QUENTIN TARANTINO REALLY DIGS 'CSI'.

Byline: David Kronke Television Critic

DON'T DO back-flips just because Quentin Tarantino is a fan of your characters: As he'll prove in a cameo in Friday night's ``Muppets' Wizard of Oz'' on ABC, he can bring nothing to your party - or worse, embarrass you.

For the folks at ``CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,'' however, he's a nice guy to have in their corner. Tarantino directs tonight's episode from a script written by the show's executive producers, Carol Mendelsohn, Naren Shankar and series creator Anthony E. Zuiker. Tarantino himself came up with the story, which he rummaged from a 1993 Kiefer Sutherland/Sandra Bullock film called ``The Vanishing,'' itself cribbed from a far better 1988 Dutch film, the title of which means the same but looks kind of silly spelled out (OK, it's ``Spoorloos'').

Here, Nick (George Eads) investigates, solo, a crime scene in a remote parking lot where guts (but little else) are in evidence. Soon he has disappeared, and Gil (William Petersen) and his team are taunted by a Web site offering a look at Nick, buried alive and on the brink of suffocation. As Nick's minutes tick relentlessly away, Catherine (Marg Helgenberger) and Warrick (Gary Dourdan) are wracked with guilt, because they feel responsible for sending Nick to his grave fate.

Tarantino capably captures Nick's agonizing claustrophobia in his premature grave (as did George Sluizer, who made both Hollywood's and the Netherlands' ``Vanishings''). The director's touch is less heavy-handed than on his own films - there are no lingering close-ups on Jorja Fox's toes, no extravagantly choreographed action scenes, only a couple of pointless pop-culture references (including an old ``Dukes of Hazzard'' board game) and not much more gratuitous gore than a typical episode would feature.

In fact, Tarantino's contribution to ``CSI'' is more coherent and boasts more character empathy than his epic ``Kill Bill,'' which may have wowed the cineastes but left everyone else wondering if Tarantino would ever return to Earth and make a movie with some taut plotting and characterizations relatable to someone from the Milky Way galaxy.

Here's hoping Tarantino's ``CSI'' experiment will reunite him with the joy of storytelling and wrest him from the jaws of auteuristic self- indulgence.

David Kronke, [phone]

david.kronke(at)dailynews.com

CSI: CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION - Three stars

What: Season finale, directed by Quentin Tarantino, finds Nick (George Eads) kidnapped and buried alive.

Where: CBS (Channel 2).

When: 8 tonight.

In a nutshell: A TV anomaly - taut, yet with enough air for some subtle characterizations.

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Photo:

Marg Helgenberger, left, and William Petersen try to find a member of their team who's buried alive in tonight's two-hour season finale of ``CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.''