CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (season 5) CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (season 5) The fifth season of "" premiered on CBS on September 23, 2004 and ended May 19, 2005. The series stars William Petersen and Marg Helgenberger. Greg begins his journey from a lab rat to a field mouse, as the Las Vegas Crime Lab faces a personnel overhaul ("Ch-Ch-Changes"), during the fifth season of "CSI". The team's final days together are plagued with more investigations into the insane and the unusual, including the discovery of an "alien" corpse just outside the boundary of Area 51 ("Viva Las Vegas"), a body washed up in a thunderstorm
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation auction ended October 7, with the prop being sold for $15,600; CBS donated the proceeds to the National Court Appointed Special Advocate Association. Real-life crime scene investigators and forensic scientists warn that popular television shows like "CSI" (often specifically citing "CSI") do not give a realistic picture of the work, wildly distorting the nature of crime-scene investigators' work, and exaggerating the ease, speed, effectiveness, drama, glamour, influence, scope, and comfort level of their jobs, which they describe as far more mundane, tedious, limited, and boring, and very commonly failing to solve a crime. Another criticism of the show is the