CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - Complete Season 2 [DVD] [2001]

The second series consolidates the show's well-deserved popular appeal, while beginning to explore (gently at first) beneath the slickly professional surface of the investigators themselves. Gradually we learn more about what makes Grissom and his astonishingly gifted forensics team tick, beyond merely that they are workaholics who seem to require no sleep at all. The show's trademark reveals of vital evidence--be it on the autopsy slab or under the microscope--add a fresh spin to what is, at heart, a good old-fashioned whodunit series. And just when CSI starts to seem a little too pat, just when the trail of clues seems too neat, the show always seems able to throw a surprise or two at us: perhaps there has been no crime after all; perhaps the evidence concerns a completely different crime altogether; or perhaps, as in one brave episode concerning brothers implicated in multiple murders, the evidence simply isn't good enough to convict the right man, even when Grissom knows which one really is guilty.

Thanks to its focus on more single-case episodes, the latter episodes provide an even more highly concentrated dose of forensic puzzle-solving. With the whole team working together on one puzzle crime (or series of crime puzzles), the group dynamic is elaborated and the audience drawn deeper into each investigation. "Identity Crisis" sees the return of Grissom's nemesis, serial killer Paul Millander; in "The Finger", Catherine is caught up in an elaborate kidnap plot; in "Burden of Proof", a stray body in a "body farm" leads to a difficult case of child abuse; while "Chasing the Bus" brings the team together to unravel the mystery of a bus crash in the desert. "Stalker" is possibly the show's most terrifying episode to date, with a woman found murdered behind the safely locked doors of her apartment. The season concludes with "Cross Jurisdictions", a rather unsubtle way of introducing the spin-off show CSI: Miami and, finally, "The Hunger Artist", a somewhat strained attempt to comment on our society's obsession with glamour and self-image. --Mark Walker