CSI: Miami - Season 7 (DVD)

Despite the fact that Horatio Caine (David Caruso) has become a bit of a joke, mocked on endless TV shows for his endless taking off and putting on of sunglasses, as well as being the most self-righteous person in the universe, CSI: Miami is still one of the most popular programmes in the world, and globally it’s more successful than the original Vegas based crime lab series.

To be honest it’s lucky it’s managed to sustain that, as in its fourth and fifth season it got utterly ridiculous and seemed to have jumped the shark. The show lost sight of the core reason people watch CSI – for the murders and science-y investigations – and instead became about nonsensical intrigue, backstabbing, conspiracies and massaging David Caruso’s ever-inflating ego.

In Season 6 it pulled things back, and thankfully that continues in Season 7. That said, it is still set in more of a fantasy world than either its Vegas or New York based sibling, but at least it’s gone back to being entertaining. If you remember back to the dramatic conclusion of Season 6, you’ll know it ended on a cliffhanger with Horatio Caine apparently getting shot dead.

It doesn’t take a genius to realise that despite the fact quite a lot of people, myself included, think the show would be better off without him, he isn’t really dead and it’s all part of an elaborate plot to take down a criminal. The 25-episode season continues with everything from the CSI crew getting involved in Ultimate Fighting after one of the pugilists is murdered, to a murder witness being killed by a runaway crane.

There is still a bit too much of the OTT intrigue and conspiracies, this season mostly concentrating on the Russian mob, as well as Horatio’s nemesis Ron Saris who is thought dead but comes back to cause trouble. This aspect of the show is all a bit too silly, but Season 7 largely sticks to the business of killing people in daft ways and then getting Caine, Delko, Calleigh and co. to use convoluted science to work it out. And when it sticks to that the show still works very well.

Thankfully it seems that Momentum has now decided that rather than releasing each season of the various CSIs in two box sets, they’re going to do it all in one go, which is both cheaper and less annoying. It means we get all 25 episodes of CSI: Miami – Season 7 in one box set, along with three okay audio commentaries and a few featurettes. There’s a look at the sound effects of the show in ‘The Miami Sound Machine’, which is actually more interesting than you might expect, especially if you aren’t aware of just how much of the audio we hear in TV and on film is added later. There’s also ‘The New AV Lab’, which as the title suggests, looks at the ridiculously space-age, holographic audio-visual lab in the show. In some ways the featurette is a bit daft, as it underlines just how silly CSI: Miami’s the AV lab is, which uses technology that hasn’t been invented yet. In fact it would be so expensive to build something even close to it (and far beyond a police lab’s budget), that it all has to be created using CG
in post-production. Finally there’s ‘Heating Up Season 7’, where the cast and crew look back over the season and give their take on events.

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Overall Verdict: Although it’s the silliest of the CSIs and Horatio Caine is very annoying, CSI: Miami has pulled itself back from its Season 5 stupidity to become entertaining again.

Special Features:
Audio Commentary On The Episode ‘Wrecking Crew’ With Joe Chapelle, Larry Detwiler and Corey Miller
Audio Commentary On The Episode ‘Gone Baby Gone’ With Don Tardino, Barry O’Brien and Carey Meyer
‘The Miami Sound Machine’ Featurette
‘The New AV Lab’ Featurette
‘Heating Up Season 7’ Featurette
Episode Summaries

Reviewer: Tim Isaac