Props

Dear CSI production,

You need a new dead dog. That stuffed alsatian you have has appeared three times in the last season-and-a-half and dudes, not only has it really been around the block, it was already truly lame. Pardon the pun. Seriously, it looks like one of those giant hairballs you yank out of the rollers in your vacuum cleaner head.

I know that there's A Thing with the fictional death of animals, especially dogs. People burst into tears and call their senators. So I'm getting that maybe your little hound of the taxiderm is terrible for a reason, in the same way that the animatronic preemies on medical dramas are all super-robotic, click-waving their tiny beige silicone arms in that hysteria-quelling It's OK I'm Not Really A Baby way.

Sure. But you're killing a dog because it makes people call senators, right? Killers who smoke dogs are truly evil, unfeeling bastards. Otherwise, you'd just stick with the banal psychos who stab whores to death, no?

This point would carry more smoothly if the soft, recently-alive fur of said dog say, waved in the wind. Or if it had visible paw pads. Or its limbs were, you know, in a plausibly dead posture.

Always happy to help,

Xtin