I'm finding myself increasingly nostalgic for police procedurals that care whether the case will hold up in court.

Isn't that what your seven million flavours of CSI are meant to address?

they are implying sexual attraction between Watson and Holmes

I'd be very surprised if they were doing anything more complex than playing a song with the word "detective" in it.

I took it to mean that Watson was no longer watching the baseball game, and was now allowing her focus to be with the consulting detective, whom it is her job to watch over.

Ha! I thought what ita ! thought.

Isn't that what your seven million flavours of CSI are meant to address?

I view the CSIs as a form of science fiction, since as far as I know, no police department in the country has that level of equipment and doesn't have at least a month's backup. The Georgia crime lab is regularly six months behind. Also, crime lab techs don't carry guns or talk to witnesses. They collect evidence and go back to the lab.

It's not like all the other procedurals are documentaries. Unless there's a specific plot point to be raised, there are no backlogs or resource constraints in any part of the justice machine, period. There's no standard "it takes x days to do that, because you're not first in line" or because "the process takes y days anyway".

If there's science in the show, they compress it (see Bones, also any show with a coroner or fingerprint recognition, never mind zoom, enhance, what's that reflected in his retina?). If there's law, they compress it. If there's investigation...yeah, like that.

The only one that addresses that stuff is "The Wire" and I hope they are too cynical, but probably not.

Not realistically, but to some extent Major Crimes addresses it. Of course it helps that they get the FBI to pick up the tab much of the time.

I haven't been watching Major Crimes, but I'm kind of surprised, because The Closer pretty much took a dump on the Constitution every episode the last couple of seasons...

They took at least one big time dump on the const. in major crimes, But in other episodes they have been concerned with getting convicitions and limited resources. As I said not realistically.

In earlier seasons, NCIS bitched about not having the resources of the bigger agencies, and it's a common thing to have Abby complaining about workload. They more or less show concern for getting warrants and for legalities.

Bones actually had an episode where they had to go for the plea bargain because they could not prove the higher crime and the perp was not falling for confession tricks.

My dividing line on procedural appeal is how much soap opera is going on. That's why I stopped watching Bones, and it's affecting my appreciation of Castle. There is soap opera on NCIS, but they also throw in humor, which saves a lot. A lot of the CSIs and L&Os, from my limited viewing, seem pretty joyless.