CSI Las Vegas

"Who are you?" by The Who

Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot

It's easy to see why quirky, eccentric Gil Grissom makes such a compelling hero. He's different from the typical brash, posturing detective (personified in this episode by Jim Brass). What supervisor would ask for a pint of blood on a new employee's first day? Who yells, "You assholes!" at a morgue full of dead people?

Grissom garners a few laughs in the pilot, but he's also an insightful, clever character. And a determined one as well--when the husband tells Grissom he cut his toenails and flushed them down the toilet, Grissom gamely sets about searching around the toilet for the clippings. The message is clear: incriminating evidence can't really be gotten rid of.

Grissom comes across as less reserved in this episode than he does as the series progresses. William Petersen is clearly having fun with the CSI's quirky side. He greets Holly Gribbs with a smile--and a request for a pint of blood. The moment where he yells, "You assholes!" at the corpses after Holly is startled by them is funny and completely unexpected.

Who knew Grissom had it in him? He also apparently tried romancing one of the lab techs, with little luck. Grissom might be good at reading crime scenes and interpreting evidence, but women are something of a mystery to him it seems.

CSI's leading lady doesn't get much screentime in the pilot. Catherine does swoop in for a memorable rescue, getting Holly Gribbs out of a sticky situation with a convenience store owner who doesn't want the CSI to waste her time looking for evidence.

Catherine's pragmatic side shows through right away when she assesses the situation and tells Holly to come with her. Why bother processing the scene of a robbery if the victim doesn't care about who robbed her? Catherine's got a point. She gives the frazzled Holly advice about the job, urging her to stick with it until she closes her first case. Catherine promises her she won't regret it.

Review provided by CSI Files.

Season 1, Episode 2: Cool Change

Catherine is naturally protective of her co-workers and doesn't take kindly to an outsider coming in to horn in on the case. "We can argue," Sara offers, "but two sharp women are better than one." With that simple statement, Sara calls out Catherine's behavior and offers a solution all in one. Reminding Catherine that they're on the same side, as women and as criminalists who want to uncover the truth reveals a lot about Sara's character.

Catherine has an increased role in "Cool Change." She feels both guilt over and responsibility for Holly's situation after encouraging the young CSI to stay until she solves her first case. Grissom initially wants to give the case to Nick, who didn't have any contact with Holly, but Catherine insists on taking it, and she won't accept no for an answer. Interestingly, Grissom accedes, proving at least in this instance, her will is stronger than his.

The audience also gets to see Catherine's brazen side when she calls the pager's owner and pretends to be a flirty young girl looking for a little fun when he picks up the phone. Catherine might be a bit unconventional, but her strong, forceful personality is evident from the get-go.

Grissom, now the leader of the CSI team, has to make the tough decision of whether or not to fire Warrick. Brass was in charge of the CSI team in the pilot but he's moved back to Homicide in this episode. I wonder if this was a network decision or if Anthony Zuiker's original plan was to have Grissom set up as a new leader for the show's first season.

It's much more fitting to have Grissom in charge of the "nerd squad" as opposed to Brass. Brass represents the old school, the type who barks orders and leans on suspects hard for a confession; Grissom is the new order, the type who uses science to figure things out and is a fount of obscure information and observations because, as he tells Nick, "It's our job to know stuff."

Grissom is a much kinder, gentler leader than Brass. He affectionately calls Nick "Nicky" and clearly views the younger CSI as his protégé. And he doesn't fire Warrick, saying, "If I let you go, I have to let me go." Grissom sees the graveyard shift as a genuine team, meaning they stand together.

As Warrick says earlier on, he was left alone at crime scenes plenty of times as a rookie; Warrick's mistake, gambling aside, was something any CSI could have committed. If Grissom knew the whole story, however--that Warrick was placing a bet for a judge--he might not have been so forgiving.

Review provided by CSI Files.

Season 1, Episode 3: Crate and Burial

Grissom continues to act the part of mentor with Nick; when Nick is ready to take the voice match to Chip from the audio tape and call it a day, Grissom urges him to dig deeper in the hopes that he can uncover evidence of Laura's involvement and sure enough, Nick follows Grissom's advice and comes up with the proof they need to put her away.

Catherine and Warrick struggle with their case. Catherine laments that she wishes her job included helping the good guys and not just catching the bad ones.

The sense of the team as a cohesive unit is underscored by the way they rally around Catherine for her daughter's birthday. Later on, when Catherine spends time with Lindsey at the park, the little girl tells her the reason she didn't want a party was so that she could spend time alone with her mother. It's the classic single parent dilemma, balancing work and family, and one that will dog Catherine throughout the show's run as Lindsey grows from a precocious little girl to a resentful teen.

Review provided by CSI Files.

Season 1, Episode 4: Pledging Mr. Johnson

The fourth episode of CSI delves into the differences between its leads, Gil Grissom and Catherine Willows. Grissom typifies science and reason and logic, which are essential in the field but also a little cold. On the other hand, Catherine personifies emotion and passion and feeling, which can sometimes be beneficial and sometimes just the opposite.

At the beginning of the episode, Grissom refers to Catherine as Watson (as in Sherlock Holmes’ partner), indicating their strong partnering.

Grissom and Catherine both locate the boat; Grissom uses his tank to figure out which way the current would have driven the boat, but Catherine is the one who actually physically finds it using her eyes. Which way is more effective? It's mostly a draw, though by the time Grissom figures out where the boat with his mock set up, Catherine has already found it. Though Catherine's way is less precise than Grissom's, both methods are clearly valid. Grissom and Catherine just have two completely different approaches to their work.

Sanders: I hear Catherine beat you to the boat.

Grissom: We work as a team. We’re not competing.

Sanders: She found it first, right?

Grissom: ‘Two roads diverged in a wood. And sorry I could not travel both.’ But Frost does not apply. When you’ve got a partner, you each take a road and that’s how you find a missing boat.

Less acceptable is Catherine allowing her own experience and emotions to sway her approach to a case. By the end of the episode, it's very clear that telling Winston Barger that his wife was cheating on him was a mistake. Not only could Catherine have spared Winston the pain of knowing his wife was going to leave him--especially after hearing from Phil Swelco that Wendy was worried Winston would fall apart if she left him--but in telling Winston, she unintentionally gave Winston motive to kill Swelco.

Obviously, Catherine couldn't have predicted that Winston would murder Swelco, but Grissom had a point when he said she shouldn't have allowed her personal experiences to influence her in handling a case. Grissom made the distinction between what their obligation was to Winston: telling him how his wife was killed is their duty, but telling him that his wife was having an affair is not.

When Grissom criticizes Catherine for telling Winston that Wendy was cheating on him, she doesn't take it lying down. She tells Grissom flat out that she can't be like him, eschewing a personal life for work, work, work. Therein lies the difference between the two: while Grissom is able to approach his work from a clinical, scientific standpoint, but Catherine is guided by her emotions and can't separate them from her work.

More than that, she's irritated at Grissom for being able to do just that: she lobbies a personal complaint, saying that she wished he'd told her when her ex-husband Eddie was cheating on her. This implies that the two are more than co-workers: they're friends, and Grissom was aware of the details of her personal life, and about her husband's infidelity.

Catherine: He needed to know the truth.

Grissom: [accuses Catherine of compromising the case because she told the husband about the affair]

Catherine: You have to be at the wrong end of an affair to understand.

Grissom: You can’t make this about Eddie.

Catherine: We bring ourselves to our cases. Relax. I didn’t tell him the details.

Grissom: You can’t give him anything. We’re scientists not psychiatrists or victims’ rights advocates.

Catherine: You're right, you know. I should be just like you. Alone in my hermetically sealed condo, watching Discovery on the big screen, working genius-level crossword puzzles. But no relationships, no chance any will slop over into a case. Yeah, right. I want to be just like you.
Grissom: Technically it's a townhouse. And the crosswords are advanced, not genius. But you're right, I'm deficient in a lot of ways. But I never screw up one of my cases with personal stuff.
Catherine : Grissom... WHAT personal stuff?

William Petersen and Marg Helgenberger play off each other perfectly in this episode, adeptly showing why they were perfect choices for their roles. Petersen plays Grissom as the consummate scientist, truly baffled by the idea that emotion and gut instinct could ever compete with or even supersede science. Helgenberger, on the other hand, brings out all of Catherine's spitfire, spunky spirit that the character will come to be known for. And yet, different as they are, they do respect each other.

[after a huge argument]
Grissom: Look, could we have a truce?
Catherine : I would love to.

Grissom is visibly impressed that Catherine found the boat on her own, without the aid of his scientific experiment. And Catherine is suitably awed when Grissom shows her Wendy's death was in fact a tragic accident and not the result of foul play. These two might have little in common, but each recognizes what the other brings to the table.

Grissom: So, was the boat at the marina?
Catherine : What do you think?
Grissom: My spider sense says it wasn't.

Review provided by CSI Files.

Quotes provided by Wet Paint.

Season 1, Episode 5: Friends and Lovers

Grissom is hit hard by the case he's on in this episode, and it's the first time we really see something get under the normally unflappable CSI's skin. At one point in the episode, Grissom outlines the three things that really get to him: men who beat their wives, sexual abuse of children and drug dealers who prey on kids.

This case obviously falls under the last category and it's evident in the usually cool-tempered Grissom's reaction to Ethan, the haughty, arrogant drug dealer who quotes the law to Grissom condescendingly. Ethan actually gets a rise out of Grissom, who vows to get him for murder. That Grissom fails in this is surprising, and Ethan dances in the hallway as he's let go. Jeff Parise injects both glee and arrogance into his performance as Ethan, and the audience is as disappointed as Grissom is when Ethan walks away scot free.

Grissom is similarly saddened by the outcome of the case. When Bobby's lawyer tells him she plans to argue diminished capacity, he tells her frankly and honestly, "I hope you win." Much as Grissom believes in following the evidence, even he can't fail to be moved by the fact that Bobby not only had no intention of hurting his friend, but that he didn't even remember doing it in the first place. The real bad guy, Ethan, walks free and there's nothing Grissom can do about it. To get away, he heads to the strip to ride a gigantic rollercoaster.

In a truly impressive sequence, the camera follows Grissom's face as his car climbs to the top and shoots down and around. The tightly-controlled Grissom doesn't let out a single scream or even a stray emotion as he zips along.

Catherine continues to stand in stark opposition to Grissom, though she would probably be interested to see his reaction to Bobby's plight. Catherine tells Nick when he quotes one of Grissom's quips to her that "Grissom isn't right about everything."

This is another novel approach from CSI: the hero isn't always perfect or right. Grissom is human just like the rest of the team, and while his methods as a scientist are inventive and effective, life isn't so cut and dry that science--or Grissom--can have the answer to every problem, especially when it comes to human emotion.

Even Grissom, who would approaches each case as clinically and scientifically he can, has things that get under his skin, like the aforementioned list. Grissom might strive for a dispassionate examination of the evidence, but that doesn't mean he's without feeling by any means.

Catherine, because she's so driven by emotion, clearly doesn't always see that. Here, she and Nick rather easily solve the puzzle, but for Catherine motive is a big missing piece. She's suspicious of Kate's story from the get-go, and the blood splatter on the wall and on Woods' shirt points to Julia's involvement. But for Catherine, the case isn't closed until she knows why the two women killed Woods.

The conflict between what the evidence says and basic human nature is a frequent theme early in the show's run; the CSIs aren't cops and their job is to deal with the evidence, not wrangle a confession out of a suspect or uncover the motive, but basic human nature means they'd naturally be curious about what causes one human being to take the life of another.

Catherine typifies this curiosity, but as this episode proves, even Grissom isn't always capable of remaining detached and emotionally objective.

Review provided by CSI Files.

Season 1, Episode 6: Who Are You?

Given how the episode ends, Brass makes an ironic comment to Grissom when he asks the CSI when the last time he drew his weapon was. The end of the episode sees Grissom pulling that weapon to save Nick, who is being held at gunpoint by the clearly unhinged Amy Hindler.

Though Grissom is very much a scientist, this is the first time we really get to see him in action, so to speak, and he rises to the occasion. There's no hesitancy in his action; he's as calm and collected holding a gun and talking Amy down as he is in his lab running an experiment.

We finally get to meet Eddie Willows, Catherine's ex-husband, a manipulative charmer who feels no remorse about playing on his ex-wife's lingering feelings for him. He has no hesitation about using their daughter, Lindsey, to get Catherine to help him: he asks her whether she wants their daughter to see her father in the park...or in jail. Whether it's for Lindsey's sake, Eddie's or her own, Catherine is swayed by his argument and pursues the case, even going so far as to call on her strip club connections to get into the strippers' locker room.

The case opens up a glimpse into Catherine's past, and rather than being ashamed of her previous employment as an exotic dancer, Catherine claims it and embraces it. When Greg suggests he might have seen Catherine dance at some point, she brazenly tells him that if he had, he would remember.

And yet, as tough and proud as she is, Catherine is still clearly susceptible to Eddie's charms. He tells her he married up when he married her and reminds her in the park where she's taken Lindsey that they were good together sexually. If Lindsey hadn't interrupted, would Catherine have kissed her ex? It's definitely possible.

As much as she's not quite yet able to chuck Eddie, she has no problem defying Grissom. Grissom tells her repeatedly to remove herself from the case, but Catherine is determined to see it through. As clueless as he can be about people sometimes, Grissom does see through to her real motivation: she's still in love with Eddie.

Grissom himself might be feeling a few tugs on the heartstrings himself: there are definitely sparks flying between him and pretty facial reconstructionist Teri Miller. Grissom takes an interest in Teri's work, and Teri takes an interest in him, boldly leaving her number on his cold case bulletin board. "The ones that got away," Grissom muses.

Review provided by CSI Files.

Season 1, Episode 21: Evaluation Day

Season 2, Episode 4: Bully for You

This brief conversation demonstrates how Catherine is viewed as a "wild child," which is reflected in how she deals with suspected criminals: like a bully. Rather than denying it, she agrees and takes it one step further.

Nick: She was not?
Warrick: She was! I saw her in action
Nick: No! Catherine?
Catherine: I was what?
Warrick: Oh I was just telling Nick how you were a bully in high school!
Catherine: I was but not the kind you wanna take a gun out and shoot.

Quotes provided by Wet Paint.

Season 2, Episode 8: Slaves of Las Vegas

The relaxed relationship Catherine has with Grissom is very refreshing considering he is often socially awkward with other members of the CSI team. A lot of this has to do with how long they have known each other. It is easier for him make jokes with her.

Catherine: I realized we have a very healthy relationship.
Grissom: We do?
Catherine: Well, when we get into a fight I don't paint Greg Sanders in liquid latex and stick a straw up his nose.
Grissom: Good. He'd probably like it.

Quotes provided by Wet Paint.