| CSI | CSI: Miami | |
| Lead CSI | Gil Grissom is a man of science who prefers bugs to humans, but rides roller coasters. | Horatio Caine is a man of men who prefers children and abused or down-trodden women to the company of normal people. |
| Direction | Other CSIs are perfectly capable of handling themselves. | If Horatio's in the room, nobody knows what to do unless Horatio tells them. |
| Cooperation | Sometimes Gil assists in his underlings endeavors; mostly he goes off and does his own thing. | Horatio never gives himself tasks. He does overuse "let's" when telling people what to do. ("Calleigh, let's do ABC; Speedle, let's do XYZ.") |
| Solutions | All the CSIs can solve problems for themselves, even when Gil is in the room. When Greg passes his last test, he screws up and Gil has to solve it, but this is a rarity! | Whenever Horatio walks in, the CSI at hand will be either at wit's end, just about to reach the solution, or jumping to the wrong conclusion; regardless, Horatio has the answer. |
| Solutions part 2 | Gil sometimes gets it wrong. | Horatio never gets it wrong. |
| Infodumps | Common CSI wisdom worked in as plausibly as possible; uncommon knowledge revealed by an appropriate character to another character who doesn't know it. | Common CSI wisdom stated blatantly, inexplicably; uncommon knowledge revealed by arbitrary character, and other arbitrary character finishes second half of sentence for them. |
| Character Development | Warrick's gambling problem; Gil's hearing loss. Nick's interest in wrong women. Sara's torch. | Horatio's... uh... sunglasses. |
| Quirky Coroners | The two coroners are interesting and distinct and memorable--one with artificial limbs, one a little young and excitable. | The one coroner has an incredibly off-putting habit of talking to her corpses. |
| Science | Features science montages without dialogue set to music. The CSIs sometimes have to use tricky bits of science to recover evidence. Occasionally they'll test a theory of what happened by running an actual science experiment. | Features science montages without dialogue set to music. The montages are boring and redundant, and Horatio always has the answer anyway. |
Of course, I'm saying this based only on the first 2/3rds of the first season of CSI: Miami, but the point is it's not exactly encouraging me to get through it all.
