I wish that I could leave out all the rest of "Leave Out All the Rest," Thursday night's episode of CSI, but I can't. I haven't been blessed with selective amnesia as far as the show is concerned, so instead I guess I'll just have to rant about it on this blog. Thursday night I was royally ticked at Grissom. Truthfully, I still am, but who I am more mad at are TPTB at CSI. They seem to love ambiguous endings more than they love Mistress Skank. They can't just give us an ending to something, good or bad. No, they have to leave it open for interpretation. After more than eight years of playing the "Did They or Didn't They" game, I'm officially sick of it.Did Grissom get down and dirty with the Queen of All Things Kinky after she shut the door? Who knows. I could argue either way, and therein lies the problem. I'm tired of arguing. I'm tired of interpreting. I'm tired of trying to figure out, "What if?" At this point, William Petersen and thus Gil Grissom only has five episodes left on the show. Good or bad, sex or no sex, I just want to know.
I've finally decided that TPTB just don't have the cajones to tell us. Seriously, they're the ones who created GSR. Jorja Fox has been quoted as saying that, when she went in to read for the role of Sara Sidle, she was told that Sara would be a love interest for Grissom. Thus, from Day Two on the show (I'm not counting Day One, as Sara didn't show up until the second episode), GSR has been there. A bunch of crazy fan girls on the Internet didn't dream the romance up; the writers and producers did. Now more than eight years later, it seems like they can't even admit to that fact or at least stand by it. So what do they do instead? They bring back a controversial character, they pimp the hell out of the sexual aspects of the show, and then they leave everyone--GSR fans and Whipper Shippers alike--hanging with a Sopranos-esque ending.
Why did they have to go that route? I'm not even talking about the return of Melinda Clarke's leather-clad alter ego. I know why they did that. If the ET interview is any indication, TPTB are still deluded enough to think that Lady Heather equals ratings. Too bad for them the ratings dropped again. No, what I'm talking about is why the "did they or didn't they" moment?
I want to say that TPTB did it to appease all ships at once. However, in doing so, I honestly think that TPTB failed to appease a single one of them. Take those of us who ship GSR, for example. Were we happy with the ambiguous ending? From what I can tell by surfing the various GSR-related message boards, we weren't. Even the members who don't believe Grissom and Heather slept together have still expressed discontent over the way Grissom was portrayed in the episode. He hasn't just hit rock bottom; he's digressed back to the character he was in the first few seasons. The infidelity issue aside, the portrayal of Grissom as a pathetic, emotionally stunted, old man who is unable to compromise or communicate with anyone that doesn't sell sex for a living is making a GSR reunion in Episode 10 seem less than desirable.
And what about the Whipper Shippers? If I was a Lady Heather fan, I would be upset by the way they portrayed her Thursday night. Their whole ship revolves around this great friendship/connection between Heather and Grissom, but, in my opinion, that friendship/connection was sorely missing from "Leave Out All the Rest." Heather's first words to Grissom were "What are you doing here?" A true friend, like Brass or Catherine, would have already known the answer to that question, which is, "Warrick's dead, and Sara's gone. I need help." Then Heather reveals to him that she has gotten her masters in psychology. A masters isn't something you get overnight, not unless you buy it off of Ebay. Grissom obviously didn't know that she had gone back to school; thus, it was obvious that these two so-called great friends have been out of touch for some time.
Then there was the whole subsequent conversation between the two of them, part of which took place while Heather wore a nightie. How many female therapists/friends can't bother to put a robe on when their male patients/friends come over for a visit? I'm guessing not a lot. I'm not even going to go into the appropriateness of the whole pseudo-Basic Instinct maneuver that took place towards the end of the show or the icky "May I touch you?" scene.
When the topic of conversation turned to Sara, once again Heather failed to come across as a friend or therapist. A real therapist would have asked Grissom how he felt about the breakup; she wouldn't have told him how he felt. A friend, in contrast, would have done what Catherine did last year--told him to go after Sara or at least send her an email. Heather did neither of those things. She just offered Grissom her bed. Then, if you believe that they slept together after he took her up on the offer, that makes Heather look like one of two things--a woman who manipulates a man when he's at his lowest point or a woman who's willing to settle for pity/comfort sex. Neither image is very attractive.
As for the Grillow/PureJoy shippers, I'd be upset that Grissom passed on the opportunity to have an honest heart-to-heart with someone who actually cares about him and chose to hide out in the candlelit lair of ratings-stunt character instead. Ditto if I was a member of one of the Greg/Nick/Brass/Hodges slash ships.
To think that David Rambo sent out emails to fans saying that we'd be pleased with the episode and that William Petersen said in an interview that this was what was best for Grissom's character. What a joke, an ambiguous, overdone, it-stopped-being-funny-after-Season-One joke.
