Horatio Caine, Professional Bad Ass.

If you have known me or listened to the Bombay Gunrunners podcast very long, you know that I love TV and spend way too much of my time watching it. You also may know that CSI: Miami is one of my favorite shows. I am not saying it is a good show, but it is the most fun, most ridiculous show on TV. It also stars one of the most ridiculous leading men in TV history, David Caruso. Caruso plays Horatio Caine, the leader of the CSI of Miami.

Horatio Caine, or H as he is known informally, seems to be the only CSI that is allowed to do no actual CSI type work and it seems is the only CSI allowed to shoot people in their face. You can’t go two or three episodes without H busting a cap in someone’s eye, while all the others just stand around and make threatening faces. Caruso is a wonderfully hammy or horrible actor and he makes Horatio Caine the best guilty pleasure on TV. I am prepared to show you proof of this.

At the beginning of each episode of CSI: Miami someone is brutally killed and Horatio Caine appears out of nowhere to gather info on the situation. After he has gotten what he needs, he makes a bad ass quip. Around the same time of the quip he will do something with his sunglasses, either put them on or take them off. In other cases, after the quip he will disappear from the scene by straight up walking off the motherf’er. There are many times when he does not leave the frame, but you can see that he is leaning that way as the scene cuts to the opening credits. I say that this counts. If there is any kind of flinch, we can jump to the conclusion that H was indeed getting the hell out of there.

This is the formula for CSI: Miami openers, sunglasses go on/off or he moves out of the frame. If you can catch one where he does neither, it is a truly momentous occasion. It is Haley’s Comet.

You must also know that Horatio Caine may have been raised by ninjas because he can appear and disappear at will. He also seems to have some sort of mind reading capabilities because he will know exactly what a criminal will do before the criminal knows what he wants to do. He combines his mind reading abilities with his ninja moves to appear out of nowhere to shoot people in the face.

For your viewing pleasure I have linked a YouTube clip that takes some of these openers and strings them back to back. I must say, it is a masterpiece. Some of you may have seen this clip but that's alright, I have seen it about 30 times, it always goes down smooth. You can watch this clip and know exactly what makes this man, Horatio Caine, tick. I have also written about my favorites of these clips and tried to give you some insight into the man who is Horatio Caine. Watch for these clips.

Watch for the one in which H puts on his glasses while looking directly into the camera and says, “Here we go.” He has no problem breaking through the fourth wall.

Another of my favorites is the scene in which H and Detective Tripp are in a dinghy or boat of some sort and there is water to the left of Horatio. As I mentioned before, H loves to gather his intel and then get the hell out of there, but this time he is in a boat and there is water on one side and Tripp is on the other. Horatio doesn’t give a crap, he gives his little one liner and appears to walk off into the water and I can only imagine he swam to shore and shot someone in the face.

Another good one is the opening that has H as a suspect in a murder and he tells Detective Tripp that “he had better move quickly because right now, I’m your only suspect.” And then Horatio promptly flees the crime scene. We don’t see if Tripp tasers his ass before the opening credits role, but if I know H, and I think I do, he got away and shot the real killer in the face.

One conclusion you can draw from Horatio by watching all these openers, he loved his mother. It’s obvious that sometime in his life his mother told him it was impolite to stare. He took that meaning to heart because we never see H look anyone directly in the eye while having a conversation. With the only exception being children and no one has been able to figure out why.

In fact in this season’s finale a child came into his home and saw his mother was murdered. The police came and tried to talk to him and he would not talk to anyone. H shows up and Eric Delco, his colleague, tells him the kid will not talk to anyone. H says, “He’ll talk to me.” H sits down beside the kid and asks what happened and the kid immediately answers him and wouldn’t shut up. He even gives H the murder weapon that he pulled out of his mother’s body. This shows you that H is a child at heart. Well, while he’s not shooting people in the face.

In another clip where we see an officer named Jessup unwittingly activate a grenade in a gas grill (ingenious), we find out that H has super human hearing as he was 100s of feet away from the grill yet not only heard the click of the pin releasing, but identified it as a grenade. He yelled out to Jessup in plenty of time for the slow witted officer to escape, but unfortunately H was so far away from Jessup that by the time his voice traveled to Jessup’s ears it was too late and Officer Jessup became just another great opening for Horatio Caine and CSI: Miami.

You have seen a ton of great openings, but perhaps the greatest opening of all time is the last of the YouTube clip and is the one in which H proclaims, “We’re going to Brazil,” as a plane flies over the lens of his sunglasses. Then H magically appears in Reo on top of the world looking down on the many bad guys he will shoot in the face. And he takes everything in and says a prayer at the foot of Christo Redentor for the hell he is about to unleash. YEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!