CSI AND "THE CODE"

I'M GOING TO SEND THIS EARLY IN CASE NOTHING WORKS AT 10PM.

Since I’ve used up all my creative energy trying to understand how to survive Yosemite, I’ll just write a short review of a series I marathon-watched last night.  The series was “The Code,” an Aussie production in 6 episodes, pursuing one storyline and intended to have a second year, which looks as though it will happen.

The deal is that there are two brothers, one a rational and responsible journalist (Dan Spielman) and the other a brain-atypical computer genius (Ashley Zukerman).  They are confronting government collusion with evil people (poison and nuclear plotting).  It sort of a conflation of “The Constant Gardener” with the CSI kind of plot.  With an extra sauce of “House of Cards.”   But what I liked best was the indigenous bits which were neither smarmy nor preachy.

Aussie films, like Norwegian detective shows, are always worth watching, partly because they pay attention to plot beyond the simple “hook” on American CSI shows and partly because the actors are truly skillful.  But also because the location generally pitches urban sterility against the powerful beyond-human landscape.  (That capital building is as strict and bleak as any I've seen.)  Also, they generally manage to avoid sentimentality.  Remember “Breaker Morant”?  Pushes you against moral dilemmas without relief.  Mostly.

The other gimmick on this series is that anything on the computer screens in the story are overlays on the “movie” narrative.  I’ve seen this before, but it is deftly done and justified by the subjects of internet hacking v. encoding and the constant webbing of smart phone communication.  It was just sophisticated enough that I understood it but it implied more than I know.  (Not very hard.)  Beyond that the camera work is excellent.

I rotate “CSI Miami”, “CSI NY,” “NCSI,” and “Poirot.”  A new contender is “Vexed” but I lasted about 30 seconds with it.  The gimmick is that they are so hardened to ghastly crime that they barely notice it -- the man/woman team only relates to each other and they are both stooooopid.

“CSI Miami” is by far the more glamorous show (the sheet glass lab has got to be the world’s most flashy) and has the most outrageous crimes (It’s alligator country.) but wonderful aerial overviews.  David Caruso always does the tenderness and morality, which is sometimes more of a schtick than an insight.  The number of fabulous near-nude women is unbelievable.  None of these people are street cops, but some of them act as if they were -- not only that, but the only cops in the department.

“CSI NY” has Gary Sinise as the alpha.  Since he’s a bit of a right-wing righteous man, that whole show takes on that flavor.  In contrast to the crayola geometry of Miami the New York aerials are black and white and the white-tile arches of the morgue are grim.  Even the blood is sometimes black.  "NCSI" has ships.   And a female punk goth technician. The quips of the pretty boy are tiresome, but with Mark Harmon as the alpha, what do you expect?

Poirot has Art Deco Paris, and intelligent scripts with real dialogue. 

Enough of that. Back to “The Code.”

The hinge, or rather interacting hinges, turn on contrasting moralities.  The indigenous values of family and education against the venality of criminals for hire, protective brotherhood struggling with a heedless and headlong plunge into human individual knowledge, the careless out-of-marriage sex that slips into outright sedition.  Nation vs. citizens. 

The acting of Ashley Zuckerman lifts the whole thing onto the plane of “Equus” or “Tea and Sympathy” -- I mean, the ability to be a little weird and off-center while still making you want to be close to him, help him, like Anthony Perkins or Benedict Cumberbach.  Zuckerman in “Rush”, another cop series, is not particularly distinctive in the clip I saw.  The Rainman part of "The Code" is a role that either transforms an actor or just goes flat.  I hope to heck they don't "heal" him.

The effect on the viewer of a quiet summer half-day spent immersed in an Aussie thriller is disturbing to cats who want their dinner NOW.  At least it kept me from obsessing about Yosemite a while.  But it left me wishing I had the same syndrome as Zuckerman so I could solve this stuff.

This is not my usual goal of 1,000 words or more, but I don’t care.