The William Shatner School of Acting

I made the mistake of flicking channels last night and landed on CSI: Miami. It had the same effect as one of those car accidents you can't look away from. It's hideous, and the carnage is quite vomit inducing, but you are riveted by the horror of it and your eyes refuse to budge.

I stared in disbelief at how anyone could give David Caruso an acting job. It seems he gets worse every year. The whole thing where he stands there, feet apart, shoulders hunched, hands on his hips, head tilted at a specific angle as he does "The Stance". Over and over again. The halting way he speaks his dialogue, as if it took actual thought to whip off that pithy badly written prose. The affected way he pulls off his sunglasses then puts them back on again - while he's inside! Sort of reminds me of Oscar Goldman from The Six Million Dollar Man, the way he would whip off his sunglasses any time something important happened. Although Oscar was way more cool.

Oh and last night was the worst. Every time Caruso and his sister-in-law were in the same room they had to play that painfully bad music and move in slow motion. Oohh yeah. Sexy. And then the knife fight? What was that?? I felt like I was watching a clumsy version of the dance scene from West Side Story. I started humming The Jets and snapping my fingers. I almost wished they'd show up, anything to save me from the agony of having to watch the sloppily choreographed and badly acted scene with its pat one liner at the end which I think was suppose to be dramatic but just ended up sounded really, really stupid.

Now don't get me wrong. I love CSI. The original is still good (except I wish Sarah would take a fast drop off the nearest Nevada cliff) and CSI New York has Gary Sinise and is probably the most intelligent of the three although he's the only one of the characters worth watching in my estimation. And there are even a couple characters from Miami that I like - Callie and the young cop guy. But I don't know how anyone gets through an entire hour watching the rest of them, especially David Caruso. It is the worst display of bad writing, acting and directing ever rolled into one package.

And don't even get me started on the lighting (hey let's make everyone gold!)... oiy vey....