#09x08

hi, rewatch anon!

good to hear from you again! and congratulations on finishing your rewatch.

re: your question:

obviously, within the universe of the show, we get very little information to go on when it comes to grissom's involvement with sheriff montgomery's poker games.

while the audience is introduced to the fact that grissom was once a semiprofessional poker player early on in the series (specifically in episode 03x01 "revenge is best served cold," when he speaks of using his poker winnings to finance a body farm in college), prior to episode 09x08 "young man with a horn," his days as a player are always something spoken of in the past tense—i.e., as an activity he participated in in his youth but hasn't pursued much since ("well, poker's not a game of interaction. it's a game of observation. i used to study people, and then i guess i, uh, got bored. now i study evidence").

though in episode 04x15 "early rollout," he mentions watching the world series of poker, we are given no indication at any time throughout s1-s8 that grissom is ever involved in currently playing poker, much less that he is in the habit of doing so semiregularly or regularly with a bunch of vegas old timers.

that information comes only in episode 09x08 "young man with a horn"—and even then, retroactively, with the indication being that grissom used to be involved in sheriff montgomery's games, enough so for the waitstaff at the gambling hall to know him and for him to be welcomed by the other players, even after a two-year absence from the game.

what form grissom's participation in sheriff montgomery's games took back then isn't specified—was he a weekly player? a monthly player? someone who turned up occasionally, schedule permitting? who played only once or twice but left a significant impression during his brief "career"? and when he played, how did he fare? how often did he win or lose? how did the other players regard him? what kind of reputation did he have?—so we can't really speak to that context.

unfortunately, trying to pin down the "when?" of it all is only somewhat more doable.

since we have grissom telling warrick in s3 that after college, he gave poker up due to disinterest, we can say he most likely isn't involved in the games during s1-s3.

however, when and why he supposedly becomes involved with them after that point, we can't really say.

all we know is that he (seemingly) sometime after s3 becomes a presence at sheriff montgomery's table, only to then give up playing again roughly two years prior to the events of episode 09x08 "young man with a horn."

within the universe of the show, episode 09x08 "young man with a horn" takes place in december '08—regrettably, i do not have an exact calendar day for the episode, though i can say it probably happens closer to the end of the month than the beginning—so two years prior would fall in 2006.

if we go very literal, exactly two years prior would be near the end of december '06, which canonically falls in-between the events of episodes 07x10 "loco motives" (12.06.6-12.08.06) and 07x11 "leaving las vegas" (01.04.07)—i.e., circa the time when grissom is preparing to go on his sabbatical from the lab to teach at williams college in massachusetts.

so looking for a reason why grissom stops playing poker, we could potentially ascribe him giving up the game (for the second time) either to the emotional/professional/social burnout he experiences throughout the beginning half of s7 and/or to him getting out of the habit when he goes to williams college (and just never picking back up again, even after his return to vegas).

and, of course, his relationship with sara could definitely factor into such a scenario—like maybe once grissom finally gets back to vegas after those five long weeks spent away, his inclination in the immediate aftermath of his return is just to spend every waking moment when he isn't at work with her (given how intensely he missed her while he was gone), and so he doesn't immediately resume attending the games, and then things get rolling with the miniature killer investigation again, and before you know it, sara's been abducted, and then he's nursing her back to health at home for four and a half months, and one thing leads to another, and pretty soon, two years have passed, and he hasn't played cards all the while.

that said, if we allow for some slippage with sheriff montgomery's "two years" quip, plus six or eight months or so—because, after all, people often truncate—then our possibilities open up a bit more.

while of course we don't know exactly when grissom and sara first get a place together, "sometime just prior to or during s6" seems like a pretty safe bet.

the first half of s6 takes place during 2005, the second during 2006 (with the divider episode being episode 06x11 "werewolves," which takes place within the universe of the show on 01.03.06).

so if by that measure we include the back half of s6 within our "realm of possibility" for when grissom plays his last poker game with the sheriff, then that period would therefore most likely coincide with when he and sara are living together (as there is fairly strong evidence to suggest that they are indeed living together by the time the events of episode 06x24 "way to go" take place, if not much earlier).

that so, i would say your "maybe grissom stops going to poker games with the fellas because he's settled down with sara" theory is definitely a real possibility.

plausibility, even.

of course, all of the above said, the idea of grissom playing regular poker games at any point during the early seasons of the show, even before he moves in with sara, is one that is somewhat hard to believe and feels like something of an inelegant contrivance on the parts of the writers for the sake of making the plot of episode 09x08 "young man with a horn" work.

first of all, just on a logistical level, the games most likely take place either during grissom's regular sleeping or night shift hours—as grissom tells the sheriff in episode 09x08 "young man with a horn," he is technically on the clock when he shows up to the gambling hall—so when would he find time to play (particularly workaholic that he is)?

secondly, from a characterization perspective, while grissom is a skilled poker player and used to play semiprofessionally while he was younger, he wasn't ever really a recreational player; rather, he played with the express purpose of winning money to finance his romantic relationship with his college girlfriend and his body farm, meaning he had a goal he was working toward; a utilitarian reason to take those monetary risks.

no doubt that poker is in some ways fun for him—and god knows he's good enough at concealing his emotions that he probably runs the table playing, more often than not—but still: it's hard to imagine someone as pragmatic as he is involving himself in a game with a $500 buy-in just for shits and giggles on an even semiregular basis.

as warrick points out in episode 03x01 "revenge is best served cold," poker is a game of skill more than a game of chance.

all the same, it isn't without its hazards.

a bad hand is a bad hand, you know?

grissom's skill notwithstanding—he does easily win the game in episode 09x08 "young man with a horn"—the vegas old timers at sheriff montgomery's table are not unskilled themselves, meaning he is definitely not guaranteed to win every time.

would grissom, who is a generally careful and methodical person, really risk losing $500 (or more) on the regular, and particularly when he no longer had any kind of financial motivation to engage in such risky behavior, like he did in college?

while a twentysomething grissom trying to woo his girlfriend and foot the startup costs on a body farm had good reason to try his hand that way (and particularly if he was playing against other college students and/or more inexperienced gamblers, whom he could easily fleece), would a forty- or fiftysomething, more established grissom really choose to go out on that particular limb week after week, especially against seasoned opponents?

the man isn't a compulsive gambler like warrick, so it's not as if he wouldn't be able to keep himself away.

i dunno, maybe it's just a me thing, but i just have a hard time picturing him sitting down to those games more than once every other blue moon or so, and especially since, as he indicates in s3, he has long since lost interest in studying the human element of the game, meaning playing no longer serves any purpose to him, either financial or "scientific."

to me, what we have here is a situation where the writers put in a throwaway line that doesn't really hold up upon scrutiny.

anyway, my quibbles with the idea of regular poker player grissom aside, as for my impressions of the poker scene more generally, the thing that has always stuck out to me is when the old timers are reminiscing about the women at the château rouge and mention how they all had "cute little ponytails."

though we don't get to see a reaction shot of grissom's face in response to that line, i can't help but imagine he's thinking of his own cute girl with a ponytail at that moment himself, remembering the first time he met her.

since the episode already contains more than a little gsr subtext (particularly in grissom and catherine's conversation at the end of the episode, with re: to grissom finding "the right girl"), i can't help but view that line as a very intentional kind of cue, a hint that grissom is thinking about "upping the ante" in his pursuit of sara.

—aaaand that's what i've got.

- “only an idiot would use gasoline willy nilly”