#05x24

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to go down the list:

warrick is the character who probably has the most personal reaction to nick's abduction, in the first place because nick is his best friend/partner, and in the second because, as he discusses in the scene you mention, he feels like he easily could have been in nick's place, had their coin flip at the start of the night turned out differently.

knowing that he might have been the one in that box fighting for his life not only floods him with guilt—if nick doesn't make it, he won't be able to live with himself—but also causes him to consider how his reaction might've differed from nick's, had the roles been reversed. 

as he admits to catherine, he doesn't know that he would have been able to show the same fortitude that nick has; he believes he might have taken the "out" and turned the gun on himself already. 

that sobering thought plays against his memories of the careless (and even cavalier) attitude with which he sent nick off on the trash run. the idea that one flip decision—that him dunking on his best friend—could potentially lead to nick's death, either from asphyxiation or suicide, rips his heart out of his chest. he cannot keep himself from thinking over all of the gruesome possibilities.

of course, there is also another undercurrent that runs through warrick's response to this situation that isn't mentioned in the episode but which is undoubtedly present in his psyche: i.e., the fact that warrick already blames himself for the death of one of his teammates, and now he's facing down the death of another.

as we discern from certain comments he makes over the years (see, for example, episode 03x04 “a little murder”) and from his reaction to the ia officer bringing up her death in episode 08x17 “for gedda,” even all the way up to the point of his own death at the start of s9, warrick never truly forgives himself for leaving holly gribbs alone at the crime scene where she was killed.

that was a situation where he made a self-serving decision, and it led to the death of an innocent person.

to think that it might be happening again absolutely guts him.

though not generally as self-loathing as grissom, warrick has at times in his life found himself repulsed by how easy it is for him to “get his” at the expense of other people. as an addict, he has sometimes prioritized his wants/needs over the well-being of his friends, family, team members, and department, and in so doing he has, even without meaning to, hurt them. 

certainly, holly gribbs is the most obvious victim of his selfishness, but there have been others: grissom, whom he has disappointed and whose trust he has at times betrayed; victims in his cases, whom he hasn't done right by because he was too busy focusing on his own issues; even outside of the current situation, nick, who has watched him engage in his destructive behaviors and suffered for not being able to do anything to stop him (see, for example, episode 02x16 "primum non nocere").

though of course, as catherine rightly points out to warrick, he is not actually to blame for nick's current predicament—that's 100% on walter gordon—warrick still blames himself for being so keen to stick nick with the trash run.

he thinks: if he had just been more generous and less cocky, if he had only conceded the strip club case to nick out of the goodness of his heart, if he hadn't been so quick to one-up nick, if he had acted more responsible—as the senior csi—then maybe nick would still be safe.

maybe his best friend wouldn’t be buried alive, running out of oxygen, with only a loaded gun to comfort him.

it's an illogical thought process on his part, to be sure, but that's the headspace he's in as he, catherine, and greg process the warehouse—hence why his fuse is so short.

he’s not really frustrated with greg; he’s frustrated with himself and displacing.

his thoughts at that point are basically a constant feedback loop of that could've been me. it should've been me. nick doesn't deserve this fate, but maybe i would have deserved it in his place. i'm a bad friend. i'm a bad teammate. if he doesn't survive, i'll never forgive myself. his blood will be on my hands, just like holly gribbs's is. there's a reason this keeps happening, and it's because of me. it's because i'm selfish. it’s because i let the people who count on me down. i have to save nick. i have to make this okay. nick doesn't deserve this...

the longer the investigation drags on without hope of finding nick, the more frantic he becomes, until he is barely able to function.

meanwhile, with catherine, she also feels a sense of responsibility for nick's situation, not because she considers that she is personally to blame for his abduction but rather because she is nick's supervisor, and his welfare is “on her.”

catherine and nick do have a very close connection, and particularly as nick has at times confided in catherine about some of his most personal secrets (see episode 02x03 "overload"), so of course there is a personal element to catherine's reaction to his abduction; the thought of sweet, dependable, good boy nicky, who has already suffered so much and whom she loves so dearly, being so scared and alone, in real danger of losing his life, pushes her to the brink.

that said, a lot of her reaction also comes on the professional side of things.

catherine is definitely better able than warrick is to comprehend that ultimately the only person to blame for this nightmare is walter gordon (which is what she reminds him of after she pulls him aside when he yells at greg); however, she is also very cognizant of the fact that if nick dies, it will be on her watch.

having only recently become a shift supervisor herself after years of being grissom's right hand, nick's abduction is the first real test of her leadership.

to this point in s5, it's not all been smooth sailing for catherine, in terms of her transition from assistant night shift supervisor to swing shift supervisor in her own right, as she has faced some pushback from ecklie, grissom, and even nick himself (see episode 05x16 "big middle") regarding her leadership.

however, even given the rocky road she has faced in getting the respect of her subordinates and coworkers in her new position, she's never yet undergone a trial like this one, where her every action is of crucial importance and the cost of failure on her part is so astronomically high.

this case is her first real "it's all on you to fix it" moment; it's the first time she's really felt the full burden of being queen in her own right, rather than being the "power behind the throne" to grissom.

more so than any petty team squabbling or bullshit departmental political posturing, this case challenges her capabilities as the person in charge.

of course, the really interesting thing to me is that while catherine certainly doesn't shrink from the challenge here—no one could argue that she doesn't take the reins on this case—she also doesn't assume absolute control, either, as she very willingly makes room for grissom to co-lead along with her.

they both automatically revert to their long-established roles, dividing up their responsibilities along the lines of protocol stuff vs. people stuff to work in tandem, with grissom becoming the figurehead of the investigation and making the "big picture" operations decisions (such as the circumstances under which they will make use of sam's ransom money) and catherine becoming more of a manager of personnel, like what she did when she was the assistant supervisor on grave.

there's no real discussion about or quibbling over the matter: that's just what they instinctively do, slipping back into what they best know how to do during their time of crisis.

and thankfully this tactic works well for them, as grissom is able to successfully navigate the strategic side of the investigation while catherine marshals the troops. they each play to their own natural strengths and in doing so make their entire rescue effort stronger across the board.

so.

for as freaked out as catherine is—and she is incredibly freaked out—she does a brilliant job of remaining outwardly even and handling whatever tensions arise between the junior members of her and grissom's teams.

she is professional enough to be the voice of reason when her subordinates need her (which is what we see when she talks to warrick about how he's doing in the warehouse). she keeps the operation functioning, even though stress levels are at an all-time high and despite that fact she is herself spiraling.

of course, as with warrick, there is also another element to catherine's response here, even beyond her sense of professional responsibility to nick: when she has to notify nick's family of his abduction, she can't help but think as a mother of what she would feel like if it were lindsey in that box; of how frantic she'd be; of how she would do absolutely anything to get her daughter back.

when doc robbins asks catherine if nick's family has been informed of the situation and she says, grimly, "no, that's my job," she knows that that duty remains hers all the way through the case. not only is it her job to tell nick's parents about the abduction in the first place and to keep them apprised of how the investigation is unfolding as developments arise, but if nick dies, it will be her job to deliver that news, and the thought of looking them in the eyes—of having to tell another mother that her baby is dead—absolutely eats her alive.

though not everyone agrees, i've always read catherine's relationship with nick as being at least somewhat quasi-maternal. while of course she recognizes that nick is a grown man (and does nothing to infantilize him), she also thinks of him like a son and is similarly protective of him as she would be of her own child.

that's part of why interacting with nick's parents hits her so hard: because not only can she empathize from the perspective of “i know how i'd feel if it were lindsey” but she also to some degree feels that way about nick himself.

she loves him dearly. she has a sense that it's her job to look out for him. to care for him. to keep him safe.

while of course she understands that for however awful this situation is for her, it's worse for nick's actual, biological parents, and she would never place her pain above theirs, there is that level of personal connection there that heightens her sense of empathy.

that's why she ultimately secures the money, making a “deal with the devil” with sam in order to get it.

that's why she's in absolute “i'm gonna fight tooth and nail for this and do anything and everything it takes to bring him home,” mama bear mode: because she's not going to allow the bad outcome to happen.

she is going to get nick out alive.

there's just no question of it.

grissom feels a similar sense of professional responsibility toward nick and judge and mrs. stokes as catherine does, as, even though nick is technically no longer on his team, he still thinks of him as “his guy”—and especially because he knows that nick ultimately moved to las vegas and joined the lvpd specifically to impress him (see episode 01x22 “evaluation day”).

though he can sometimes be socially oblivious, in this case, grissom is highly aware that, current team configurations notwithstanding, he is, as the most experienced criminalist and the historical “point person” for their team family, still the one whom everyone is going to be looking to to lead; that he will set the tone on this investigation.

though throughout s5, there has been some jostling between him and catherine as she has sought to assert herself in a leadership role independent of him (see episode 05x15 "king baby"), here, she doesn't protest either his involvement in the case or him co-running the investigation alongside her at all. she makes room for him without complaint, not only because she knows that they ultimately do work best together but also because she is glad for the support he offers.

honestly, she needs him to lean on, more than she can say.

to that end, grissom knows he needs to be strong. he knows he needs to be decisive. he knows he cannot falter and that any wrong moves on his part could have fatal consequences.

so he makes use of his ability to hyperfocus to lock in on the case details and make strategic decisions for how to move forward, mindful of the fact that everything really comes down to him—hence why he's the one to process the package that arrives at the lab; hence why he opts to take the money to the rendezvous; hence why he makes the calls, runs ahead, and is ultimately the one to descend into the pit to talk nick through the final part of the rescue.

it's an assumption of power on his part, certainly, but also an assumption of responsibility.

these are “his guys”—all of them—and he knows they need him now more than ever if they're going to bring nick home safe.

of course, his reaction to nick's abduction is also perhaps more personal than most people might expect from him, as, like catherine, he also very much thinks of nick as a son.

as i talk about here,

nowhere [are grissom's fatherly feelings toward nick] more on display than during the events of episodes 05x24 and 05x25 “grave danger” pts. i and ii, where we see grissom agonize over nick's kidnapping as if nick were his own son and even call nick by the same affectionate nickname that nick's own biological father uses for him (“pancho”).

when he volunteers to take the bag of money into the warehouse, he's not only thinking like a supervisor or a public servant. 

ditto for when he stands atop nick’s explosives-laden coffin to instruct him through the rescue. 

in those instances, he's also acting on his deep, instinctive love for nick, doing everything in his power to save him because he feels very strongly that his life and well-being are in his care.

he is keenly aware that he and the team only have one shot to get this thing done right, and he'd never forgive himself if they didn't come through.

he loves nick too much.

then there’s greg, whose experience with nick’s kidnapping is very much colored by his status as the youngest member of the team.

at this point, greg has only been a csi level i for a little over four months, and during that time he has very much been operating “with the training wheels still on,” so nick’s kidnapping is far and away the biggest, most grueling, most high-stakes case he has ever worked as a “field mouse.”

greg is just as much of a friend to nick as anyone on the team is, and he wants just as desperately to bring nick back home alive. however, he has so much less practical experience than everyone else does, so when they all spring into action, filling their well-established roles, working off of a “crisis script” that they all somehow seem to already have memorized, he kind of gets left behind. he’s expected to “come along,” despite not really knowing what exactly he needs to be doing or having the knowledge base or forensic skillset to keep up.

and whereas normally someone—probably sara, who, for the last several months since even before the team split has been serving as his primary trainer*—would typically pull greg aside and give him some instructions, in this case, everyone is too busy and caught up in their own investigative activities to really take the time to spell things out for him, particularly as time is of the essence.

* as for why sara doesn’t seem to oversee greg at all during this episode, even though technically it should probably be her job to do so, more on that point in a minute.

so greg does his best, but there are instances—like when he doesn’t know where the black box is in the suv engine—where he is clearly out of his depth.

and, unfortunately for him, because everyone is so stressed and tensions are already high, his team family doesn’t really have the patience to accommodate his inexperience—and especially not warrick, who is perhaps the most emotionally compromised person out of anyone.

as stated above, when warrick chews greg’s ass about the diagnostic unit and later for suggesting that they try to reassemble the bomb, it’s not that he’s actually mad at greg—he’s just frustrated by the situation and with himself and what he views as his own complicity in nick’s situation.

still.

regardless of what actually lies at the heart of warrick lashing out, greg still bears the brunt of it, as warrick meets his good-faith questions and suggestions with open hostility and even goes as far as to kick a can of oil in his direction (not necessarily at him but not not at him, either). 

and of course the really sad thing is that greg does just want to help. 

he wants to be useful.

you can see him using all of his not inconsiderable brain power to come up with something—anything!—that might be the key to getting nick home.

creative thinking and finding nontraditional investigative avenues to explore has always been his strong suit, since even before he left the dna lab, and he’s pulling out all of the stops to that end—thinking maybe they could use the bomb’s tripwire to do x or calculate y based on what the black box tells them.

but the more his suggestions get shut down, the more we see him retreat, getting increasingly in his head about the potential cost of screwing up. whereas normally he would be 100% down for experimentation, knowing that innovation can often lead to breakthroughs, warrick’s treatment of him seems to reinforce the idea that in this case, there is no room for trial and error because error can be fatal. 

never have the stakes for screwing up been so high for greg.

it’s one thing when using the bathroom facilities at a crime scene causes him to flunk his level i proficiency exam (see episode 05x01 “viva las vegas”), but under these circumstances a mistake could actually result in the death of his good friend.

—which is perhaps why we see, as the episode goes on, greg resorting more and more to very basic tasks, sticking to what he knows he can do (like running to go get the fire extinguisher out of the truck and then being the one to weild it) rather than contributing in other ways.

he takes a backseat role because he doesn’t want to get in the way.

—not because he doesn’t care to the same degree as everyone else does but because he’s not exactly sure what to do otherwise.

so, then, to sara.

the interesting thing to me about how sara behaves in episodes 05x24 and 05x25 “grave danger” pts. i and ii is that for as much as we might expect to see her be one of the most openly emotional characters in dealing with nick’s abduction, she actually is fairly restrained. while she does get teary at a couple of points, she keeps her wits about her, her temper in check, and doesn’t ever fully break down and in fact is one of the calmer members of the team overall.

while outside of the universe of the show, we can attribute her relatively even keel in this scenario to the fact that she is simply not one of the episode’s focus characters—not in the same way that warrick, catherine, and grissom are—i do think there is actually an in-universe explanation for her comportment, as well, albeit one that we might have to read between the lines to find.

certainly it’s not the issue that she “cares less” than anyone else.

in many ways, nick and sara are very similar: both bleeding hearts who throw their whole selves into their investigations, they are the members of team graveyard who are most outwardly emotional. though sometimes this likeness between them causes them to butt heads, it also makes them very close to each other. theirs is a siblingesque relationship, where underneath their occasional rivalry they do deeply love each other a lot and share a deep-seated understanding of each other’s characters.

rather, it’s that she’s aware of what is needed from her.

looking around, she can see her other team members flailing, and she realizes she can’t afford to do the same.

in particular, i believe she’s aware more than anyone else of how much pressure grissom is under, and so she’s doing everything in her power to just be a reliable, efficient helper to him, doing what needs to be done so that he has one less thing to worry about.

part of my reason for saying so, admittedly, stems from my belief that by the events of episodes 05x24 and 05x25 “grave danger” pts. i and ii, grissom and sara are already a couple—to me, this scene is very much a “we just recently got together and i am so twitter-pated over you,” honeymoon-phase kind of deal—and my sense that, accordingly, sara is perhaps more attuned to grissom’s moods than she has ever been.

#girlfriend mode activate

however, i also believe that even if one doesn’t share my assessment that grissom and sara are already together by this point, sara’s behavior throughout these episodes nevertheless speaks to her special mindfulness of grissom anyhow, as she spends a lot of time hanging around him both in his office and a/v, remaining nearby seemingly just in case he needs her.

considering how closely they’ve worked together over the course of s5, particularly since the team split (when she has essentially become his right hand), that she would adopt this kind of “quiet helper” role where she functions almost like an extension of his brain makes a lot of sense.

it also accounts for why she’s not more involved in directly supervising greg, as, frankly, her attention is elsewhere.

though at times throughout the episode we do see sara take some moments to herself where she is obviously wrestling with her feelings, she does her damnedest to stay focused on the work and do everything she can to generate new leads, knowing that doing so will help grissom, which will in turn help the team to find nick. she keeps her cool and holds things together because everyone else is compromised and she realizes someone needs to keep it all in check.

so.

as for my read on the scene you mention specifically, here’s how i see things going down:

as the day has worn on, warrick has become increasingly agitated, knowing not only that nick is close to running out of oxygen but also that the longer he’s in the box, the more likely he might be to end his own life.

that split second before he realized that nick had shot out the light rather than shot himself really did a number on him.

as discussed above, he largely (though unduly) blames himself for nick’s predicament. since he can’t imagine that there will be a happy ending to this story, he is already excoriating himself for “killing his best friend” with his selfishness.

so tumultuous is he inside that he can’t help but manifest that tumultuousness on the outside, either, which is why throughout the day he’s been snippy with greg.

when greg tries to offer some optimism here—making the longshot suggestion that they could use the bomb components to figure out where the materials came from—he just can’t take it.

he’s sick of the dead ends and false hopes.

so he loses his temper.

meanwhile, on greg’s end of things, for lack of knowing what else to do, he’s just trying to help. he is fully aware that the bomb reconstruction angle was a longshot, but at this point, even a longshot is better than nothing, isn’t it? nobody else has any better leads, so who’s to say some creative thinking might not help? he’s just trying to offer up what he can, but then the next thing he knows, warrick is kicking a jerrycan at him, contaminating what little evidence they have gathered.

all day, warrick’s been acting as if greg is some pain-in-the-ass little brother, and greg is fed up with it.

he wants to find nick, too, but he knows that’s not gonna happen if they can’t all just pull together and focus.

—hence why he calls warrick out for his outburst (even though normally he might not be brave enough to “fight back” in that way).

catherine witnesses this exchange go down, and she knows that she is on the brink of losing her team to in-fighting at a time when they really can’t afford to take their eyes off the ball. though she’s upset herself, she pulls warrick aside, but rather than dressing him down for being a dickweed to greg, she approaches him with concern, realizing that his fear for nick’s life is overriding his judgment and that he needs some outside help to refocus.

she gets where warrick is coming from, she really does, but she needs him dialed in, so she carefully applies logic to his irrational blaming of himself, trying to make him see that this situation is not his fault and that the best thing he can do to help nick is to just stick to the work until they find something usable.

it honestly surprises her when warrick admits that he believes that were he in nick’s place, he would have already killed himself, as warrick has always been a rock for her and is one of the strongest people she knows.

—so she reminds him as much.

thankfully, at that point, greg discovers that the oil from the jerrycan seems to have brought out an outline in the dirt, so suddenly there is something to pull all three csis together, giving them a common objective (outside of themselves and their own hang-ups) to focus on once more.

anyway.

that’s my take, fwiw.