And to think I just watched for the plot. Over at Pop Matters is one of the brainier discussions in recent memory of "CSI: Las Vegas," exploring the idea of the investigators as metaphorical beacons of truth with the sole power to glimpse reality in a city of artifice:

In CSI: Las Vegas, we see forensic experts as the ultimate voyeurs: the omniscient oracles, who, through their art, are able to dis-cover truth. These scientists hold in their hands the secret, not of life, but of death. They transcend the taboo of death and gain access to the deepest recesses of the human body and mind through their scientific tools. Forensic science has superhuman eyes that can penetrate all textures, all alibis with its technological gaze: the cold, metallic gaze of machines that can photograph, record, reconstruct, and dissect every moment, every action, every bodily function of and around the corpse it uses as its point of departure; its probing and digging into the flesh, as deep as the DNA, allows it to peek into the world behind the façade.