Catherine's personal life has always been the most complicated of the group's, and not in a good way. She has a penchant for choosing men who are unfaithful to her, she discovers the identity of her father just as she learns he's a murderer, and now she's being presented as an inadequate mother.
So it isn't a great surprise that Catherine goes out to blow off steam and finds herself an undesirable man. That in itself isn't troubling; any woman can go out for a night on the town and meet a man who turns out to not be the gentleman he first seems to be. But why is there an air of condemnation hanging over the whole episode like a dark cloud. The subtext is glaringly apparent, even without Grissom's judgmental condescension, there's a sense that Catherine had no business being out in a bar.
After all, Catherine has a daughter at home, and the clear implication this season has been that Catherine is not spending enough time with Lindsey. Early in the season, we saw Lindsey getting into trouble. Catherine went after the day shift supervisor position so that she could spend more time with her daughter. But Catherine didn't get the shift she wanted--in fact, in theory the shift she got would make it even harder to spend time with her daughter as the swing shift would be on duty in the afternoon when Lindsey got home from school and late into the evening, and presumably Catherine might not get home until Lindsey was already asleep. But short of turning down the promotion, that hardly seems to be something Catherine can help.
Still, she's clearly being taken to task by her mother for not being around to spend time with Lindsey. Her mother of course chooses to confront Catherine with this in the middle of the day, while Catherine is working on a case. I'm not sure what we're supposed to get from this scene, or the earlier one where her mother expresses surprise that Catherine is going into work in the middle of the night. Are we supposed to think that Catherine works too hard? That she's a bad mother who shows no interest in changing? I have a feeling about where this is all going, by the way. Around the time Grissom gets his "guys" back, Catherine is going to realize being a shift supervisor is leaving her with no time for her daughter, and ask to be demoted back to the night shift.
Review provided by CSI Files.
