#buildinggsr

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for me, i read s10!sara as being uncertain of how to present herself as a married person more so than being embarrassed of her marriage itself. 

if you’ll allow me a metaphor: 

it’s kind of like what happens when a kid grows up in a small community where everyone knows everyone, and then that kid reaches adulthood and strikes out on their own outside of the community for the first time (to attend school, take a job, serve in the military, travel, etc.). 

at some point, they return to visit for the holidays, see their folks, and/or move back in and settle down. since they’ve been gone, the person has changed immensely, learning and growing and developing a new sense of how to relate to the world. 

however, when they come back to their former community, the people who knew them while they were growing up—and especially the “old-timers” who were involved in raising them—have trouble seeing them for the person they’ve become, so for a while, there’s awkwardness; a kind of negotiation of “who i was then” vs. “who i am now,” where everyone involved has to adjust to the new status quo, including the person themselves.

to me, that’s what happens with sara in s10: she shows up in vegas, and for the first time ever, she’s not the sara everyone thought they knew for the last nine years—insomniac, workaholic, raw, high-strung, saturnine, “perpetually single” sara who spends her free nights at home curled up with a police scanner—but rather a new sara—deliriously happy, balanced, mellowed, bright-eyed, blissfully married sara who spends her free nights at home curled up with, well, grissom.

of course, people knew she was with grissom before, but that situation was different. 

the thing is that even though her and grissom’s relationship became public knowledge at the end of s7, they weren’t really any more forthcoming about its particulars with their coworkers in s8 and s9 than they were back when it was a secret between s5 and s7. 

while they did engage in some slightly more visible couple behaviors after “coming out” (e.g., sara calling grissom “gil” at work, sometimes checking in on each other in grissom’s office when their shifts overlapped, sara occasionally picking grissom up from his scenes, in rare instances attending social events as a couple, etc.), their level of disclosure regarding their relationship itself didn’t actually much change from what it had been back when they were still on the dl.

all they really allowed anyone to know was the very fact that they were indeed together—not when and how they first got together, how they spent their time at home, what their dynamics away from work were like, their relationship history, their future plans, etc. they continued to play everything very close to the chest (to the point where they didn’t even tell anyone about their engagement following the events of episode 08x04 “the case of the cross-dressing carp”). 

they never really got into the habit back then of letting anyone “in.”

there were undoubtedly a number of reasons why they didn’t, including some degree of guilty feelings over having lied to their friends for so long, their generally private natures, their sense of what was appropriate and inappropriate to talk about at work, force of habit carrying over from their “secret dating” days, a desire to avoid awkward questions and comments about their personal lives, etc.; however, i think a big one, especially for sara, was that she didn’t know how to reconcile her public persona and her private expression of herself within her relationship with grissom without revealing (what would be for her) some fairly intimate details about her life.

skirting the details of how her personal history played into her and grissom getting together—like, say, that one of the major precipitating events of their official relationship in vegas was grissom coming over to her apartment and encouraging her to talk about her childhood trauma, even though she’d never told anyone about it before—would be one thing, but there’d be no way to fully avoid airing her personal feelings and presenting herself in a new way otherwise.

that prospect would be absolutely daunting to her.

i mean, hell, she’d even had a hard time admitting to her relationship with hank back in the day—seriously: count the number of times in s3 when she argues against the notion that he’s her boyfriend, even though he clearly is—and she’d never even actually fallen for that guy!

talking about grissom, the actual love of her life, even just in a superficial “yup, he’s my man” sense, would have required more vulnerability than she was comfortable showing to anyone but him.

that so, she largely didn’t talk about him/their relationship, at least between when they first came out at the end of s7 and when she left vegas for the second time at the beginning of s9.

so cue her return to vegas at the start of s10. 

now everything is different: she and grissom are married, and marrying someone is by its very nature a public declaration. 

though certainly there are many details which married couples can and do keep between themselves, their lives are typically so entwined that hiding how much and in what ways they influence each other would be difficult.

and also super weird.

part of the reason people marry is for the social message it sends: it’s establishing a bond in a public way, saying to the world, “this is my person.”

that so, when sara shows up in vegas at the start of s10, she finds herself in a position she’s never been in before, which is that not only is her relationship known but it’s also more “forward-facing” than it’s ever been.

she’s been spending every day for the last nine+ months with grissom, and everything that’s going on with her is tied up in him. whereas she used to have two connected but ultimately partitioned identities—one professional and one private, only the former of which was ever fully visible to her teammates—now her identities have merged. 

the part of her life which had always, even after she and grissom “came out,” been hidden from her coworkers—the part where she and grissom are stupidly in love with each other and much softer and more attached than anyone could imagine—is now something they have at least partial access to, much more so than they ever have before.

that means they get to know a side to her they hadn’t seen much of previously.

and, as discussed in the metaphor, when they do meet that side of her, that also means that they have to adjust to it—to learn to relate to her differently than they had before. 

for both sides, this debut of “mrs. grissom” is awkward, not in the sense that there’s anything wrong with or bad about it, but just because, like catherine says in the scene in question, “that’s a weird side of [sara]” compared to what they’re used to—and it’s even weird for sara to show off that side of herself publicly.

specifically for catherine, while she has over the last few years come to respect sara a lot more than she did when sara first arrived in vegas, she has also always had this kind of view of sara as a “kid,” remaining highly aware that she’s got 10+ years of life and work experience up on her. 

in all honesty, though she has come to view sara as a friend on her own terms, she’s never quite understood grissom’s attraction to sara and has only been able to rationalize it as a kind of “okay, well, he’s obviously going through a midlife crisis” deal; otherwise, it hasn’t really computed for her why someone his age might want to be with someone who’s still so incredibly young (and, in her view, oftentimes markedly immature).

so cut to this scene in the locker room, where not only does sara prove amazingly levelheaded and offer catherine some really sage, wise-beyond-her-years advice but where she also shows that she is a good wife™ to grissom maybe more so than catherine herself ever was to eddie.

instead of this hotheaded young lolita with barely any self-awareness to speak of, sara is this collected, insightful, mature woman with good takes on both professional matters and personal ones.

it’s the first real glimpse catherine gets into the sara who is the kind of person it’s unsurprising that grissom would fall in love with.

and it’s weird and it’s awkward in the sense that it shatters catherine’s previous conceptions—because, seriously, where did this sara come from? had she been there all along?—but it’s also kind of impressive.

there’s this whole new dimension to sara catherine never knew existed, and, honestly, she thinks she likes it, even if it might take some getting used to.

grissom and sara watch baseball together. who would’ve thought?    

meanwhile, on sara’s side of things, she's got this sense of self-consciousness, because she knows that a lot has changed with her even just in the year’s time since she was last in vegas—all of it for the better, honestly, but all of it also drastic, with her becoming such a different person than she ever was when catherine and the rest of her teammates used to know her. 

as a side note, while i’m not really a fan of the later seasons, i do very much enjoy how undeniably happy sara seems during s10 and s11. baby girl smiles all the time and especially when anybody mentions her husband; she just absolutely lights up.

while she’s not necessarily scared that they’ll reject her, she is somewhat apprehensive because it’s going to be a new vibe. she's so much happier now than she was then, and so many of the walls she used to have are just gone. she’s wearing her heart on her sleeve more so than she ever has before, and, because she’s married and coming back from living this fabulous dream life in paris, everyone’s going to know why; they’re all going to know exactly why it is she can’t stop smiling.

she thinks she’s ready for that change, but she also knows that after four-ish years of obfuscating everything about her private life, it’s going to be a little bit of a culture shock to openly admit, “yeah, i’m basically living my own personal fairy tale with grissom, and i couldn’t be more over-the-moon about it.”

so when she finds herself babbling to catherine in baseball metaphors and acknowledging the reason that said metaphors come to mind for her is because grissom’s been teaching her the ins-and-outs of “the beautiful game,” it’s an exposing moment for her.

even though it’s just baseball, it’s more than she’s ever copped to before when it comes to her and grissom’s home life.

—and it is wonderful to finally talk about, but also a little bit surreal.

hence how squirrelly sara seems.

so that brings us to the scene from the reboot.

i very much agree with you that sara seems very balanced there and very centered.

part of that’s definitely just maturity—she’s just turned fifty and is very much an “old married” now in 2021—but, like you say, part of that’s also knowing how to “fix all her things.”

to me, it really comes down to her unifying all of the parts of her life. before, in s1-s7, she was always split down the middle, having to keep up this façade at work, pretending to care less and be far less involved with grissom than she actually was, playing it cool around him even when her heart was either breaking or beating for him. then, even in s8-s13, she was still stuck in this kind of half-life, this time even in a physical sense, where she was often living apart from him, maintaining these two separate existences, one based around her work and one based around her relationship. finally, between s13 and “immortality,” it wasn’t just that she was divided but subtracted; that the life she was living felt incomplete because she wasn’t living it with the person she loved.

only since finding grissom on the pier in marina del rey has she really been able to put everything in order: to do away with that old partitioning between who she is and what she cares about in public and who she is and what she cares about in private; to center her life all in one place (with her one person); to heal that gaping wound in her heart.

and so much of that ordering, of course, has to do with grissom and setting things to rights with him and finally living with him 100% of the time, but i think it also goes beyond that; in a more philosophical sense, sara has finally allowed herself to want what she wants and to believe that she can truly have that happy ending. she’s not forcing herself to choose between the different things that fulfill her anymore; it’s not an “either/or” proposition but an “and” one.

she’s spent the last six years doing work that’s meaningful to her, living her life in the daylight, side-by-side with the love of her life, and you can tell.

jorja’s mentioned in a couple of interviews that this iteration of sara is more chill and perhaps softer than the sara of yore, and i think we see that change in her in this scene; there’s just so much light in her.

she’s at peace.

whereas back in s10, she was still trying to figure out how to reconcile all the disparate parts of her existence, now she’s mastered that skill.

she’s happy, and she believes that she has the right to be happy—that it’s something that’s truly possible for her.

like you say, considering her backstory, that’s a truly remarkable conclusion for her to have arrived at. it’s amazing to see her so centered and at one with herself.

i love that development for her.

anyway.

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in regards to why brass would be more likely to be the one to call sara rather than hodges, based on the full trailer and other bits and pieces of information we've gotten in various interviews, we know that brass is "in trouble," whereas hodges is now an expert witness; of those two positions, it seems more likely to me that brass's is the one from which someone might call in an old friend for outside help.

as i've talked about here and here, i think it's pretty likely that brass is implicated in the fabrication case and/or has been targeted by its perpetrator(s), particularly based on the "jim brass is just the beginning" typewriter text and also what we see/hear in the scene in which he consults with the grissoms in their hotel penthouse about what they should do next.

that scene reads very much like one in which brass has expressed sentiments along the line of "well, i'm really fucked, so what do we do now?" and grissom is telling him "the truth will out. we'll clear your name and/or find the person who's after you if we just follow the evidence."

if so, it would make sense that brass would need someone to help him either clear his name and/or catch the person(s) gunning for him.

though hodges is likely also involved in the case or at least eventually becomes so, it's hard to say in what capacity he first signs on.

it's possible that to start out he's not involved in the case at all but rather is just working more generally as a kind of legal "gun for hire" after having left the lab (taking on the same kind of role that phillip gerard has in s3), in which case he might only be "sucked into" the case at the same time that the grissoms are or even afterward.

if he is already involved in the case BEFORE the grissoms join the investigation, then he might be working as an expert witness for the defense, trying to help sort out the fabrication and clear the lab of wrongdoing, using his expertise in trace analysis to help wade through the counterfeit evidence.

however, i also think there is at least a possibility that he might be working as an expert witness for the prosecution under the new district attorney, perhaps having made some kind of deal for immunity in exchange for testifying against his old coworkers, lest he, too, be implicated and face criminal charges.

either way, whether he were working for the defense or the prosecution, while it's possible that he could call on the grissoms for some reason or another, i don't think there is necessarily the same imperative for him to do so as there is for brass.

all said, i won't 100% rule out that hodges could be the one to place the call; however, i also think there is a clearer narrative path for the caller to be brass.

for my money, brass is our guy.

imo, for what it's worth, sara would also probably be more likely to consider brass a "dear old friend" (which is how jorja refers to the mystery caller in her tv guide bts spot) than she would hodges, which is not to say that she hates hodges or isn't friends with him at all, but just that her relationship with him as not as close as her relationship with brass is.

now, in regards to why brass might call sara rather than grissom:

honestly, i'm not sure that we're actually dealing with an "either/or" situation here—meaning i'm not sure that it's a deal where brass opts to solicit sara's help but has no interest in also soliciting grissom's.

while everything we've heard so far specifies that sara is the one who gets the call, indicating that it probably comes in on her phone or at least a phone that she answers, it may be the case that she's the one brass reaches out to more by default than for any other reason.

as of the events of "immortality," brass has sara's phone number (as she calls him during the course of the investigation to warn him about the suspicious person outside of heather's house).

while she may have to change that number after leaving csi in 2015, it's also possible that she doesn't or that even if she does, she distributes her new number to her old contacts, and particularly those that she would consider "family," such as brass.

in any case, i think it's likely that if brass needs to do so, he has a way to get in touch with her.

not necessarily so with grissom, though.

between 2009 and 2015, grissom basically goes "off the grid" as far as his old coworkers are concerned. while he does have a cell phone, he is hit or miss about answering when called. also, very few people (aside from sara and heather) seem to have his number.

though we know that ecklie gets grissom's number from sara during the events of "immortality," we cannot say for certain if anybody else does. however, just knowing grissom, i think that it's somewhat unlikely that they do, and particularly not as he leaves vegas after the case is solved operating under the assumption that he has just lost his one true love AGAIN and so is off to resume his sad and solitary existence, bereft of her forever, meaning that he is probably not looking to "keep in touch" with anyone from that part of his life.

also, brass is still in the hospital at the time that grissom skips town, so even if grissom does hand out his contact info to others, brass isn't in on that whole exchange.

if not, then brass may not have any means to actually contact grissom except to do so through sara—hence his call to her rather than to him.

however, even if brass does have both grissom and sara's numbers, i still don't think that the fact that he calls sara's indicates that he wants her help but not grissom's.

when i call my mom, i know that the majority of the time she will probably take the call on speaker, and that, if he's home, my dad will be standing next to her, taking part in the conversation, as well; that so, i'm always aware that i'm not really calling one of my parents so much as i am calling both of them, even though it's technically my mom's phone the call is going to.

the same kind of thing might be going on here.

brass might call sara's phone, but he probably does so knowing that what he's really doing is calling the grissoms, either in the sense that grissom will also be on the line with sara OR that sara will immediately turn around once the call is over and relate everything brass said to her husband.

if so, then it's probably not a situation where brass is saying "i want her but not him" or even "she's my first choice for this over him," much less "she's the dearer friend to me or the one i trust more to help me with this problem."

hell, depending on the grissoms's living situation, he might not even know who's going to pick up when he calls if it's the kind of thing where they maybe are sharing one cell phone or he calls them on a ship-to-shore line.

—all of which is to say that i'm not sure that we can assume that brass is actually calling sara "instead of" grissom, as opposed to "with him" or "in addition to him."

sara's just might be the phone that he calls or she might just the the one who initially picks up (for whatever reason).

sara also might be the one who originally ends up helping brass not because hers is the only help he requests but because she is the only one certified to help in this particular situation.

after all, as we learned from the tv guide interview, sara still has her csi accreditation, whereas grissom does not.

if brass needs someone to help clear his name and/or catch a criminal, that someone has got to be able to cross the yellow tape.

sara can still do so, but grissom can't (at least before he is brought on as a consultant to the lab), and whether or not brass already knows as much when he calls her/them, the fact is that, of the two grissoms, sara has more ability to help him at the moment—just from a law enforcement angle—than does her husband.

moreover, while not so much a reason why brass might contact sara rather than grissom, i think it's worth noting that while brass and grissom are old friends and have a lot of working history together and brass literally trusts grissom with his life (see episode 06x24 "way to go"), the same can also be said of brass and sara, meaning that it's not necessarily a sure thing that he would prefer grissom's help to sara's or would feel that sara were less capable of getting him out of this jam than was grissom.

by the time brass leaves the lvpd back in 2014, he and sara have been working together for fourteen years, and they have been through a lot together. he thinks of her almost like a daughter, and he trusts her to have his back.

given how highly he regards her professionally and how dear she is to him personally, i don't think it would be strange for him to call her to help him out at all—and particularly not if a) he has the means to get in touch with her, and, b) he knows she still has the necessary certifications to work the case, as discussed above.

that so, while he probably isn't opposed to also getting help from grissom, i don't think he's at all disappointed when sara is the one who initially comes to his aid; he's getting good backup from her, and he knows as much.

all of the above said, if it does turn out to be the case that brass is specifically calling for sara and not grissom, he could potentially be doing so because sara is in some way directly connected to the case while grissom isn't (at least to start out with).

say that one of the first cases to come under scrutiny in terms of the fabrication is one that brass and sara worked together between 2010 and 2014. say that brass is under suspicion for having tampered with the evidence, but sara is someone who can potentially vouch for him and prove that he didn't, as she was there and she knows what actually happened at the time.

in such a scenario, it would very much make sense for brass to call sara, as she could provide an alibi for him.

if things were to go down that way, it might explain a) why sara is the one who returns to vegas first (before grissom does), and, b) why she initially assumes it'll be a quick seventy-two hour, "i'll just explain what happened and then leave again" thing when she does so, as per some of what jorja talked about in her recent tv guide bts interview.

as for the matter of sara being willing to return to vegas now, whereas in the past she was the one who wanted to leave, i think it comes down to a couple of factors:

the first time sara ever voices a desire to leave vegas is in s2, when she asks for a leave of absence from the lab and then subsequently threatens to quit if grissom doesn't grant it to her (see episode 02x15 "burden of proof"); in that instance, her desire to skip town is a symptom of the fraught state of her and grissom's relationship at the time.

essentially, after having moved to vegas back in s1 with the expectation that she and grissom would "up the ante" on their relationship, she's finally realized, after a year and a half of disappointment, that things are worse off between them than ever, and she's feeling disgruntled because he keeps giving her the runaround, treating her well one minute but poorly the next.

thankfully, in that case, grissom is able to change sara's mind about leaving him the lab by changing his behavior toward her.

see the gsr love fest that is that back half of s2, from episode 02x16 "primum non nocere" on.

the next time sara develops a desire to skip town is in s8/s9, as a result of her ptsd in the wake of her abduction by the miniature killer. in that instance, her instinct to flee is largely motivated by her sense that she cannot remain in grissom's presence or maintain their relationship, given how mentally ill she is. not wanting to burden him or elicit his disgust, she basically runs away because she can't deal, not once but twice.

that said, she does eventually return to sin city once her mental health crisis has been dealt with and her relationship with him stabilized (see s10)—and, at that point, the only thing that then eventually induces her to ever leave again is her desire to be wherever he is (see "immortality").

so.

all considered, the thing is that with the brief exception of during her s8 and s9 ptsd arc (when the desert landscape is somewhat triggering for her, given her recent ordeal), sara never really "has beef" with las vegas in and of itself; it's not like she grows to hate the city because of what or where it is.

rather, her willingness to be there or not is almost 100% dependent on the state of her relationship with grissom.

if she feels like they're good, then she's content no matter where she is.

it's only when she considers that things are bad between them (or are in danger of becoming so) that she gets that itch to run.

—and even then, that's only when he's there with her in las vegas to actually run away from.

when he's not there with her, like when they get divorced in s13, she is content to stay put, because what the hell does it matter anyway? she's going to be bereft of him no matter where she is; that so, she might as well at least stay somewhere where she has friends/a job.

as her goodbye letter in episode 08x07 "goodbye & good luck" states, grissom is home to her above anything and everything else—so as long as he is with her and things are well between them, she can live anywhere and be happy.

that's why she's willing to return to vegas with him: because it's all about them being together, and the rest is just details.

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

i hope you and yours are safe and well.

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just to talk about that scene more broadly—beyond the line in question—it always strikes me that even though they are at work, we get to see grissom and sara’s couple dynamic on display here in a way we are seldom allowed to elsewhere in the series. this is candid gsr, with them being their unfiltered selves because they are alone together (and have every expectation that they’ll remain that way until they’re done processing the room).

things that stick out:

the way they finish each other’s thoughts/sentences. thinking through the implications of the miniature, they are completely on the same wavelength, coming to identical conclusions pretty much simultaneously. by this point in the series, they’ve worked together for so long (and have done so so especially closely ever since the team split in s5) that they’ve really developed a shorthand with each other. the way in which they follow the same thought threads is very much on display here.

the good-natured teasing—“that is a level of obsession that gives even you a run for your money,” “probably before your time,” “i'll download it,” etc. these little jokes are such a “long-time couple” thing. sara is allowed to call grissom out for being obsessive because she’s the one who has to remind him to eat something and/or go to sleep after he’s been hung up on the same project for ten hours in a row, and they both get to poke fun at their may-december romance because it’s their deal, you know? there’s such a familiarity and fondness there.

how much grissom obviously enjoys listening to sara think out loud. once she starts reading the room and making observations about the points of entry, the body, the possible angles of attack, etc., he stands back and lets her go, trusting her to cover everything worth mentioning. of course, listening to her is not only a matter of professional expediency for him; you can see by the way he looks at her how much he adores her and the way her mind works. that's his genius wife, and he is smitten by how smart she is. he loves watching her in action.

how comfortable they are in general. there's no pda in this scene—beyond their usual personal space violations when they’re examining the miniature—but there is very much a sense of closeness and ease. they are so obviously accustomed to sharing space and bouncing ideas off each other. their interactions here scream “partners,” and it’s great.

i hope we get a lot more scenes like this one in the reboot.

now.

as for the line in question:

i love your interpretation of what “one hit” refers to. i had never really thought about grissom’s word choice in that way before—i was always more focused on the pun (you know, because izzy delancy is a “one-hit wonder”)—but now that you bring it up, what strikes me about your idea is that it’s so obviously true for both of them.

both grissom and sara fall in love with each other right from the start.

sara is the first one to allude to this fact in episode 02x12 “you’ve got male,” when she reads an email from the victim in the case they’re investigating aloud to grissom and finds herself relating very strongly to the words.

“‘i know it sounds weird,’” she quotes, “‘but my life began when i first heard your voice. when you said my name, it felt so right. did you feel it, too?’” 

as she reads, she starts to sound somewhat choked-up, and she fidgets under grissom’s attention. though she doesn’t cop to it in any kind of direct way, it’s obvious by her reaction that she very much feels the sentiment of the words she’s reading—that to her, life began when she first heard grissom’s voice; that him saying her name awakened something in her; that she wonders if he had the same experience that she did.

clearly, her whole life changed upon meeting grissom, to the point where she doesn’t even consider that she was really living before him.

as she finishes the passage, she briefly allows herself to glance at his face but quickly turns away again, seeming overwhelmed by the intensity of the moment.

“it’s easy to wear your heart on your sleeve when you’re not looking in his eyes,” she stammers, trying to move past the enormity of the truth she just admitted to (albeit using someone else’s words).

shortly after, grissom expresses similar sentiments in episode 02x16 “primum non nocere,” when he talks about how it was only after meeting sara that he started to care about beauty. while his statement is of course stunning because of its brazenness—way to pitch some shakespearean-level woo out of nowhere, my dude—it is also significant in terms of what it communicates about just how monumental his and sara’s first meeting was to him; simply seeing her changed his entire worldview, and he’s never been the same since.

later on, they both revisit this idea again in episode 07x03 “toe tags” and then yet again in episode 08x02 “a la cart,” when they talk about their first encounter at the forensic academy conference, and specifically in the latter episode, how immediately they both noticed each other.

for sara, all it took was for the handsome seminar speaker to start lecturing, and that was it for her.

for grissom, all it took was for the beautiful girl with the ponytail to ask a question, and he was head-over-heels.

now.

i'm sure things probably would have panned out differently, this strong and immediate spark notwithstanding, had grissom and sara, upon some actual interaction with each other, realized that they were incompatible; but the thing is that whatever happens during that first forensic academy conference only seems to reinforces the sense of connection between them. 

they both experience this very chemical “!!!” instant of attraction to each other based on that very first blush, but then they actually start talking to each other, and it only becomes realer and more meaningful; they recognize in each other a kindred spirit and someone they want to spend the rest of their lives knowing.

whether or not they end up going out at any point during that first conference—sara mentions in episode 08x02 “a la cart” that she wanted to ask grissom out to dinner after his first lecture, but we don’t know if she ever found the courage to do so or not or if he said yes if she did—we can’t at the moment say*.

* though it’s possible we’ll get some clarification in the reboot. who knows?

we also can’t say exactly what shape their relationship takes during that prelapsarian time between their first meeting in san francisco and when sara moves to vegas two and a half years later, particularly in terms of whether or not they sleep together.

still.

whatever does or doesn’t transpire between them, we know that their connection remains strong enough going forward that it never actually breaks; they are in love with each other from day #1, and regardless of their relationship status or where they’re living or what’s going on between them, that feeling never changes.

it hasn’t changed for them, going on 23+ years now.

and that’s remarkable, particularly considering who they are and how they’re wired.

neither one of them is the type of person you would typically expect to fall in love at first sight. to see someone they’d never met before and have this all-in, “this is my person now” response is not logical or pragmatic or realistic or scientific; it’s a completely emotional, irrational, throw-caution-to-the-wind kind of deal, antithetical to the way that they would usually live their lives.

that they’re both somewhat scared of the intensity of that feeling to start out with makes a lot of sense.

however, it also makes sense that for no matter how scared they are, they can also never bring themselves to completely walk away from what they’re feeling—not when it means so much to both of them.

in episode 08x07 “goodbye & good luck,” sara states in her goodbye letter to grissom that she feels like she’s loved him forever, suggesting that same kind of “before vs. after” dichotomy and “all at once, i loved you” experience alluded to in episode 02x12 “you’ve got male;” she also talks about being with him is the only home she’s ever known.

for her, meeting grissom clearly marked the turning point in her life. before him, she was aimless and alone, convinced that the world was a dark, hopeless, violent place where everyone eventually bailed on her; with him, she found her place and someone who helped her feel safe and cared for, who earned her trust and showed her the kind of love she had never known before.

grissom is likewise changed by the very act of falling in love with sara; as he tells heather in “immortality,” before sara, he had built a shell around his heart and basically lost all faith in humanity, but after meeting her, she restored his “faith in the human being.”

as i talk about in this post,

sara is the game-changer for him.

he takes one look at the girl with the ponytail sitting on the front row at his lecture, and he is just gone.

whereas he has been able to downplay his feelings regarding his team members and avoid thinking too much about the implications of his relationships with them, with sara, he can’t do that. he is instantly in love with her, and she doesn’t just chip away at the shell around his heart—she completely cracks through it.

sara is the messiest of messy human beings—full of contradictions and complexities and irrational feelings, the kind of person who causes grissom to have to make impossible choices and be honest with himself in a way that he has never been before—and yet grissom can’t help but love her and care about her and want her in his life.

around her, his rationality goes out the window. logic tells him that he should go nowhere near her.

and yet he’s drawn to her, in spite of himself. and so he ignores his better judgment.

that they both affect each other so deeply really is something.

anyway.

i don’t know that these thoughts are especially coherent, but suffice it to say, “sometimes it only takes one hit,” indeed.

thank you for sharing your interpretation of this scene!

______

so, first off, the way i interpret this scene has a lot to do with the gsr timeline surrounding it.

to my mind, it's really important that the episode before this one is episode 02x15 "burden of proof," which ends with grissom arriving at the conclusion that he needs to be more attentive to and even affectionate with sara or else risk losing her (both romantically and as an employee).

it's also important that in the episodes directly following this one (including, notably, episodes 02x17 "felonious monk," 02x21 "anatomy of a lye," and 02x23 "the hunger artist"), whenever grissom works with sara, he acts highly comfortable around and is oftentimes flirtatious with her, with no hint of awkwardness in her presence; he still very much seems to be in the business of attempting to fulfill his mission from episode 02x15 "burden of proof" (which is basically straight up just to woo her).

given that grissom is in "i need to win her back" mode going into the events of episode 02x16 "primum non nocere" and that he seemingly remains in that same mode after said events take place, as well, i tend to think that nothing sara says or does within the episode really throws him off of his game or upsets him all that much.

so, then, to talk about the content of the actual episode:

grissom himself is the one to get the ball rolling.

his desire to prove to sara that he actually does care about her influences him to say the "since i met you" line in the first place.

he's been thinking about how important sara is to him so much over the last few weeks (since he sent her the green plant) that he just can't help but blurt out how she literally changes his whole worldview; the words leave his mouth in an instant of unguardedness, both unpremeditated and unselfconscious on his part.

—but the "unselfconsciousness" lasts only for a moment.

because, as is typical with grissom, the second he says something revealing, he immediately feels fear and starts to second-guess himself, wondering if he has just crossed a line.

consequently, he then quickly covers his admission so as not to make it too much of a thing™ and does so by continuing to discuss the case.

while he very much wants sara to hear what he says (in the sense that he does desire for her to know that he cares about and admires her), he also doesn't want either one of them to have to act on his words or make anything of them, particularly to the extent that the status quo of their current relationship would have to change.

hence why he washes down one of the most emotionally revealing, honest, bare confessions he's ever made in his whole life with a chaser of "business as usual"—to make sure that there's no room for any kind of response to what he says; to keep things in the realm of ideas as opposed to actions.

his tactic works, as sara is too stunned by what he says to initially respond and then quickly loses her chance to do so even once she returns to sensibility because by then he has already moved on, continuing to talk shop as if nothing had happened.

as stated above, sara goes away from this moment as eager to return to the topic of what grissom said as he is to avoid doing so.

and that brings us to the scene in question, when sara drops her "beauty, grissom. remember?" quip, directly invoking the word that has been hovering between them, unspoken but tangibly present, ever since their discussion about baseball.

if i haven't done so already, i'll show my cards up front:

i don't think grissom's expression after sara says her "beauty, grissom. remember?" line so much communicates anger or a sense of "how dare you?" as it does pure shock on his part.

here he is, thinking he successfully "got away with" dropping a shakespearean-level line on her without having to reckon with the implications of what said line means.

he's processing evidence, innocently musing about a brand name, no longer on his guard whatsoever (because, after all, by now, hours have passed since he actually dropped the line itself).

then, all of a sudden sara is bringing up said line in all of its incredibly forward, incredibly revealing glory and fixing him with this flirtatious, challenging look that says your move, cowboy.

to say that her doing so stuns the socks off of him would be an understatement.

she's getting dangerously close to breaking their "unwritten rules."

as i talk about in this post,

sometimes grissom decides it is all right for him and sara to be touch-y or couple-y when they’re alone together (see episode 02x21 “anatomy of a lye”), and when he does so, sara is supposed to go along with his actions without asking questions or betraying any explicit emotional reaction to what he is doing. she can’t act too surprised or too pleased or make any sort of overt comment on what is happening. her job is to passively accept his affections and understand that they represent the “best she’s going to get,” given her and grissom’s current situation.

likewise, sometimes grissom decides to be verbally affectionate with sara when they’re alone together (“since i met you,” “i don’t need one; i have you”), and, again, sara must accept these overtures from him without either comment or explicit reaction. the implicit contract in place is that if she wants these moments to keep happening even just occasionally, then she must play things cool and not do anything to spook grissom or make him regret his effusions...

sara typically is not allowed to initiate affectionate exchanges between herself and grissom, except on very rare occasions. when she does so, they must be alone, and she mustn’t specifically label what she is doing as romantic (see, for example, when she “wipes the chalk off of grissom’s face” in episode 02x05 “scuba doobie-doo”).

on the few occasions when sara does assert herself, acknowledge anything beyond what grissom is comfortable with, and/or explicitly mention feelings and/or her and grissom’s relationship history, grissom becomes visibly disconcerted, reacting as if he has been smacked in the face (see episodes 01x16 “too tough to die,” 02x15 “burden of proof,” and 03x22 “play with fire”). it’s very clear in these instances that sara is “breaking the rules,” and grissom barely knows how to respond to her brazenness. most often, he simply retreats.

to my mind, sara bringing up grissom's effusively affectionate statement from earlier comes close to breaking these rules, as

her doing so involves her making while not necessarily an overt comment on grissom's previous verbal pda, certainly an oblique one, enough to intimate to him that she is actively responding to his behavior; and

her doing so represents her asserting herself, bringing up a topic of conversation grissom had previously closed and trying to entice him to interact with it.

however, while in making her quip, sara comes close to breaking the rules, i ultimately don't think she actually does so, as she doesn't come right out and ask, "grissom, when you told me you only started caring about beauty after you met me, what did you mean?" and instead only insinuates some kind of meaning along those lines, leaving it to him to either acknowledge her reference or ignore it as he will.

her leaving him that wiggle room is key, as it means that the choice of whether or not to engage in an honest discussion about his admission remains his.

even though she's pushing up against his boundaries, trying to see if there's any give, she's still ultimately respecting them.

respecting him.

seeing if he's up to continue playing the game without forcing him to do so.

had she been more straightforward or adamant, then i think grissom would have been more on guard.

however, as is, my read on his reaction is that while he is momentarily flustered, he quickly comes to understand that she's not confronting him but rather just bantering—trying to see if he's willing to engage with what he previously said but doing so in a way that doesn't have stakes.

you can see his brain literally go

"did she really just say what i think she said?!?!" in the moment as he scrambles to explain himself and account for his previous behavior but do so in a way that won't fundamentally alter the fabric of his and sara's relationship.

however, that panic lasts only for a second, as a) sara immediately looks away from him, indicating that she doesn't necessarily expect him to respond*, and, b) he quickly discovers the toenail in the sheets, which moves the conversation along without further need for him to comment on her innuendo.

* on her end of things, i think that as soon as she says her quip and sees that startled look in grissom's eyes, she recognizes that he's not going to take the bait and so she withdraws, knowing better than to press.

she's not pushing him to say more than he's comfortable saying, and she's certainly not seeking to change the basis of their relationship.

the exchange is a harmless one, and for that reason, he doesn't allow himself to get too flustered—even when sara follows up one brazen quip with another and ~casually mentions~ how she wishes that she were having more sex, *cough, cough, ahem, ahem, gilbert*.

that he continues to work with sara in close proximity—and even fit in a couple of classic gsr personal space violations as he does so—suggests that this is a no harm, no foul situation as far as he is concerned, and especially considering that, as stated above, his behavior toward sara remains warm and comfortable throughout the rest of the season (only changing come s3, when he learns that sara is dating hank).

over all, i think he is actually pretty pleased with the outcome of the situation, as he manages to say something that indicates to sara that he cares about her and receives confirmation from her in return that not only did she catch his meaning but she also welcomes it; however, this whole exchange generally does little to "rock their boat," meaning that they can continue working together without risking making any kind of changes to their dynamic.

in his mind, that's a win-win-win scenario:

☑ he's wooed the girl; ☑ the girl knows he's wooed her and is receptive to him having done so; ☑ however, no one else has to know and nothing about their working relationship has to change.

so despite initially being a little bit startled, i think he leaves that exchange feeling pretty okay—like, yes, he wore his heart on his sleeve, but at least no harm came of it.

he got the message across loud and clear, but sara's not going to push him to act on that message unless he's ready.

had she been any more aggressive than she is in that scene, then i think the whole exchange would have gone down very differently, and he would have completely freaked out. but as is, she reads him well enough to know just how far she can push without crossing that line. it really is a testament to how well she knows him.

anyway, that's my take—though i certainly acknowledge that my read is not the only one possible.