There was a no-name writer with a good idea, a big-time movie producer with little TV experience, and a request for lots of money.
The idea seemed so outrageous and overwhelming that one of the production companies backed out before the first episode even aired.
And it was being slipped into one of the worst nights a television show can ask for: Friday.
What came of it was one of the most popular shows in television history, two spinoffs and three of the most familiar initials of the new millennium.
“CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” celebrates its 100th episode at 9 tonight on KIRO-TV.
In an episode called “Ch-Ch-Changes,” the series explores yet another aspect of society that brings on its own set of big-picture questions when the team explores the world of transgender.
But tonight’s milestone marks a moment that few, including some of the show’s creators, expected.
When creator Anthony Zuiker sat in a room with producers and writers, he was the only one who had today in mind.
“He was brand new to television and was already talking about the 100th episode from the first few episodes of the first season,” executive producer Carol Mendelsohn said in a phone interview last week. “We were looking at him like he was crazy.”
CBS hoped the new drama would keep just 80 percent of the audience that tuned in for the show leading into it, “The Fugitive.”
Remember that one?
Since then, “CSI” has been become a consistent winner on Thursday night, effectively taking over NBC’s stranglehold.
In preparing to write the first few episodes of the show, Zuiker, who’d spent five weeks on the graveyard shift with crime scene investigators in Los Angeles, handed out a book about crime scene investigations.
“We started to talk about what we read in the book and about forensics,” Mendelsohn recalled. “It wasn’t about how do you make it interesting. In talking about it, we got excited.”
From the start, the directions from executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who’d made his name with blockbuster movies including “Top Gun,” “The Rock” and “Armageddon,” were simple: “Make it real.”
In the early days, that meant watching Zuiker drag another writer across the carpeted floor to see if fibers from it would snag in the victim’s wristwatch.
In the second season, writers and producers sat around watching a dill pickle get a blast of high voltage while researching for a show in which a victim was electrocuted.
“We’ve had companies come and teach us how to take fingerprints,” Mendelsohn said. “To write it we have to understand it. But we wouldn’t have a show without the real (crime scene investigators).”
The show has always used real crime scene investigators as consultants – a couple of them have even gone on to write episodes for “CSI,” “CSI: Miami” and “CSI: NY.”
Like “ER” before it, “CSI” uses the type of language that its characters would really use, and people dig it – even they have no idea what’s being said.
“We knew it doesn’t matter if anybody understands the words, the terminology. People want to have a window into this world,” Mendelsohn said. “We try always to make the science real. I think that’s what the audience has always responded to.”
Mendelsohn doesn’t worry about viewers overdosing on CSI, believing that the original’s, well, originality makes it stand out from imitators.
And because the show’s writers are always trying to outdo themselves, she doesn’t worry about “CSI” losing steam.
“As opposed to feeling more pressure every year, we put pressure on ourselves since day one,” she said. “It’s no different than it was in season one, we’re just all a little more tired now.”
Columnist Victor Balta: 425-339-3455 or vbalta@heraldnet.com
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