CSI: NY: Season 01  (2004)

Theatrical Release Information:
CSI: NY: Season 01

Introduced in May 2004 as an episode of CSI: Miami, the CBS "procedural" cop drama CSI: NY launches its first full season with 22 hour-long episodes. The opener, "Blink," finds NYC Crime Lab head Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) and his team of brilliant, iconoclastic forensic specialists hunting for a serial killer using clues provided by the perp's only surviving victim -- who has lost virtually all powers of communication. Later investigations involve a hungry rat who has swallowed vital evidence, a skeleton found by a tourist which may or may not be a hoax planted to throw the police off the trail of a real crime, and a grisly robbery-murder in Brooklyn in which the victims were systematically shot and smothered to death. Also, a police terrorist-response drill compromises the CSI's efforts to rescue a kidnap victim; a police horse may have to be put to sleep to retrieve an important clue as to the murder of the horse's rider; Mac's protégé Danny Messer (Carmine Giovinazzo) gets a bit too up-close and personal while hunting down a gang of young punks who kill for sport rather than profit; the team tries to determine if a somnambulist committed murder while asleep; three murders occurring simultaneously in three different boroughs might be connected; and the CSIers are forced to turn a mirror on their "own" when the chief investigator in a police-corruption case is murdered before making his findings public. The season ends with the episode "What You See Is What You See," in which Mac must choose to save the life of a shooting victim or immediately chase after the shooter -- a decision that triggers tortuous memories of the death of Mac's own wife during the 9/11 terrorist attack. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide