David Caruso has perfected the art of the pause ... and it must be working ... because his show is a hit on CBS

April 8, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN
Television Critic

If you want to make fun of David Caruso, you're late to the party. Yes, he puts on his sunglasses and takes them off a lot. On, off, on, off. And he says the corniest stuff. The top "CSI: Miami"-related video at YouTube is a funny compilation of opening scenes. They make Caruso's Horatio look like a cartoon cop.

The YouTube piece is called "CSI Miami -- Endless Caruso One Liners." If you watch "One Liners" -- to deconstruct the acting style of one of TV's biggest stars -- you'll see Caruso is always mixing cliches together, or overselling utilitarian dialogue.

He does this by pausing ... while speaking with the accentuated authority ... of a movie-trailer narrator.

Mixed cliches: "So we have a victim that started the weekend as a big man on campus, and ended it [pause-pause] dead on arrival."

Overselling a line: "There's a chance this girl's alive. [Pause, sunglasses]. And we [pause] are gonna find her."

Mixed cliches: "The verdict is in, Frank. [Pause, put on sunglasses.] But the jury is out."

Overselling a line: "I [pause, sunglasses] am going to get to the truth."

It's a catchy gimmick. "CSI: Miami" is a top five show in the ratings. And Caruso, 51, is a big star again, even though he doesn't get as many on-screen minutes as the usual lead character in an ensemble show.

His voice acting fits Horatio. It often seems like the character is merely the show's narrator, showing up at crime scenes and interrogations to issue one or two abbreviated Greek chorus judgments to cops and killers. He repeats these taglines often.

In a November episode about the death of a soldier, a suspect asked Horatio: Isn't Iraq out of your cop jurisdiction?

"Not anymore, Brad. Not anymore," Horatio said.

Later in the same episode, the killer whined that Horatio just didn't understand why the victim, a Cpl. Kirby, had to die.

"I bet Cpl. Kirby does, Brad. I bet he does," Horatio said.

It doesn't take Jim Carrey to mock Caruso, but Carrey did on "Letterman" several weeks ago.

"He loves to put the button on, and then he just walks away," Carrey said. "He doesn't wait for anybody to retort. I think he's afraid they might have a comeback."

I ran into Caruso at a CBS party a few years ago. I failed to ask about Horatio's speaking pattern. But when Caruso wasn't happily looking at photos of his new baby, he explained the sunglasses bit.

"Hiding my eyes at kind of important moments in the hour would be valuable [symbolically], especially down there, because everything's so bright. Sunglasses are an important, indigenous factor down there."

This insight into sunglasses reminded me of when NPR's Terry Gross asked Clint Eastwood how he came up with the idea of making his Spaghetti Western characters squint like cool customers. Eastwood answered simply as if this was the most unnecessary question ever: The desert was sunny.

Eastwood is an interesting comparison. Eastwood's a better actor. But his fed-up cop Dirty Harry is something of a forefather of Horatio. Caruso's hard-bitten Horatio is much colder and Dirty Harry-ish than Caruso's Detective John Kelly was in "NYPD Blue."

John Kelly was a sensitive guy. If a secretary was having tough times, John would gently place his hand on her shoulder, give her a Peter Jennings head tilt, and talk-whisper something like, "You OK?" This perfectly fit the "I feel your pain" Clinton years.

By contrast, Horatio kills killers like a sociopath would. Emotionless. This perfectly fits the tone of the "evildoer" Terrorist-Bush Era.

One gunman threatened that Horatio was in so much jeopardy, he was "already dead." Horatio raised his pistol, shot the man dead, paused of course, then flatly articulated, "Join the club."

Another time, Horatio shot a bad guy who fell to the ground and, dying, tried to grasp a gun. Horatio walked past the man and, without looking down or altering his step, blasted another bullet into the villain's body.

Bullets can't hit Horatio. And in yet another way, he's a much luckier cop than Dirty Harry and John Kelly in that his suspects love to confess in the last 10 minutes to him or to another investigator.

A few weeks ago, one of three twin sisters began to confess as if she were on "Perry Mason" -- "I was told to shoot Dominick when I heard the champagne corks pop" -- and then, her other two sisters started confessing their roles, even though there was no real evidence against them.

Flashbacks aplenty revisit victims' last moments and suspects' schemes. Extreme close-ups and special effects display the microscopic insides of a dying heart or a forensic computer.

And, oh, those hilariously repetitive musical montages focusing on forensic cops cutting things with scissors and rubbing things with Q-tips.

That's the obvious "CSI" stuff. What's funniest to me is when Caruso tells people, "I'm with CSI," and they respond as if they're familiar with their local Crime Scene Investigation office. If people told me they were from CSI, I wouldn't think they were cops. I'd say, "Which one? Vegas, New York or Miami?"

But there's no mistaking Caruso deserves credit for crafting Movie Narrator Cop out of thin air and making Horatio a household habit, a decade after he became synonymous with "Cheers' " Shelley Long. Both left hit TV shows in search of failed movie careers. Long could certainly use a "CSI: Boston."

But Caruso didn't just stumble into this newly stylized performance. He makes Horatio this way on purpose. As Horatio once said, an "accident [pause, sunglasses] is not an accident at all."

delfman@suntimes.com