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The CSI franchise has enthralled TV crime fans for most of the 21st century, while bringing the police procedural into the modern age. It helps that every one of its series is packed full of pithy one-liners about the nature of criminal investigations, as well as the kind of lighthearted patter that brings any workplace drama to life.
Yet, we have to go all the way back to the first season of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, the franchise’s original flagship show, to find the quote that ultimately defines it. William Petersen’s CSI team supervisor Gil Grissom has enough great lines to fill a book across his tenure on the show, but one stands above the rest.
Arguably the best investigator in the CSI franchise, Grissom tends to work on instinct more than others in his team, although he enforces the principles that underpin their work more than anyone else. The most fundamental of these principles can be neatly summarized by one line of dialogue in the third episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
In this line, Grissom encapsulates not only what makes CSI’s best episodes so special, but what makes it such an innovative procedural franchise. In just 12 words, Peterson’s character effectively explains how CSI paved the way for a whole new kind of crime show, reflecting the advent of cutting-edge forensic technology.
Gil Grissom’s Best Line In CSI Comes Early In Season 1
It’s in the episode “Crate 'n' Burial”, right at the start of CSI’s TV timeline, that Gil Grissom utters his most famous quote. Addressing the couple at the center of an apparent abduction plot, Grissom says, “I tend not to believe people; they lie. The evidence never lies.” Right here is the distilled essence of everything the CSI teams stand for.
Throughout the franchise, from Las Vegas to Miami, crime scene investigators look for the hard evidence needed to solve crimes, so that the police don’t have to take somebody’s word for what happened. They pool some of the force’s finest scientific minds in search of answers, and, more often than not, DNA saves the day.
Horatio Caine might have even more to say for himself, while Catherine Willows is just about the best forensic specialist around. But neither of them put into words what exactly CSI contributes to crime-fighting better than this celebrated line from Grissom.
The first and most iconic leader of the franchise’s titular investigative team, his effortless charisma and instinctive grasp of almost any given situation gives rise to many of the original show’s best quotes. Yet, across his 12 seasons in CSI and CSI: Vegas, Grissom never uttered anything more singularly definitive than this line about evidence-based casework in season 1.
CSI’s Evidence-Based Storylines Revolutionized The Crime Procedural
From the moment it arrived on CBS in October 2000 with episodes like "Crate 'n Burial", CSI: Crime Scene Investigation transformed the police procedural genre forever. Case-of-the-week cop shows had long centered on maverick detectives, hunch-heavy sleuthing, and guilt-ridden antagonists, but this series took a completely fresh approach.
Basing itself on the latest forensic science and modern technology being used in real police work, CSI broke new ground for its genre, setting new standards of authenticity, and laying the blueprint for a new era of procedural crime dramas. It’s impossible to imagine many of the current decade’s most popular series without the franchise, from NCIS to Blue Bloods.
In fact, CSI’s signature tropes can now be found in every corner of TV crime. At the same, nobody does evidence gathering and analysis better than Gil Grissom, Catherine Willows, and their team. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation remains the pinnacle of this police-procedural subgenre, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. After all, the evidence never lies.
