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.

I was talking about Elementary with a friend and one of her other friends refuses to watch it because they made Watson a woman and the thought popped into my head: what if instead of Irene Adler, they had Ira Adler - then the question of some Watson/Sherlock could be avoided. (Assuming that one wants to do that.)

The main think I think is that they forgot that Watson is supposed to be almost somebody that you don't really notice and Lisa Liu stands out. If they had a few more female characters that might help - but it's as if they really didn't understand Watson as a character.

Compared with Bones, CSI is practically a documentary.

L&O was pretty good at indicating that time was passing. The crime lab was backed up sometimes. They went home and came in in the morning. It took them time to get somewhere, as opposed to the magic transporter used on some shows. Then there were weeks or months before the trial.