I was hoping that a good night's sleep would make me appreciate Thursday night's CSI a little better or at least let me remember it with a lot less anger. I got the sleep, but the animosity is still there insofar as Grissom is concerned. I can say one thing positive about the episode. Sara has finally stopped taking Grissom's passive-aggressive crap. Remember back in the day when Grissom told Sara that "maybe she was suffocating him"? On the surface, he was talking about the dead woman at the foot of the stairs who was no longer sleeping in the same bed as her husband. However, underneath the surface it was quite obvious that Grissom was talking about Sara suffocating him. Back then, Sara just shrugged off the cryptic comment and started digging around in the dead woman's drawer, trying to find something to make a joke about. Now she's no longer shrugging. She's calling Grissom out on such statements. Kudos to the writers for finally giving Sara a backbone when it comes to Grissom.Now to the negatives. Grissom, at the ripe old age of 52, still doesn't have a backbone, at least as far as anything or anyone outside the lab is concerned, and I'm starting to doubt whether he is going to grow one in the next eight episodes. I mean look at what he did to Sara in the whole office scene Thursday night. He apparently wanted to break things off with Sara, but he didn't have the cajones to do it himself, so he tells her that he wants her to do it instead. In my opinion, that makes him a total butt. Well, it makes him worse than a butt, but I'm trying to keep this blog in the PG/PG-13 range, so I'm just going to leave it at butt.
The fact that Grissom acted this way, presumably a few hours after the whole cuddle scene, makes him a juvenile butt at that. He's acting like a spoiled, little five-year-old who, after being told by his mother that he can't have the sucker at the grocery store, sticks his bottom lip out, tells his mother that he hates her, and refuses to talk to her the rest of the night. Here Grissom wanted his sucker--i.e. he wanted Sara to stay in Vegas--but Sara told him that he couldn't have it. So what does he do? He sticks out his bottom lip (his demeanor during the cuddle scene was rather pouty, plus he gave all those truncated responses to Sara's vacation suggestions), tells her that he no longer wants to be with her (his refusal to leave Vegas and the whole withered nonsense), and then presumably ignores her (we didn't see his response to Sara's question in the office, but whatever it was--silence or otherwise--it was enough to send the girl packing). Real mature, Grissom. Real mature.
I understand why TPTB did it. They've got to give Grissom a reason to sleep with the great and wonderful Lady Heather in three weeks. They've also got to give him a reason to hit rock bottom, and apparently having Warrick, his surrogate son, die in his arms wasn't enough. No, he has to lose Sara, too. I just hate the way they did it. Here the show is in its ninth season, and Grissom is the same person he was in Episode 1, Season 1. He hasn't evolved at all. It seemed like he had for a few minutes there last season and the season before, but Thursday night's episode made those changes out to be temporary, personality glitches, not healthy examples of personal growth. It's still Grissom's way or the highway when it comes to GSR, and Sara finally chose the highway. Good for her.
I'm starting to wonder whether Sara will even be waiting for him when Grissom chooses the highway as well. Yes, I know Jorja Fox is returning for one more episode, but for all we know that's just so Sara can testify at Natalie's trial in Episode 7. A return does not equal a happy ending. The sad thing is that, thanks to the way TPTB portrayed Grissom on Thursday, I'm not so sure I care anymore. If Grissom continues to be a butt to Sara or if he does, in fact, get down-and-dirty with the Queen of All Things Leather, I may not even want that happy ending. I may just want Sara's prophecy from the day the lab blew up to be fulfilled. That is, I may want Grissom to show up in San Francisco and find out that, due to his own inability to compromise and to grow, it is too late.
So bravo, TPTB. You laid the groundwork perfectly for your golden girl, Bondage Betty, to come back with her whip and her stupid bangs and send your ratings through the roof. (Good luck with that by the way. If the ratings on previous Lady Heather episodes are any indicator, you're going to need it. Seriously, good luck.) You also pissed off and possibly alienated a lot of GSR fans, this one included.
