While I know the show and all of its off chutes are obviously fiction to provide entertainment, I was curious at how accurate it was.

It seems like every episode goes into insane details and huge amounts of technology to find the answer to the smallest cases. Is all of that just to be glitzy and showy for our entertainment or do they actually do anything close to that.

I would assume at least in the really high profile cases, they might come close, but in many of the smaller cases, I would think they wouldn't go into as much detail.

Like one of the CSI:Miami episodes I saw yesterday, which I believe was an old one. Two cars got into an accident, 2 people died in the crash. After what was probably days and days of research, they derived it was the daughter driving, she had swerved a gator on the road, and the son stashed marijuana in the hood which accidently cut the power steering lines causing the daughter to lose control. They go as far as lifting treads from their shoes, measuring abrasions throughout the car to match to the victims clothing, and even taking some fluid from a dead eyeball to determine if the "driver" had alcohol in their system.

I mean, that is some pretty crazy investigation that I would guess 99.9% of precincts around the country wouldn't bother doing. Obviously without all of that investigation, they might not have found out what really happened and the son would have gotten away with weed possession.

Do they really do anything anywhere close to that in real life? Heh.