TV Shows that just won’t die

This is one of the saddest times of year for me. The May Sweeps always tend to sweep away some new shows I had just gotten attached to, and even shows that aren’t getting canned are revealed to have been close to receiving the axe. This year, One of my favorite shows, Jericho, was cancelled, as it happened to go against American Idol on Wednesdays, as did Studio 60, but that was coming for a while. Additionally, it was revealed that How I Met Your Mother and Scrubs were on the verge of termination as well. Awful. Especially when shows like CSI: Miami are kept on the air.
Monday night, I happened to catch the tail end of the CSI: Miami season finale, and nothing really made sense to me. There were people making out and people coming to realizations that weren’t revealed to the rest of us, and a pulsepounding musical montage on top of all of this. At the end, there was shot of David Caruso on top of a skyscraper in Miami, which then led to a pan away from him. Where have I seen that before? Wasn’t there a zoom to Jack Lord on top of a Honolulu hotel at the beginning of every episode of Hawaii 5-0? Even though they zoomed to Lord and away from Caruso, the similarity of the shots struck me. CSI: Miami is the same show as Hawaii 5-0.
I mean, look at the comparisons:
Location: Miami, Hawaii. Both make the characters seem foolish for wearing suits all the time, while lending to bikini clad women roving the background.
Plot Holes: Seriously, go back and watch some episodes of 5-0 and you’ll see that you could park a bus in some of those plot holes. (A guerilla struggling in his impoverished nation can’t secure weapons there, so he sneaks off to Hawaii to raid an American military base to pilfer weapons! Horatio’s brother is dead, but hes not, but he is, because that brings back the sexy sister in law!) CSI: Miami is, admittedly, slightly better at making coherent plots than 5-0 was. Slightly.
Incompetent suboordinates: Lets face it, both shows were and are about the main character, and the others were there to do the bidding of the star. They each had their own pretty boy sidekick, with Dan-o at McGarrett’s beck and call, doing the booking ’em, and what not, and then Eric Delco nodding and not saying much when Horatio demanded that he follow the evidence or something. I really think Dan-o and Delco are related. The names sound the same, even. I don’t think Chin and Callie are, however.
Awful, awful, awful, truly awful acting: I always thought David Caruso was the worst actor on television, now or ever. This was, of course, before I started watching 5-0 on local tv. At least Caruso changes his posture every once in a while. Jack Lord makes interpersonal communication painful. He stands rigidly, and looks like a kid at his first dance, trying to talk to a girl. Then again, as well as Lord does awkward, Caruso does surreal. How hard would it be to talk to someone who pauses twice every spoken sentence and is constantly putting on and taking off his sunglasses? Especially with that low gravelly quasi-whisper. Of course, the sunglasses thing is a marked improvement over Lord’s signature “Oh God the Taco Bell is barkin back at me” look. It’s really a toss up as to who the worse actor is.
I’m not saying that these characteristics make a good show, but they certainly are present in a couple long lasting shows. I’m not sure what they all do for people, but frankly, Hawaii 5-0 is one of the longest lived shows ever, so expect CSI:Miami to survive like a cockroach. I don’t like it, but at least I understand it.