Let’s start with the most obvious bad boy on the team… Danny Messer (played by Carmine Giovinazzo) grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, he was a gang banger and all-out bad boy with his brother leading the trail. His choices eventually lead him to the right side of the law.

Then we get into the greek Stella Bonasera (AKA Melina Kanakaredes). She shoots and kills her abusive nut-job boyfriend and comes back to work like it is all in a days grind. Ughh.

The sweet girl from Montana, Lindsay Monroe (played by Anna Belknap), is found to have a horrible dark past. She was the sole survivor of a horrific event. Ok I guess.

And just to round it out, our Dr. Sheldon Hawkes (Hill Harper) has to be framed for robbery and murder just for fun from a Psycho `Terminator` Kid (no more hints on who that actor is, you have to use the clue in this sentence).

Mac Taylor is the only one who really hasn’t had the darkness follow him around, the fact that his wife died in the WTC on 9/11 (which was openly exposed early in the show) doesn’t count. He has a secret fling with the M.E. (Claire Forlani)… but it is all up and up. I guess his moral compass and solid foundation has to stay strong before the rest of his team just cracks and forms a gang or something.

Don’t get me wrong, all the CSI’s have questionable backgrounds in all the shows, they just collectively seem to have the darkest, or farthest reaching ‘thin line’ story backs.

(Yea, Yea for Vegas we have Kathrine (stripper), and Miami’s Delco (dope) and more…)

Just my two cents… since almost every episode of NY bears a bit more of someone’s soul.

I love the show, I love the stories, just a bit of a “Hey… I want to relate to their humanity, but don’t push me too far”…