Every once in a while, procedurals decide to do a story with an eeeeeeevil, eeeeeevil gamer. I both hate and love these episodes; I hate them, because I feel that they’re overall a poor representation of gamer subculture as a whole. But I love them because they usually feature dialogue that no living actor could possibly deliver in a dramatic way, dialogue so soul crushingly bad it makes your teeth hurt. Seriously, go look up the last Law & Order episode to have anything to do with it. Regardless of what story they’re trying to tell, it’s impossible not to laugh.
So you can imagine how excited/disappointed I was when I found out that CSI: Cyber was doing one of these episodes. Shit, the line from the promo was “video gamers performing gaming actions in the real world!” And if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have been quite so excited. I mean, the last time I remember a CSI show doing something like this was back when CSI: Miami was on the air, and it was the first to go! They were sort of overdue.
The real sad part of the episode is that it really doesn’t feature the usual level of cringe-inducing dialogue. Maybe that Law & Order: SVU episode spoiled us, because it somehow managed to make Ice T sound like the whitest guy on the planet. Someone really ought to give those scriptwriters some kind of medal, because if that isn’t an achievement of some sort, I don’t know what is. I still can’t believe he was able to manage that shit with a straight face. He had to have corpsed, like, 20 times each take. I know I would’ve. Guess that’s why he’s an actor and I’m not.
Anyway, in this episode, they’re after a guy (whose handle is VIPER75) who manipulates young gamers into moving guns into position to shoot his targets. He does this by somehow hacking their game accounts and stealing all of their equipment, then ingratiating himself to them by giving them the shit he stole from the previous kid, lather, rinse, repeat. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t you be able to call up customer support to get your stuff back? I mean, if the game works on an account system rather than storing everything locally, as long as you don’t act like an asshole to the person on the other end of the phone/email, it shouldn’t be a problem, right?
Anyway, half the episode is dedicated to the dealer that sells the VIPER the guns, by the name of Trigger. He manages to send them through the mail by hiding them in other objects; in this case, power drills.
Fun fact: this show features Peter MacNicol, who you may know better as Dr. Janosz Poha from Ghostbusters II, or as X the Eliminator from Harvey Birdman. It also features a big dude that looks like Rutledge Wood’s long lost cousin, and a guy whose apparent love of vests is only eclipsed by that of Montel Williams, among others.
One of the best things is that the episode basically pretends that parents shouldn’t let their kids play video games, because they’re all online, and as such are a breeding ground of scammers and pedophiles. Single player offline games? Never heard of them! If only such a thing existed!
The real crown jewel of the episode, however, is when they track down one of the many gamers the guy is scamming. The guy bolts the second they flash a badge, and James Van Der Beek and Patricia Arquette have to chase him down. He makes it to the roof, and obviously decides that he’d rather not go down for anything, so he jumps onto an awning connected to the next building over. Naturally, a bunch of rusty sheet metal wouldn’t hold his weight, and he falls through, ruining the Kelley Blue Book value of the car he lands on. They try to play it off as Game Transfer Phenomena, hence the line used in the episode previews. I’d argue that what happened was that the guy was an idiot, who imagined that he didn’t want to got to a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison over drug paraphernalia, rather than that Don Quixote de La Mancha bullshit. That reminds me of a shitty movie that was an early role for Tom Hanks.
They eventually get to one of the guns before VIPER, so that they know where to catch him. Despite the fact that she just saw the guy pick up a gun, Patricia Arquette’s character approaches the guy and at no point does she draw her own gun. Even when he points the gun that he just got out of the power drill at her, she doesn’t draw her own. Why? Because they got here first and removed all of the bullets, that’s why! Never mind the fact that it’s probably just a good idea to have your weapon at the ready, especially when you’re within ten feet of the guy, they removed the bullets so she’s perfectly safe! Oh wait, except he pushes past her and makes a run for it. Lucky thing that he didn’t go the opposite direction, though, because the police are waiting right outside the alley. And James Van Der Beek gets to deliver the witty one-liner the writers probably wrote the entire episode around.
This one was a double disappointment. It wasn’t quite bad enough to be entertaining, and it wasn’t good enough to actually be good. And since I don’t actually watch the show on a regular basis, I can’t tell if this was just a bad episode, or indicative of the series as a whole. Judging from what I’ve seen online, however… yeah.
Final Thoughts:
- Man, that awning was clearly a giant.
- More games should declare you TEAM WARLORD
- My Game Transfer Phenomena? I’d like to drop a shoryuken on the writers.
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