The Funniest Moment In CSI Season 1

Launching on CBS in October of 2000 and airing through May of the next year, Season 1 of "CSI" – also known as "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" — quickly established itself as solid performer for the network. Following the exploits of the elite investigators of the Las Vegas Crime Lab, the show was anchored by mainstay stars William Petersen as lab Supervisor Gil Grissom and Marg Helgenberger's blood spatter analyst Catherine Willows.

Not surprisingly for an episodic TV series in this popular genre, the storylines of "CSI" Season 1 generally dropped its viewers into crime scenes more or less guaranteed to be shockingly grisly, totally twisted or utterly baffling, if not all three at once. From killers who used severed body parts as gruesome clues, to the bloody slaughter of an entire family, the series pulled no punches when it came to grabbing viewers and keeping them riveted to their screens. 

But with all that being said, while the series' stock in trade may have been grisly crimes and homicidal criminals, it nonetheless did display flashes of humor -– including one interlude that may stand as the funniest moment in all of Season 1 on "CSI."

As with other shows in the criminal forensics' genre, humor could become an accepted facet of a series' overall tone, with detectives, analysts and cops using a dry aside or witty comment to defuse a tense or awkward moment. In other instances, jibes traded between two characters might simply be part of a friendly rivalry. Such seems to have been the case for two recurring analysts on "CSI" — George Eads' Nick Stokes and Gary Dourdan's Warrick Brown.

In this regard, the good-natured competition between this pair was on full display in the "CSI" Season 1 episode "Anonymous." While not the main storyline, the episode's B-story focused on Stokes and Brown attempting to solve a strange vehicular accident case with no apparent driver and the sole survivor passed out in the car's back seat. Betting each other on whether the case was a criminal act or a DUI accident with a missing "phantom driver," the two investigators followed a trail of increasingly tantalizing clues. As each new discovery prompted them to up the amount of their wager, they also upped the mutual ribbing at every turn. 

In the end, however (spoiler alert!), neither man's theory was proven correct, forcing them to ruefully agree that they'd both lost the bet. So, while "CSI" overall was a deadly serious crime drama, the light-hearted, no-win-wager moment shared by Brown and Stokes in "Anonymous" was a comedy highlight of the show's inaugural season.