CBS: Where nerds rule the roost

'Here comes the nerd squad!"

This is how forensic scientist Gil Grissom is greeted as he arrives at a crime scene in the pilot episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation in October 2000.

Spoken by a couple of macho cavemen cops, the word nerd was meant to be derisory, but Gil wore it as a badge of honor during the nine seasons he was the top nerd on the CBS procedural, a tenure ending in 2009.

CSI wasn't unlike most cop shows: Its heroes didn't pack guns and handcuffs, but tweezers and test tubes.

Portrayed by William Petersen as an articulate, oddball intellectual, Grissom inaugurated a species of character that's become endemic to CBS' crime shows including all three CSI spin-offs, the NCIS franchise, Criminal Minds, Hawaii Five-O, and the network's newest creation, Scorpion.

The network's crop of nerd-rich shows end their seasons and look forward to new ones: CSI: Cyber will have its first season finale Wednesday; NCIS: Los Angeles will wrap up its sixth season Monday. Both were renewed for additional seasons Monday. CSI, the mother ship, has yet to be renewed but also has yet to be canceled.

Thus, we take this opportunity to pay homage to the Nerds of CBS.

So what's a nerd?

Nerds are over-reflective and obsessive, always worried that they've done the wrong thing. They tend to be socially awkward, if not downright toxic.

Sure, geeks, freaks, and nerds abound at the edges on plenty of network dramas, but none seem to have such a well-defined role as they do on CBS' procedurals. And as awkward as they are, they are treated as valuable members of the crime-fighting team. They're visible, allowed to shine on camera.

No one can accuse Pauley Perrette's NCIS alter ego, Abby Sciuto, of being a wallflower. When she's on screen, you can be sure she's on scream: Over-caffeinated, overexcited, and overeager. She even over-hugs her avuncular boss, Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon), like there's no tomorrow.

Or take FBI technical analyst Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness) on Criminal Minds, a series about the FBI's legendary Behavioral Analysis Unit, whose agents draw up suspect profiles. On any other show her weight, rather than her skill, would take center stage. Here, the character is simply as an expert who knows her field better than anyone else.

For its part, NCIS is set in an office building that has a nerd on every floor: There's Timothy McGee (Sean Murray) on Gibbs' team, a video-game enthusiast who is self-conscious and shy; Abby rules the roost in the crime lab directly below, while the morgue is livened up by medical examiner Ducky (David McCallum), and his equally nebbish morgue assistant, Jimmy Palmer (Brian Dietzen).

The CSI franchise has gone back and forth with its nerd quotient. It lost its way with CSI: Miami. Grissom's counterpart, Lt. Horatio Caine (David Caruso), wasn't a man of the mind, but a blowhard who packed a semi-auto. His hot young colleagues - played by Emily Procter, Adam Rodriguez, Sofia Milos, and Eddie Cibrian - clearly valued their gym membership cards more than their library cards.

The network went to the other extreme with its 2011 one-season wonder Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior which starred the brilliant Forest Whitaker as a tortured intellectual. The show might have worked if it had found a way to balance Whitaker's excess. Instead, the cast was populated by more of his kind.

CBS this season has found a nice way to accentuate the nerdiness without piling on excess creepiness with CSI: Cyber, which features a maternal Patricia Arquette overseeing a roost that consists of one hard body (James Van Der Beek) and a whole sea of computer geeks (Shad Moss, Charley Koontz, and Hayley Kiyoko).

Seeing more nerds on TV is a lovely thing. But these shows are too formulaic. Like clockwork, each episode usually features two blocks of nerd-alogue or techspeak. Each explosion of nerd energy seems designed to shock or alienate the viewer with weirdness.

Nothing can top the egregious abuse of nerd power more than the double act put on by Barrett Foa and Renée Felice Smith as analysts Eric Beale and Nell Jones on NCIS: Los Angeles. He looks like a refugee from a children's fairy tale, while she's the epitome of Mary Poppins niceness.

  The younger nerds may be annoying, but they may flower into the kind of mellow, superhero nerd embodied by Grissom on CSI, Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin) on Criminal Minds, or Hetty Lange (the incomparable Linda Hunt) on NCIS: Los Angeles.

All three characters are nerds through and through, yet because of their years of experience and their obvious expertise, they have come to be recognized as masters in their field. Their social awkwardness no longer is a sign of weakness but proof of their unique genius.

Having achieved true nerd consciousness, they transcend geek status. They have become gurus.

NCIS

12th season finale

8 p.m. Tuesday, CBS.

NCIS: New Orleans

First season finale 9 p.m. Tuesday, CBS.

CSI: Cyber

First-season finale

10 p.m. Wednesday, CBS.

NCIS: Los Angeles

Sixth-season finale

10 p.m. Monday, CBS.

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