposed werewolves, of course, are the prime suspects, but it soon becomes apparent that they weren’t working alone. A flashback illustrates that there were several attackers that took turns hacking at the victim’s neck.

With the popularity of vampire series like True Blood, it figures that CSI would attempt to capitalize on the trend. But the producers seem to have forgotten that the former series is on a premium cable network, while the latter airs over the publicly-owned broadcast airwaves at 8:00 p.m. Central/Mountain time. This horrific brutality was beyond the pale of what is appropriate for prime-time television. CSI rightfully deserves the title of Worst TV Show of the Week.