CSI: Las Vegas Season 8 thread (1 Viewer)

[Marianne]

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?

 

[Anthony Hom]

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.

 

[Marianne]

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.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

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

 

[Paul McElligott]

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

 

[Nick Martin]

"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.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

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

 

[Mike Frezon]

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!

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

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

 

[Mike Frezon]

Joe:

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

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

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

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

 

[James_Kiang]

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.

 

[Nick Martin]

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.

 

[Walter C]

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.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

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

 

[Nick Martin]

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.

 

[James_Kiang]

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.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

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

 

[Scott-S]

This news is making headlines on the news sites. You cant visit CNN.com without reading the headline. Unless the spoilerphobes don't visit any other websites, they know already.


This whole spoilerphobia is getting tiresome. It is like banning peanuts from schools and airplanes because one person is allergic. We can't all kowtow to every single persons wishes.

It makes it hard to discuss the shows here if you have to go down a checklist of what is not allowed:
Don't mention things you think might happen in the future.
Don't mention where a plot might be going
Don't mention why certain things are happening.
Don't mention something you saw in a commercial for upcoming episodes.

I guess I am going to have to spoilerize all my posts here for now on.

 

[TravisR]

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.