I promise this is not about baseball.  For those who have zero interest in sports, please bear with me for four sentences.  Middle relief pitchers are undervalued.  There is this absurd belief that the ninth inning is somehow more important than the sixth, when in reality the question of whether to use your best pitcher should be situational, rather than structural.  Runners on second and third with one out in a one-run game in the seventh inning is the moment to use your best relief pitcher, not when you have a three-run lead at the start of the ninth.  Conventional wisdom rules the day, despite its general silliness.  It’s the same with acting.

The star of the show is important, sure, but it’s the little moments of film/television that are the most important, and these moments by and large live and die with the entire production, not just those whose names are in the opening credits.  Successful drama is about immersing the audience in the moment, creating an inner life to the proceedings.  If the lighting or sound is off, we’re instantly taken out of it, and by the same token, if the featured extra in the police uniform is looking at the camera when he’s supposed to be preventing the victim’s family from contaminating the crime scene, nothing else is going to matter.

 So in honor of the invisible and unappreciated in television, let’s take a look at one of most important jobs in procedural crime dramas – the dead people.  These shows wouldn’t work without great dead bodies, and you need good actors to pull that off.  Their names are often unknown, but their contributions invaluable.  So to these unsung heroes, a moment to shine with a list of the top 4 procedural crime dramas and the nameless, faceless corpses that go with them.[1]

As with any ranking system, there needs to be a set list of qualifications, or else it just becomes another arbitrary opinion which will lead to criticism and second guessing which then inevitably devolves into anarchy.  To prevent this unfortunate end, my list ranks the shows not based on their overall quality, but on the overall excellence of their dead bodies and were scrupulously assembled and ordered according to the following 10 criteria:

1. The dead people must be victims, not corpses.  Any idiot can lie on a slab or in a coffin with their eyes closed.  It takes talent to pretend your face has been slit open while actors, extras, PA’s, AD’s, producers, personal assistants, gaffers, grips, key grips, gawkers and men carrying giant cameras traipse around you.
2. No breathing or movement from the dead.  This should be pretty obvious, but it’s not always done.[2]
3. The actor must convey some measure of personality to inspire sympathy from the audience so we invest in the bad guy getting his comeuppance.
4. Subtlety and nuance rule the day, so no broad over the top nonsense.  No extraneous tongue hanging out or weird grimaces and so on.[3]
5. No CGI.  This is acting, not special effects.  Bonus points awarded for standing out in a pile of bodies.
6. No lines from flashbacks, ghostly visits in act four or voiceovers.  That’s cheating.  Only what is accomplished as a dead body.
7. Only people are considered, no animals.  A dead dog is no fair.
8. No more than one prop per body.  Props are the lazy actor’s crutch.
9. Contortion or difficulty of pose.  It’s not easy hanging upside down from a tree with fake blood running up your nose while some day player cries nearby.
10. Smiling.  Grinning dead people deserve special consideration because it is counter-intuitive, and it’s a rare feat when an actor even attempts it, let alone pulls it off.  It does not count if the smile has been cut into the victim with some sort of serrated knife.[4]

Bearing all this in mind, and allowing for the occasional misfire over the course of hundreds of episodes, here are the top 4 procedural crime dramas currently on the air based solely on the quality of their victims:

4. CSI: Miami

Surprisingly stylish yet easily the goofiest of the procedurals, one of the great pleasures/horrors of television is hearing David Caruso deliver a line while putting on his sunglasses.  Here is one of my absolute favorite Youtube clips that features loads of great actors portraying murder victims.

3. Castle

Castle is a fun show.  It stars Nathan Fillion, who was in Firefly, which was a great show.  One of my favorite things about Castle are the many references to his Firefly days that are scattered throughout, the best of which is here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q3pdj9p6yI and here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5Sz8iLMayo&feature=related.

Many good dead bodies are in Castle, but I like this one a lot, she had to do multiple scenes with a lot of people moving around her, all with fake nails glued to her head.  Eyes open only adds to the difficulty.  Top-notch work.

2. CSI

The original and still the standard for procedural crime dramas, it’s also the PCD with far and away the most T and A.  This might seem gratuitous, but let’s be honest, sometimes we just don’t care if the mentally disturbed daughter finds out how her estranged father ended up impaled by a guitar.  Sometimes we need cleavage to get us through the hour.  Nothing spectacular about this particular victim, but he is lying in fake blood for a long time.  That deserves a place on the list.

1. Criminal Minds

This is the show for dead bodies.  Virtually every procedural crime drama has at least one victim per episode, but Criminal Minds often rolls out dozens of corpses per episode.  The formula is simple, we see at least one victim at the top of the show, and then the team discusses the profiled serial killer of the week and his many other victims, all of whom are usually shown.  Many are shown via still photography, but these are still fine actors doing solid work.   Here is a video of the Criminal Minds formula opening, which features an excellent actress forced to play dead in the rain, always tough, and this is followed by photos of many, many dead people.

Criminal Minds kills men, women, old people and children, in great number and in unpleasant ways.  Far and way the most violent of the procedurals, it’s number one by a wide margin.  The reality is there are so many great actors portraying serial killer victims on this show it’s difficult to pick just one, but in the course of my extensive research for this piece, I came across some truly fine work, so it would be a bit remiss if I didn’t throw out a special mention to this guy, featured in the photo visible at the 50 second mark.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rTkUI34LXM

His throat slashed, eviscerated, he has met a grisly demise.  Look at that commitment.  Dreams deferred, hope lost, a moment, just a moment from perfection but then forever just a memory of shadows in the night.  Here is a production still taken from the episode.

Seriously, somebody give that man an award.