Enough with the Forensics already!

It's about 1:40 AM where I am right now, and my father (who got home about half an hour ago and is now eating his midnight dinner) is watching some forensic show where they're trying to identify a skeleton by the shape of the holes in his head (much like telling your fortune by the bumps on your head, but not.)

I hope this TV forensics kick dies out soon. I'm getting tired of watching people with dark, low, serious voices talk about how Jane Doe got killed with a bathroom towel rack or how mystery man #18 disappeared from his toilet thirty-eight years ago.

The real-life forensic shows that are based on true solved and unsolved cases are boring because they all have the same methods for finding criminals, and the people on them either sound very rehearsed or very lethargic (much like my Calc 4 professor. I still don't know how to solve equations in a spherical coordinate system because his droning was like the voice of Morpheus in a narcolepsy clinic). Either way, it's not exciting TV. At least I have a chance of learning something, if I haven't heard of that technique or seen that episode before.

The drama forensic shows have slightly better acting and cuter people investigating the crimes, but the technology they use is insane! From what I've seen on the real-life forensic shows most police departments don't possess the technology or money required to do all the stuff that they do on CSI (David Caruso is annoying here, here and here). I bet even police precincts in Miami and New York have to scour the world for experts to figure out how Deady McDeadster got a fingerprint in the anthrax on his eyeball.

What is weird is that these shows have single-handedly revived forensic academia. All kinds of classes are popping up in community colleges everywhere! I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but twenty years ago Forensic Science never would've competed with such community college academic standards as Paralegal and Telecommunications.

Oh, one more thing. I don't like how a lot of the forensic drama shows end with a pop song. It's like they didn't write enough forensic jargon to finish off the whole 48 minutes. So they had to add a little music video to fill in the last three minutes complete with slow motion smiles and phantoms of the dead person standing in the room as their case is laid to rest. Blah! Since when does The Who = forensic science?

Okay. I'm done ranting about forensics shows for a while (as if two posts aren't enough already.) It's not that I hate them, I'm just ready for something new.