What have they done to Sela Ward?

Decided to check out CSI: NEW YORK last night. Hadn’t seen it since a friend was killed on it a few years ago. I won’t watch CSI: MIAMI because David Caruso is such an utter joke. And the original CSI is just not as good without William Peterson. But if it’s on and I’m already seen this week’s HOARDERS, I will check it out. It’s amazing the budgets those police forces must have. They each contain every piece of whiz-bang equipment ever invented. Those labs must cost two billion dollars. They’ll have a giant Hubble telescope type contraption that measures tire wear based on skid marks. How often would you use that? Who approved that acquisition?

So I sat down to watch CSI: NEW YORK. I don’t know the characters but so what? They’re all interchangeable. You got the male star who once had a feature career, the female star, and a gaggle of J. Crew models who serve as the field investigators along with cute television-acceptable nerds who work in the lab. Gary Sinise is solid. He’s like Greg Kinnear but always better.

What I didn’t know was that Sela Ward is now on the show. I have to say that when she first came on the screen I let out an audible gasp. My God, who did her face work? I was horrified. Squinty eyes, skin pulled way back – whatever softness and expression she once had is gone. With her bone structure and plastic surgery she now looks like Jack Lord. I found this so sad I could no longer enjoy the program. No matter what she said she had this odd smirk on her face. She’s consoling a grieving mother and involuntarily smiling.


Sela Ward is a beautiful woman. Yes, she’s now in her mid-50s but so what? Without any help, she’d be beautiful in her 70s. So she’ll never be offered the part of Gidget? Big deal. The real beauty of Sela Ward was how real she was. She always played smart, she always played sexy, but you knew there was a real person in there. Now she’s a Real Housewife of Beverly Hills.

Maybe television won’t let actresses age gracefully. And with HD you can’t get away with soft focus anymore. Perhaps if Sela Ward didn’t dye her hair jet black and have her cheek bones lifted to above her eyes she couldn’t have gotten that role on CSI: NEW YORK. It can be an ugly heartless business. So it saddens me that talented people like Sela Ward have to sign a Faustian-like contract with the devil… known to some as Beelzebub, known to them as Botox.