Friday Night TV Murder Pile: The CSI franchise just died… again

For the second time in the franchise’s ridiculously successful 23-year history, CBS’s CSI franchise is facing the prospect of a world in which there are no active CSI shows on the air. The network announced tonight that it’s killing off revival series CSI: Vegas after three seasons on the air, tossing it onto our old pal, the Friday Night TV Murder Pile.

At least it won’t be lonely: Besides being joined by the well-analyzed corpses of its generally more successful siblings, Vegas arrives on the Pile alongside second-season drama series So Help Me Todd, which was an actual TV show, even though they called it that. The series starred Marcia Gay Harden as an experienced private investigator, working with her screw-up son, played by Skyler Astin. (Vegas, meanwhile, starred Paula Newsome, with William Peterson and Jorja Fox reprising their roles from the original CSI in its first season.)

Per Deadline, both shows were notoriously “on the bubble” this season, which is, if you think about it, a fairly whimsical way to say “everyone was in serious danger of losing their jobs.” The shows were the two least-successful dramas on the network’s schedule, rating-wise, each bringing in about 6.2 million live viewers per episode.

Don’t feel too bad for CSI executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer, though: He’s still got a non-acronym-y series running on the network, Fire Country, and is in talks to revive Cold Case, which would, in its own way, be the coldest case of all. Todd, meanwhile, was created by Scott Prendergast, and, in a fact that instantly became the only thing we will remember about the series going forward, was also executive produced by Dr. Phil.