Some thoughts on CSI.

I watched CSI yesterday, so my post below is just some of my ramblings regarding that episode. If you don't like to be spoiled, stop reading please.

~SPOILERS FOR SEASON 9 EPISODE 10~

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It was Grissom's farewell episode. I gotta say I teared up at the end. There was no big goodbye for him at the lab, and only Catherine noticed that Grissom was going around saying his silent goodbyes for the last time. For me, it was the perfect exit for him. It fit Grissom well -- he dislikes a lot of hullaballoo, so the quiet curtains-down came off just right.

I'm a GSR (Grissom Sara Romance) fan too so I absolutely loved the ending where he goes and looks for Sara somewhere in the jungles of Costa Rica. I think he will be happy there. Showing that bug in the leaf was a nice touch too -- certainly he won't lack for itty bitty creatures to study there, LOL. I wonder if they're going to get married? Maybe. He did ask her several episodes ago, after all.

Some folks over at several CSI-centric forums have stated that they will stop watching the show now that Grissom is gone. I myself will still watch though, as I like the show itself. However, after seeing the last episode and how Lawrence Fishburne's character, Dr. Raymond Langston, went about trying to solve his first crime in CSI, I am forced to conclude that if he was meant to replace Grissom, it ain't going to work, and the show is never going to be the same again.

Don't get me wrong, ok? I like the Langston character, and I think there will be people who will probably start watching the show because of Fishburne and his acting calibre. The problem is, I don't think the people who were drawn to Grissom's character will be drawn to him in the same way. He's just very different. Different target audience, CBS guys, ok? Lemme explain.

It's quite simple. Grissom is a science geek. When he doesn't know where to go next in a case, he goes back to the evidence. He analyzes STUFF. This last episode where he touches on forensic astronomy was pure Grissom. And remember there was this one episode in Season 1 (or maybe it was Season 2), where Catherine wanted to go out and talk to witnesses and suspects, but Grissom chose to stay in the lab and go over the evidence? (I don't remember which episode this was but it had a boathouse in it, and the victim was having an affair there). At the end of the episode, both Grissom and Catherine came to the same conclusion, but their methods were thoroughly different.

Now Dr. Langston is more of a detective rather than a scientist. When he reaches a dead end, his instinct is to go back to the suspects. He analyzes PEOPLE. He wonders about their motivations and thinks he can "trick" a villain into revealing information through psychology. I actually think Dr. Langston will be a better fit in Criminal Minds rather than CSI. Maybe the defunct Profiler. Or The Closer.

I'm not saying that the people route is bad, but it's very COMMON. Detectives in countless cop shows use this. All detectives are supposed to have a gut instinct for reading people and getting information out of them. But crime scene investigators? Grissom is the quintessential CSI because he goes back to the evidence. Who else remains in the cast who is like that? This is also one of the reasons I like CSI Las Vegas over the other CSI franchises. The instinct in the other characters (think Horatio Caine) is to go the people detecting route. Sigh.

This makes me wonder about the future of CSI. CSI made science cool. GRISSOM made science cool.

CBS, please please PLEASE find another geek please. Somebody should be saying "go back to the evidence" and make the science of it fascinating for us. That's what CSI is. The show is different because it looks at STUFF, not PEOPLE. I just can't envision anyone in the current cast who holds that same enthusiasm for science (well, maybe Hodges... or one of the lab rats, but this show is called CSI and NOT Lab Rats).