Season 10, Episode 1: A family Affair

Catherine struggles with criticism of her leadership, the team investigates the murder of an actress and a familiar face returns to lend a hand in CSI’s tenth season premiere.

Catherine, already frazzled at being understaffed, doesn’t know quite what to do with the critique so she turns to an old friend for advice: Sara, the person Ecklie called on to step in and help the understaffed grave shift.

Sara uses a baseball analogy to help Willows.

When a great baseball team loses its clean-up hitter, everybody’s swinging for the fences and nobody’s playing small ball. She recognizes that Willows still has a lot of great players and some new talent, and maybe she needs to reshuffle the line-up. The translation: Willows is a great CSI and she knows how to manager her team. The only thing that Grissom had that Willows doesn’t is someone like herself.

Sara’s advice to Catherine provides the grave shift leader with a flash of clarity: Sara tells Catherine that what Grissom had that she lacks is a strong second-in-command, a crucial counterbalance.

As soon as Sara shares her thoughts with Catherine, Catherine knows exactly who she needs as her right hand man and goes to Nick to give him the promotion to Assistant Supervisor…and an armful of paperwork. Nick is a good choice–the only choice, really, unless the also newly promoted Langston was to leapfrog him, something that would have left fans groaning even more loudly.

Nick proves his worthiness for the job early in the episode when he backs up Catherine’s decision to send Greg to the hotel crime scene. Langston offers to go in his place, but Nick steps in, reminding them that Catherine is the boss and it’s her call.