CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

Perhaps Warrick isn't someone who would cheat on his wife.

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

Are we supposed to talk about this week's show as a hidden spoiler and not discuss any details out in the open until next week? is that the rule now?

I thought someone said in the above that we do not discuss the next week preview except in a spoiler. So is it okay to talk about this show without spoilers provided I don't give away next week's preview?

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

Well, there are no objections, so let's talk about this weeks show, no previews for next week. I don't think it's fair to spoiler everything until the reruns. So no spoilers for a show that ALREADY has been shown. You have been warned.

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

First let's analyze the show:

I think they are now back on track. The GSR was just an important blip on this show. They needed to close it, but they went back to the kind of stories that make this show popular.
The two cases - The totally dark restaurant was in the tradition of many CSI episodes (like the plushies and furries one), not bad. The go cart racer was another bizarre story fitting the puzzle pieces together.
Character bits - Warrick is now divorced, guess that storyline didn't gel with audiences, so they closed it. Doubtful if Warrick and Cat will start something. They have always been close friends, he helps her out as a reliable friend, nothing more.

The GSR had a good no-twist conclusion (or non-conclusion). Now that Eckley knows, they can no longer work in the same group, conflict of interest (Sara dating her Supervisor). They both love their jobs too much to jeopardize them and they understand their love of their work, so she will go to swing shift, not really closing her off from the show, but we are likely to see less of her.

The ending - Great ending! Loved it to see them all riding the race cars. It was a symbolic ending, Sara getting Gil to go and race with the rest, showing her separation from the team. Even Doc Robbins was racing! It was a touching way to acknowledge her maybe departure.

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

For those who don't read minds... What is GSR?

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

Grissom Sara Romance, I believe. Or Gun Shot Residue, but in this case, it's the former.

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

I missed that mention of Warrick being divorced. I missed the teaser and part of the first act.

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

I don't watch the show closely, but Grissom in a go-cart seemed out of character. He seems to eschew social interactions, particularly the frivolous.

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

But that's why his romance with Sara has changed him in some respects.

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

I didn't watch closely last season until the Miniature Killers arc. Did Grissom have character development through the season due to his relationship with Sara? That would be neat to watch, since actual character development in TV drama is pretty unusual.

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

Liked the Mythbusters approach to solving the case!

I have a question. The CSI team in the show are on the night shift, so how come most of the investigations, etc are during the day. I guess they get called out at night and have to continue searching for clues, etc. during the day. So when do they sleep and what does the day shift do? If the day shift is called out during the day do they continue investigating at night. So how come we never see them around?

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

One has to believe that like other professions with different shifts, there is day, swing and graveyard (owl for those who want to be PC). Yes, the focus of attention is on graveyard shift. As i recall, didn't Catherine take Worrick and Nick with her to day shift in season 6? While Gil had Sara and Greg?

Here's my guess: they are focusing on a nightshift for getting called out to crime scenes because it is the stranger, weirder cases that are found during those hours? But to investigate people, they still need to talk to them during the day. This certainly seems to rob the team of any social life, if they have to spend the day shift hours investigating and I assume they usually sleep during swing shift hours.

This certainly could be true, showing the effects of the job on Cat (not being there for her daughter), Worrick now getting divorced. Nick seems to get involved with prostitutes from time to time, even Brass has issues that go way back with his daughter, Ellie. I suppose Greg has the most active life, so they took him into another story line, his lab exploding, getting assaulted by the fanny smackers, etc.

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

So how come we never see people from the other shifts - they must overlap in the offices and labs due to their investigations running into "overtime". Obviously in the "real world" this would happen, but on TV it would mean there would be more actors to pay.

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

Grissom has been opening up to other people in a number of ways, large and small, for several years now. Much of this is due to his relationship with Sara (and began even before it turned sexual.) I noticed it several times in his interactions with Catherine in recent seasons - moments that wouldn't have been there in earlier years. (His opening up to her about his father's death at one crime scene, for instance.) Also he has conciously acted as much more of a father figure to Nick and Greg in the past couple of seasons, and been more comfortable in the role. The change is subtle and mostly visible in isolated moments, but it is definitely there. I think it is easiest to see when you watch a whole season in big chunks on DVD than when watching the show week to week.

Regards,

Joe

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

You must have missed the episode when he took Warrick out to ride roller coasters, one of his hobbies.

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

"Go To Hell".

Harold Perrineau was quite good, and the ending was fantastic.

They put the wrong opening credits in this episode!

They used the season 7 credits (with Louise Lombard, who is no longer a regular) instead of the new credits (with Wallace Langham)

Weird mistake.

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

Well, that's an iffy example. That was less Grissom being sociable than his introducing Warrick to one of his solitary pursuits -something Grissom did, by himself, to escape the tensions of the job. It was more a matter of, "This works for me. You might want to try it yourself when you feel the need."

Prior to the start of season six, Grissom is still mostly in "science guy" mode except insofar as being the supervisor has required more. (And except in relation to Sara, where his emotions conflict with his responsibilities as her boss, and lead to him alternately treating her as the teacher's pet and being more distant from her than from the others at times.) His most normal relationship is with Catherine, who is about the same age and a better people-person than he is.

From late season five until about 1/3 of the way through season six a series of events changes Grissom's perspective on work and life - notably Nick's kidnapping and near-murder at the end of season five, which I think lead to the beginning of the romance with Sara (much as it did to Warrick's marriage) and what everyone went through in the friendly-fire incident where Brass accidentally killed a fellow cop.

By the time of "Still Life" (ep. 6-10) Grissom is much more willing to open up to other people. While investigating the dissapearance of a little boy whose father had died years earlier, Catherine asks Gil how hold he was when his father died.

She is very surprised when instead of giving her the number and then clamming up, he goes on to tell the whole story of how his father (a botanist) came home from work one day, lay down on the couch to take a pre-dinner nap while his son watched TV and never got up again, apparently the vicitim of a stroke. "No one would tell me what was going on". The little vignette, a few lines of dialogue, encapsulates Grissom so nicely. The scientist father, emulated by the son who had to become "the man of the house" when his mother "shut down" after the event, the close proximity to death at an early age, the drive to find out "what was going on" - and the emotional withdrawl and detachment.

He is basically describing the origin of the Grissom we've been watching for the past 5 1/2 years - except that Grissom would never have told this story.

So the development has definitely been there.


I agree on both counts.


I don't recall, was Louise in the episode at all, even briefly? (I've already deleted it from my DVR to make room for this week's shows. ) I know Wallace wasn't, there was a line explaining his absence, so it could be some odd-ball contractual thing if he was written out at his own request to do another project. I only mention the possibility because something similar happened once on Babylon 5 and they had to alter the credits at the last minute to avoid triggering another automatic payment and residuals above what had been contracted to a particular actor who was not in the episode. So they might have slapped the S-7 credits on this episode and then omit Louise's guest-star credit the next time she's in and episode to balance the books.

Regards,

Joe

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

And, no matter what time of day/night it is, they search locations (interiors & exteriors) using flashlights! That will always continue to amuse me. VERY dramatic, but doesn't seem practical. Turn on the lightswitch, folks!

Maybe that's why we don't see the members of the teams from the other shifts. It's too dark!

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

Trivia:

In the teaser for "A La Cart" Grissom quotes a line from Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", "Ichabod was horror struck on precieving that he was headless!", while considering the body of the decapitated rider. He quotes exactly the same line in the 2nd to last episode of season one, "Evaluation Day", when examining a severed head found in the trunk of a car.

Coincidentally, that is also the episode where Grissom and Warrick take their rollercoaster ride. Here's the dialogue:

WARRICK
(Sitting down in the rollercoaster car)
I thought you said we were grabbing a beer.

GRISSOM
We are; after this.

WARRICK
(Starting to leave)
No, Grissom - you know, this is your thing.

GRISSOM
(Grabs his arm to keep him from standing)
Ah-ah-ah! Every nine years and thirty-four days I feel like sharing. You'll like it. It cleanses you.

WARRICK
It cleanses me. Whatever happened to my evaluation?

GRISSOM
You're sitting in it.

(And the rollercoaster starts up)

Makes you wonder what happened nine years and thirty-four days before that night, doesn't it?

Regards,

Joe

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

Joe:

Nice post. Are you our resident CSI expert, then?

I'll have to go check out the episode from Season 1.

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

They catch the cases at night, but follow-ups like interviews and re-examinations of a crime scene can happen at any hour. Court appearances would have to take place during normal business hours, as would meetings with DA and police personnel who work during the day. Also they frequently make reference to pulling double and triple shifts, which would push them into working daylight hours. (And explain why we rarely see day- and swing-shift personnel. They're working other cases, which is why "our" guys are catching cases during those hours to begin with.)

And we do see folks from other shifts. A lot of the background people are likely regular workers on those shifts when the CSIs are in the building off hours, and Eckle was originally the dayshift supervisors before he became lab director - and we saw him (and presumably some of his guys) often enough. Granted speaking roles were kept to a minimum, but that's the economics of TV (and the time-constraints of the one-hour drama. If you only have 42 minutes or so to tell a fairly complex mystery and maybe touch on the inner lives of the regular characters, you don't have time to focus on a succession of one-shot day-shift characters just for the sake of establishing that they exist.)

Regards,

Joe

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

http://tv.msn.com/tv/article.aspx?news=279795&GT1=7703

EDIT: Link takes you to an MSN article with show spoilers. Don't click unless you want to know.

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

Meh, we all dance around it with spoiler tags but we all know the story.

Why do we bother with hiding it? I have no idea.

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

I remember one of the earliest episodes where one of the CSIs (don't recall which one) did turn on the lights, but Grissom told them to leave them off, because it could contaminate a crime scene.

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

Because we don't "all" know the story. Some people work very hard to avoid spoilers and those of us who do follow casting and other news about the show should respect their desire to see how the drama unfolds on the screen. I think James's post is virtually a spoiler in and of itself even without reading the link, given the current storyline. What is so hard about using a spoiler tag? This sort of thing used to be called "common courtesy" until it became so rare.


As I recall it was a cop (O'Reilly?) who turned on the light. The lights themselves obviously wouldn't contaminate a crime scene, but flipping a switch that a suspect might have touched could smear or destroy a fingerprint, and the CSIs always want to photograph and document a crime scene exactly the way it was when they enter it, before anything is moved or altered. So there is a certain logic to leaving everything as is during the initial examination of a scene, down to leaving the lights off (or on) unless there is a safety issue. (Like Nick turning off the gas burner under the pot on the stove.)

Regards,

Joe

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

I spoiler-tag that stuff all the time, out of the very common courtesy you speak of. It's not like it takes any kind of effort to do that, but it's a pretty safe bet that the people who read the threads just hear about these 'insider information' tidbits elsewhere, whether it's intentional or not. I myself tried to avoid any and all talk about Sara's capture and entrapment under that car prior to the season premiere, and thankfully it was successfully kept secret with no spoilers leaked at all - in front of or behind the camera. At the same time other things slipped out, like the upcoming "Without A Trace" crossover, and William Friedkin directing an episode.

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

I actually was trying to be courteous with my post by not giving (what I thought) anything too major away. Anyway, I have edited my post to try and make it safer.

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

Thanks James. Reading the quoted portion of my post makes me wish I'd thrown in a carriage return in between "current storyline" and "what is so hard..." because it reads like the courtesy comment is directed at your post, which wasn't my intent.

It is clear from your post that by only providing the link and not naming names you thought you weren't spoiling anything. I'm trying to get those of us who do follow show news to be more aware of what can really constitute a spoiler for someone who doesn't. In short, I was trying to answer the question, "Why bother with spoilers?"

Regards,

Joe

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

Warning Spoiler! Click to show

Re: CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread

Just because news stories don't mind ruining things in their headlines, I don't think it's that much of a hardship to follow the "If it hasn't aired, uses spoiler tags" policy.