After Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino did a lot of TV over the next few years, notably ER, Saturday Night Live and All-American Girl, as well as making the round of all the talk shows of the time. (Read more about it here.) Unfortunately, this contributed to a lot of the overexposure that, in part, led to his follow-up film Jackie Brown underperforming at the box office. As such, he laid low after the film, focusing on making the Kill Bill films as good as they could possibly be.
The hard work paid off, and both volumes of Kill Bill were an unqualified success. With that achieved, Tarantino decided to make another foray into commercial TV, this time on one of his- and America's- favorite shows, the enormously-popular CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. By that point, the show had already spun-off two other shows, CSI: Miami and CSI: New York, the latter of which had premiered the year before QT did his episodes, so the franchise was at peak hotness at the time.
Unlike ER, where he was a mere hired hand directing someone else's script, this time around, Tarantino came prepared with a story pitch of his own, which was then turned into a script, with pretty obvious, if uncredited, contributions from the man himself. It seems that, while concocting Kill Bill, he'd had another idea revolving around someone being buried alive, as The Bride was in Volume Two, but this variation was arguably even more sinister.
His idea was this: what if, while investigating an inherently odd crime scene, in which someone simply dumped some entrails on the side of the road in an isolated locale, one of the CSIs was kidnapped by a madman with a hidden agenda, who then subsequently buried said agent alive in a tricked-out plexiglass coffin, complete with a camera to film them, a link to which was then sent to his fellow CSIs, so that they could watch in horror as their friend was suffering, seemingly powerless to do anything about it?
Included within the coffin was a tape recorder to record one's last comments to their loved ones (as well as to deliver a creepy message from the kidnapper, but of course), and a loaded gun to take one's life, if they wanted to end their suffering and go out on their own terms. In addition, unbeknownst to those watching, the link button that they pushed would not only cause a blinding light to come on, but it would cut off the device that was providing the trapped party- in this case, Nick Stokes (George Eads)- with air in the first place.
Fortunately for Nick, his team is one of the best, and they're working overtime to save him, against all odds. It's probably not much of a spoiler to reveal that they eventually succeed- this is TV, after all, and it's not as if this were some random, throwaway character- Eads was one of the leads on the show. But that's not to say there weren't some twists along the way, including the reveal that the kidnapper wasn't really in it for the money.
Indeed, in arguably the two-part episodes' most wow-inducing moment, the kidnapper (played by veteran character actor and QT fave John Saxon, of Nightmare on Elm Street fame), after arranging for a million dollars to be brought to him, in exchange for the location of Stokes, reveals that he has rigged himself with explosives, which he then proceeds to detonate, blowing himself- and a fair bit of the money- to kingdom come. ("Uh- you might want to back up a little," he says, in the understatement of the year.)
Although CSI had admittedly pushed the envelope in terms of the level of violence or gore that could be shown on TV, this was still pretty shocking at the time, as it was definitely shown in all its body part-splattering glory. The idea had been for the kidnapper to take as many cops with him as he could, assuming that anyone who came would be accompanied by a bunch of back-up, but he didn't count on how close they were, as only Grissom (William Peterson) showed up to deliver the money. (Note also the dialogue quote in the scene- appropriately enough, from Kill Bill, Volume Two.)
Of course, once again, he's one of the leads, so he emerges relatively unharmed, though, of course, the first part of the two episodes ended trying to lead viewers into thinking he was dead. Still, a pretty impressive sequence, especially for TV at the time, which was still in the transition period of trying to remain "suitable for all audiences" and competing with cable in a more aggressive way.
That would soon change, thanks in large part to the efforts of young upstart FX, which was really pushing the boundaries of what could be shown on basic cable at the time, to say the least, thanks to the likes of The Shield, Sons of Anarchy and American Horror Story. The enormous success of that channel's efforts, as well as stuff like AMC's Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead would soon open up the floodgates of what was permissible on commercial TV, but back in the early 2000's, things were still very much in flux in that department, shows like this and NYPD Blue (which was notoriously the first major network show to feature a bare ass- and then some) notwithstanding.
In another eye-opening scene, this one played more for dark humor, Stokes imagines his own autopsy, picturing Dr. Al Robbins (Robert David Hall) and "Super" Dave Phillips (David Berman) gleefully ripping into Stokes' ribcage- with a chainsaw, no less! The scene, shot in B&W to tone it down a bit, is pure Tarantino, even managing to incorporate a variation of his famed "trunk shot" into the proceedings, via a shot from Stokes' perspective from within one of those sliding morgue containers that come out from the wall where bodies are kept.
Be all that as it may, overall, unlike ER, which QT made when he was still relatively green, there aren't a lot of showy shots that are there just to be there. For instance, if you pay attention to his ER episode, it's like there always has to be something going on in the frame- there's constantly stuff going on the background, and the episode features any number of oddly-staged scenes.
Here, QT's CSI episode, by and large, looks like any other CSI episode- by then he'd learned to work in the service of the show, rather that drawing attention to all the stuff he could do to "wow" the viewer. It's like the difference between a student film shot by a savvy filmmaker trying to throw in everything but the kitchen sink, shot-wise and staging-wise, and a professional that knows how to let those sorts of things happen organically, in a way that services the episode, not draws attention to itself.
In short, Tarantino had matured exponentially as a filmmaker. Yes, the kidnapper explosion and the autopsy scene are attention-grabbing, to be sure, but for the most part, those are isolated incidents in a feature-length endeavor, one for each episode. Considering how much QT stuffed into that one episode of ER, these two episodes are positively restrained by comparison. Tarantino never forgets that he's a hired hand, and for the most part, he sticks to the script and to the overall format of the show, in look and overall content.
This is not to say that there aren't some very QT moments scattered throughout, though. The short bit with Catherine (Marg Helgenberger) asking her father, Sam Braun (completely forgot he was played by Walking Dead star Scott Wilson) for money to pay Stokes' ransom is another excellent scene, as he's stocked it with two old Hollywood vets, Tony Curtis (who makes jokes about his films Some Like it Hot and The Vikings) and Frank Gorshin (who was the original "Riddler" on TV's Batman and does a host of impressions here), both of whom ham it up to the fullest.
I'd love to see the outtakes of the scene, which I can imagine was pared down considerably from the original, given how gleefully Tarantino lets the two character actors go on as long as possible. Sadly, Gorshin died right before the episode aired. In the original showing, the episode was dedicated to his memory. (It still shows up that way in syndication, I believe, but it was removed from the version I watched for this review.)
In another fun scene that has little to do with anything, Hodges (Wallace Langham) and Greg (Eric Szmanda) are shown playing a board game version of the TV show The Dukes of Hazzard. Given that Tarantino is known to collect such games- he once played a Welcome Back, Kotter one with that show's star John Travolta, on the set of Pulp Fiction- I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the Dukes game was likely from his personal collection, and that QT probably wrote the scene himself. (Love the bit with Greg ribbing Hodges about his not having the "full David Hodges experience"- "I think I'm having it now." Lol.)
QT also manages to sneak in a few of his signature obscure oldies as well. In the first scene, we see Stokes singing along with Bob Neuwirth's "Lucky Too," which I mistook for Willie Nelson at the time. The scene obviously mirrors the ones in which characters sing along with the radio in Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. In addition, there's an extended sequence in which the CSI's listen to a cassette provided by the kidnapper, which features The Turtles' "Outside Chance," which is a great song I'd never heard at the time, either.
There are a few other quick QT moments along the way: the scene with Stokes and Warrick (Gary Dourdan), in which they discuss his evening out the night before, as Warrick checks his gun and straps it in, followed by the ill-fated coin flip; the bit where the cops bust in on the stoner wearing a "Lucio Fulci Lives!" t-shirt (Kill Bill was dedicated in part to the director and used music from one of his films, The Psychic, in the hospital scene where Elle almost kills Beatrix) with a Cabin Fever poster on the wall (QT would go to work with the director, Eli Roth, producing his next films, the Hostel movies, and featuring Roth as an actor in his next two films); and, of course, the freaky ant attack scene.
I'm not going to go into the whole cast- anyone who's seen the show is familiar with the main cast, obviously. But there are a few others worth pointing out. As Stokes' parents, there's character actor Andrew Prine (Grizzly, The Town That Dreaded Sundown, The Evil- you can read more about him in my review of his film, The Centerfold Girls) and Lois Chiles (Coma, Moonraker, Creepshow 2). At one point, he has Prine call Stokes "Pancho," which becomes a recurring thing later on- it's a reference to the old show The Cisco Kid.
Tarantino, as he did in ER, also sneaks in a few vets of his own films, including Michael Bacall (Death Proof, Basterds, Django) as the guy who delivers the package to the CSIs, Clark Middleton (Kill Bill Volume Two- he was also in Sin City and Twin Peaks) as the delivery man's attorney, Bruce Del Castillo (the lead grip on most of QT's films, starting with Kill Bill- he also has a bit part in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) as the stoner, and, most impressively, Aimee Graham (From Dusk till Dawn- she was one of the hostages- and Jackie Brown- she was the salesgirl that Jackie buys the suit from), as the daughter of the kidnapper, who's been long-suffering in jail for a crime she didn't really commit.
Graham's character would resurface on the show, in fact, in the sixth season episodes "Still Life" and "Daddy's Little Girl." I dig it when a show like this has continuity- not all of them did back then. At the time, it was still relatively rare, as TV producers worried it would be a problem in syndication, as people often would just watch an episode randomly, and wouldn't know what was going on if there was an ongoing story. Now it's common, of course, for there to be ongoing storylines on all shows, but back then, it was still somewhat of a novelty.
"Grave Danger" is well-worth seeing, even if you aren't very familiar with the show, and if you're not keen on getting a whole box set to watch it, good news: it's readily available as a stand-alone DVD and on Blu-Ray, where it is presented as one long, feature-length episode. You can also just simply rent the episodes (also as one long episode) to stream on Amazon, YouTube, Hulu, CBS All Access, iTunes and Google View, so there's plenty of options of where to see it.
"Grave Danger" was a massive success, ratings-wise, and was number one in the Nielsen ratings the week it aired, as a two-part, back-to-back episodes event. Indeed, twice as many people watched it as its nearest competitor. TV Guide also ranked it as the #47th best episodes (with both parts qualified as one) of TV of all time. Tarantino was nominated for an Emmy for the episodes, though he didn't win.
As before, Tarantino took his time in plotting a follow-up to his last film, but it would be a doozy. In fact, it would be technically a double-feature, co-directed by longtime friend Robert Rodriguez, entitled Grindhouse as a whole, with his segment going by the name of Death Proof. Join me next time for a look at the extended cut of that film, as well as my thoughts on Grindhouse in general- and, as always, thanks for reading! 😃
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