GTFO, Horatio Caine!
If you are fortunate enough never to have watched a single episode of CSI: Miami, count yourself lucky for not having to subject yourself to one of the most unlikeable, teeth-grittingly irritating blowhards to ever grace the TV screen. Yes, I'm talking about Horatio Caine, the head honcho of the CSI team. There is nothing like bad plot expositions driven into my skull like rusty rapier blades to drive home just how excruciating this show is. But I just can't stop watching.
It is very easy to hate Horatio Caine even on sight alone. David Caruso looks as if he's spent his time in career limbo trapped in a desiccating jar in Area 51 where they suck all fluids from his body until all is left is a shriveled husk of a man. His face is always in danger in caving in on itself, with his wrinkles giving his face an eerie resemblance to a post-nuclear holocaust moon landscape. He walks with a slouch. He covers his shrunken pea-sized eyes with a pair of shades that make his head even more like a shrunked head rejected by Voodoo priests. But that is before he opens his mouth.
Horatio Caine doesn't speak like you and me. Every sentence from his mouth is a proclaimation of his omnipotency. He is always right and he wants you to know it. He passes judgments on everything in his path. When told that the deceased was dying even before she was killed by somebody, he would say, "Well, let's find who robbed her of the last days of her life!" He drops phrases like "Crime doesn't pay" into his conversations as if he's conducting a lecture on public safety. He doesn't talk to people, he asks them questions on which the answers he already knows, as if he's a schoolteacher and they are his dumb students. Even his laughable attempts "romance", such as when he decides to subjugate his brother's widow with his procreative urges, is totally unconvincing because this man is a blowhard who acts like he's superior to everybody else around him.
It gets even more annoying when the script lets him be some superhero. I don't really know what his job is, to be honest. He's a cop? He's a bomb specialist? Or is he just a lab person? Wait, he's Miami's Jesus. Every final scene will have Horatio standing at the beach or during sunset or better still, at the beach during sunset, where he will put on those irritating shades and put on that sober Crusader of Justice (Mood: Mournful) look. Speaking of those shades, why is he wearing them during sunset? Or in a building? Are they some sort of special shades that mark him as the son of Jesus or something?
Much has been said about Kim Delaney on this show but seriously, I miss her Megan character even if Megan doesn't come off as a credible forensics person because Megan is the only character that tries to argue with Horatio and question his decisions and theories. But Delaney rubs Caruso the wrong way and the producers are willing to blame her for less-than-impressive ratings so adios, Delaney! And now, there is no one to contain the raging God Complex of Horatio Caine and he is becoming more intolerable by the week.
But why do I watch C$I: Miami then? Okay, here's an unpopular confession: I prefer this TV show over the original CSI. The original CSI takes itself too seriously at times and the writing isn't good enough to warrant such sobriety. On the other hand, C$I: Miami is laughably bad. The "suspense" is transparent, the lines are laughable, and the scripts are often tacky. What's not to love about such a fabulously lousy TV show? Also, this CSI team is far more interesting than the original team, especially because Calleigh is a kickass gal, Alexx has never met a corpse she doesn't touch or feel for inappropriately (she probably gets high on the sly), Speed is driven to stubble haven because he is obviously nursing a crush on both Horatio and Delko, and Delko is one confused twit who jumps from girlfriend to girlfriend, unaware that his true love is carrying a camera and staring forlornly after him.
Here is how I would rebuild this show.
Firstly, let's get rid of Horatio. His God Complex forces the rest of the team to be subservient to his all-knowing nature and therefore he must go if the others are to have their chance at being somebody. So one day, after solving a crime involving the death of a poodle, Horatio stands back and stares at the tombstone for the dead poodle, contemplating the state of humanity that drives people into killing innocent doggies everwhere when his head explodes. It turns out that he is facing the sun in a certain angle that finally sets off the polymers in shades - the explosive properties are set off by too much contact with salt carried in the breeze on those beaches he poses at and the heat from the sun is the final kaboom, so to speak.
Yummy Holt McCallany is promoted from recurring to lead status as his Lt Hagen takes over as the head of the CSI. Calleigh and he then ooze plenty of unresolved sexual tension - fun! Meanwhile, Megan walks back in, having gotten over her dead husband, to deliver an eulogy on Horatio's appropriately overblown funeral. "God has taken his Son back to His bosom and we mourn the loss of the Almighty Horatio Caine and his Sunglasses of Omniprescience," she will intone to loud applause before taking up the post as the Bureaucrat that Everyone Dislikes. This show needs someone to hate so it may as well be she. Delko mismanages Horatio's sunglasses (it's evidence to be used to nail the manufacturer), blows up the lab, and Speed spends the whole show moping and crying and using to the fullest those sad, sad beautiful eyes God gave him as he sits by Delko's hospital bed. Speed never dares to confess his love and instead spends more time casting those sad puppy eye looks after Delko once Delko wakes up. Delko is a good Catholic boy so he doesn't dare acknowledge his feelings for Speed. But we'll have one kiss on the season finale to thrill everbody, how's that? As for Alexx, she'll start clashing with Bug, who has moved over permanently from Crossing Jordan, and sparks fly.
And Horatio Caine would be nothing more than a footnote in this show, which is more than what he deserves.
