tale of two ciries (it's not typo)

Current books read: Time of Your Life by Neil Gaiman; Disclosure by Michael Crichton - expected TV program: Wetten Dass...? 1.10. ZDF - study reading: this and that, here and there

Sit down. This will take a while. And you may find it boring. I'm a talk about two TV series that I've been watching for the past two weeks. Both are american series. The first, is ...

The West Wing

My first encounter with The West Wing was when this Emmy-Globes-SAG-awards-decorated series first aired in Indonesia. At that time, as my English was still below average, I spent most of the airing time not watching it, but reading the sub-titles. And I still didn't understand what were they talking about. I managed to stay awake late to watch it until the "Indonesia" episode. It was so big, even local newspaper picked the story up, as far as I can remember. After the "Indonesia" episode, I quit watching it. Just because I don't want reducing my sleeping hours reading things that I don't really understand.

It turns out, that The West Wing is so much better than I remembered. There are some reason for this judgment. First, my English that got better here and there. At least now I understand some of the things they are talking about. Second, characters, characters, characters are mostly the reasons why I like or dislike series. The characters in The West Wing, are just remarkable. My favorite is CJ, the press secretary which brings us to my favorite scenes: CJ in the press briefing room.

Third, the one that I watched is the third season. Fourth, it is just superbly written, and not pure entertainment.

I am not gonna talk about its inaccuracy here and there, because I don't know what's accurate or not, and I don't talk politics. :p But let's go back to the characters. The president's character, eventhough I believe is not the central character is also well-developed. He just had enough wit, bravery, charm, love, and sense of humor. A perfect Hollywood-style president.

Now, you may get tired of watching the series because most of them are nothing but lobbying. Seriously. Lobbying here, lobbying there, in this room, in that room, in this restaurant, during the day, early in the morning, on weekends, while flying, and so on, and so on. I will get tired as well, had it not had CJ's briefing scenes. And the non-issues issues.

Now the other series,

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

somehow brings recollections to my childhood. For me, CSI is Hawkeye and Amy twenty years after. My first encounter with CSI, is the super funny TV trailer CBS had some years ago. Super super funny. And that made me want to watch CSI.

After watching CSI, I made a dare to a friend of mine. I develop a story which goes like this.

There was a man born and mistakenly raised by the parents so that he got somewhat disturbed and tolerating violence.Sometimes during his adult life, he committed murder, for motives other than revenge. The police, had to solve this case and find the murderer. The police succeeded, the murderer went to trial. He lost, and served time in jail until the end of his life.

The dare, was to find an appropriate movie or series for every sentence. I forgot how he answered them all, but we both noted the same answer for the third sentence: CSI. And we agreed, not so many series or movies are specializing in only how murder weapon was found, what analysis needed in order to make a case, and so on and so on.

But I don't like CSI. It should be titled Crime Lab 101, or crime lab for dummies because it always comes with, for example: the murder was done at 1:00 pm, right? So that means at that time, this matter hadn't been oxidized with that matter, so that the pressure of this room, would not correspond to that temperature, and the corpse would have not showed this hours of decay. And then one of the crime lab super-member pulled out their super device out of their super case to get the evidence.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's just too scientifically sophisticated. Well, maybe their job is scientifically sophisticated. But not that what makes me don't like it. It's the 101 thingie that made me never lose the feeling of being told and taught. And I don't like the acting as well. Especially the guest stars. It reminds me a lot of court room dramas or even Lenßen und Partner. Another bonus: it's missing blue line plot that series made me want to watch them more.

However, it is thousands times better than Detektif Conan (don't know how it's called in English, German, or its original language Japanese :p) which after a while, tells us nothing but solving cases by redoing the "almost impossible" murder. Boring. But seeing almost all of CSI's season one, it's going that way, though.

OK. I'll cut 'em some slack because I watched the first season only. Come on, I don't remember that I was head over heels for FRIENDS as I watched its season one, weren't I? So, I need some rebuttals. One conclusive thing though, it costs a bloody lot of money to solve a murder. Wonder if Indonesian cops could afford it.

See, toldja it would be boring. Sleep tight, tonight.