When 'CSI' Meets Reality

On Thursday night's episode of "CSI," the worlds of crime and law enforcement overlapped in disturbing ways as the team investigated a cop killing that might have been from "friendly fire."

The worlds of fiction and reality collided as well during filming says show star George Eads, whose own father was a respected district attorney in Texas for decades.

"It's an episode where there's some gunplay, and some police officers are killed," Eads tells The Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen. "And that's just, quite frankly, disturbing to me.

"We were shooting in downtown L.A., and there were some cop cars that were just riddled with bullets. And some of our police officers who kind of hold up traffic and run security were looking at the car and just going, 'That's not cool.' And I was, like, 'Yeah,' a vehicle that's got over 70 bullets in it, kind of comes out like a porcupine."

"I asked the tech advisor again, Rich Cannelloni, who's really hands on. I said, 'It seems like a lot of bullets. Is this for TV?' He said, no."

Eads says it reminded him of how men and women put their lives on the line to do their jobs.

"Being the son of a lawman, I've always kind of had that affinity and reverence for those public servants: firemen, teachers, police officers, you name it. So to have an episode like this one's a little bit more disturbing."

Next week, The Early Show goes behind the scenes once more with Marg Helgenberger. She says she was never more grossed-out by something on "CSI" than by a scene from next week's episode. Stay tuned and find out why.