[…]

Most Special Effect: The elaborate opening shot of CSI’s opening episode was as dazzling as promised: a freeze-frame tableau of the lab’s violent invasion by gun-toting Russian mobsters. Shards of broken glass, blood spatter, bullet trajectories, gunshot flares, and bodies in various modes of action-hero motion, all frozen in a 3D-like tapestry of chaos. The episode that followed wasn’t bad, either, and Jorja Fox is welcome back anytime, although we’re sorry we missed Sara and Grissom’s wedding. (The scene where Sara and Nick crack up over a tray of viscera from a victim that’s been through a wood-chopper was classic “CSI”, even before they found the incriminating cuff-link amid the bloody pieces.)