It’s official. The critics really hate Patricia Arquette’s new television show CSI: Cyber, the latest incarnation of the successful CSI television franchise.
They say that women who win the best supporting actress Oscar are cursed. Their careers tend to tank after winning the award. Their follow up movies tend to stink. For example, think about Mia Sorvino and Marisa Tomei.
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But TV shows?
Arquette obviously signed to appear on the program long before she was even nominated for an Oscar. And considering the track record of all of the previous CSIs it will probably do well regardless of whatever the critics say.
On the show the Oscar winner plays FBI Special Agent Avery Ryan who is in charge at the Cyber Crime Division of the FBI in Quantico, VA. She is tasked with solving major crimes that start in the human mind, live online, and play out into the real world.
Variety said, “On its face, “Cyber” (rooted in the work of a real-life “cyber psychologist”) would seem to be timely, coming as it does on the heels of the Sony hack and other legitimate concerns about digital security. The intro, moreover, taps directly into those fears, with Ryan citing “a new breed of criminal” and, noting that she herself was victimized, warning, “It can happen to you.”
Still, that’s just a fancy way of dressing up a 15-year-old cop franchise — one that birthed previous branches in Miami and New York — to see how much more can be wrung out of it. So while the threats might involve the high-tech world of hacking, “CSI: Cyber” is just plain hackneyed.”
The Hollywood Reporter said, “Part of the problem is the same one that plagued the network’s Intelligence last season — cyber crimes are basically actionless crimes. It’s simply not that exciting to see someone sitting at a computer typing, no matter how intense or menacing the look on his or her face. So CSI: Cyber has a lot of action that seems a little out of place — Would the same people who are computer geniuses be the ones running with guns? Probably not — and features many of the gross-out factors that the original CSI pioneered.”
And USA Today said, “You can slap on a new coat of paint and tune up the engine. You can even put an Oscar winner at the wheel. But at a certain point, old looks old.”
