"Worst. Episode. Ever."

Over at Salon, editor Andrew Leonard serves up a scorching review of last night's CSI: Miami episode, "Urban Hellraisers." The show depicted - what else - rampaging video gamers.

Andrew, known to GP to have played a game now and then, is also a man who can turn a phrase. And turn them he does:

"In conjunction with the venom and disgust that enfuses the word 'gamer' when it's spoken by star David Caruso, aka 'Horatio Crane,' it is made clear... that people who play games are but one step removed from pedophiles or suicide bombers in the social hierarchy of evil..."

"When Horatio confronts a slick, smarmy executive from the company that makes the game, the suit refuses to divulge any information about the internal narrative of the game that would help the cops figure out the next target of the criminals. "

Ed: What, they don't sell strategy guides in Miami?

"It turns out that executive isn't just smarmy - he's Satan. Not only is the company providing bad role models to the youth of today, but, in an effort to boost sales in a competitive industry, it's also actively supplying college students with Tec-9 automatics and encouraging them to murder innocent people... This neatly solves the problem of whether video games are responsible for violent behavior."

Ed: Hmmm... wouldn't a certain attorney love to have that on a certain game company?

"Just one hour of watching David Caruso's leaden acting and banging my head against this ridiculous plot did, I confess, make me want to get my own Tec-9 and start laying waste to television executives. But I refrained, just as 99 percent of everyone who has ever played a violent game refrains from throwing a punch at someone in flesh and blood. "

Ed: Make that 99.999%

(Reported from www.gamepolitcs.com)

This is why I don't watch any form of CSI. They always manage to insult a group of people and not do any sort of research on it. Just all gore, glamor, and shock value for ratings. Real Crime Scene Investigators are not super cops. They are neither judge, jury nor executioner and they are definatly not Judge fucking Dredd.

You want to watch a series of shows that get most things surrounding the Justice System? Watch the Law and Order shows. Law and Order:Special Victims Unit and Law and Order:Criminal Intent dealt with suspects that played games (and in SVU, the defense attourny tried the "games made him do it defense") and yet, they manage not to be idiots that think that people like me are followers of Satan for playing Grand Theft Auto.

Von Karama represents my frustration with people like the cast and crew of CSI.