#csi commentary

EVIDENCE:

Grissom’s home in “The Strip Strangler” (01x23):

This place feels a lot like Grissom to me, especially for this era of his life. It’s got tons of specimens up on the wall. It’s got lots of books. It’s got what looks to be a nice sound system. It’s not super tidy, but I also wouldn’t call it messy. It is a bit cold and sterile looking, though, which I think comes a lot from the lighting but also the industrial loft vibes that don’t really have anything to soften them.

Grissom’s home in “Burden of Proof” (02x15):

I was always convinced this looked like a different place from the last one, but on close inspection it could be intended to be a small portion of the space from the first season, just shot up closer (maybe because they’d disassembled or couldn’t use the first space and wanted to recreate as little of it as possible) and with warmer light.

Sara’s home in “You’ve Got Mail” (02x12):

This appears to be a tiny studio apartment. Given that her bed is in the foreground and her kitchen is in the background, there doesn’t appear to be any more to it than what we see here. There are two bar stools and a desk and chair, but otherwise there’s no seating area and no dining table. This really is an apartment for a girl who does nothing but work, read, and listen to her police scanner. It also seems to have little in the way of personalization (although there are some plants, on the bar, fridge, and shelving unit!).

This is pure speculation / headcanon, but I could see this being a small, furnished place she chose quickly, maybe even intending it to be a short-term things, when she first moved to Vegas and in which she finds herself a year and a half later because she really hasn’t bothered to pursue anything but work (and, I mean, obviously spending as much time as possible with Grissom, in that capacity) since she moved.

Sara’s home in “Nesting Dolls” (05x13):

Okay, discussing this from the perspective we see in the first and last shots I’ve included, the near wall has the front door (which looks like maybe a door to outside, with a bicycle opposite it), the far wall has a window, the righthand wall has a door to the bathroom, and the lefthand wall has something with shutters over it, which I assumed was a window because of all the light coming from it but could I guess also be a closet (because there doesn’t otherwise seem to be one).

I’ve always thought this was another studio, with a bed in the far lefthand corner. There appears to be something there with a blanket (or blankets) on it, but it’s hard to make out what it actually is. At any rate, this place looks larger than the first place either way, and it seems to have some decorative flourishes that actually belong to Sara, so it’s a step up from her first place.

The bedroom in “Way to Go” (06x24):

This is the bedroom that will be discussed in more detail below.

The bedroom in “Leaping Lizards” (07x22) (also seen in later episodes):

When I first (re)watched this episode, I assumed this was Grissom’s (new) home and Sara was just spending time there—i.e., that they were not technically living together though in practice they basically were. I think this is probably mostly just based on the fact that I had a hard time believing two people would be living together while still conducting a secret relationship (and, again, I still thought they were in practice basically living together).

I guess I revised my opinion mostly based on personal preference, though I do think Sara’s quick disappearance from Vegas in 08x07 would have been hard to orchestrate if she had still been living in her own apartment, so I will say I think they are living together at this point.

In my opinion, this bedroom looks the most like it belongs to a home they might share together, is the most inviting of the places we’ve seen for either of them up to this time, and is the most sophisticated. I will echo Goldilocks and say this is where they get things just right:

Nice wall colours;

Nice artwork;

Appearance maybe of vegetation outside the window;

Nice decorative touches beside the TV;

Bedside tables present but not overcrowded;

Nice lamps, with appropriate ambient lighting that does not require the use of scarves;

Good-sized bed;

Simple but comfy-looking bedspread or duvet; and

Dog.

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS AND ASSUMPTIONS:

Grissom is older (has been in the workforce longer) and more senior in the workplace (has a higher paying job), so unsurprisingly his “townhouse” looks larger and nicer than Sara’s first two apartments.

(He calls it a townhouse early in the series, but it doesn’t look like a townhouse to me, being from all appearances one level and above street level. But I still headcanon it as being a townhouse, with its own entrance, because that is my prerogative. Anyway, that’s not the point.)

I find it highly unlikely that, whenever Sara and Grissom move in together, they would move into a place that is smaller and less nice than where Grissom was previously living. It’s more likely that they would either (1) move Sara into his place or (2) together move into a new place that is as nice as or (because pooling their money) nicer than where Grissom had previously been living.

When I speak in generalities here, I’m speaking from a North American context. I don’t expect that these generalities would necessarily hold elsewhere in the world.

ANALYSIS:

Size:

Based on what we can see, the room seems on the smaller side, for the context. (By context, I mean what we see of other places characters in the show live over the years, the fact that they’re not twentysomethings or living in New York City, etc.) We can’t see the wall on the left, but I’d expect the bed is supposed to be somewhat centred.

You could argue, if it were a real bedroom, that perhaps it’s in fact larger than how it’s shot to appear; you could also argue that if you wanted a different headcanon. But the point here is that that is how it’s been shot to appear—as in, that is the choice “the show” (its creative team) made.

The room is much smaller than what one would imagine finding in Grissom’s quite spacious townhouse. It’s also smaller than a Las Vegas hotel room would be. (The only way I can see it working as a hotel room is if it were somehow part of a larger rental unit or maybe some sort of bed and breakfast.)

Even though bigger is not always better, I don’t imagine Sara and Grissom moving into this bedroom, which feels somewhat small for them as a shared bedroom, when, based on Grissom’s townhouse, they must have had the option for something larger.

This room does feel the right size for Sara, though, based on what we’ve seen of her other apartments. It could either be the bedroom of the last apartment we saw (if we believe there was a hidden door to a bedroom and ensuite) or, if one gets studio vibes from that place, like I do, this would be a reasonable step up for Sara into a place that’s a bit bigger, with one bedroom.

Furnishings:

Bed:

The bed looks like a queen to me. I expect a single adult with enough space and money would likely have a double or a queen-sized bed. With enough space and money, a couple might go for a king-sized bed, but they might also have something smaller. (A single adult could also have a king, but this would presumably be rarer. I love a king-sized bed in a hotel, even just for myself, but I don’t really know how common they are out in the real world.) A hotel could also have a queen or a king.

Based on the above, any of the options is compatible with the bed size.

Bedside tables:

The room has two bedside tables. I’d expect a single adult with enough space and money would likely have two bedside tables, whether it be because they potentially want to “entertain” (if you get my drift), for the aesthetics (symmetry is beautiful!), for extra storage, as a place to put another lamp or more decorative elements, or whatever combination of the above. I’d also expect a couple or a hotel to have two bedside tables.

Based on the above, any of the options is compatible with the bedside tables.

Laundry basket:

This is my best guess for what’s behind Sara, to our left (her right)? I’m open to other suggestions! Anyway, I’d expect a laundry basket in someone’s home, but not in a hotel room.

Bed linens:

The bed linens are light green with a bit of light blue. I used to think the pattern was a paisley, but looking at it more it looks like a floral (or maybe a vegetational!) motif. The front pillow is a decorative bolster. The two pillows behind it look like they have pillow sham covers, but you can see that they’re stuffed in a way that makes them look just slightly lumpy (not smooth as you’d imagine at, for example, a nice hotel). The two pillows behind that presumably have standard pillow cases.

This is a less sophisticated look than what we see in the bedroom in 07x22 and onward. The bedding is also not what I would imagine Grissom buying (both because of what we see in that subsequent bedroom and just generally). Hotels usually stick with standard white bedding, so I can only imagine these linens in a hotel in a particular kind of bed and breakfast context.

I actually think, though, that these bed linens are a perfect representation of Sara and where she is in her life.

First of all, we know Sara often dresses very practically for work, but she also dresses up for every occasion in which we’ve seen her in which that would be appropriate. She does wear makeup to work and straighten her har. She has some nice decorative elements to her apartment in “Nesting Dolls.” In 2021, JF even described her as a “girly girl.” (I’d possibly have questioned this statement coming from anyone else—I think JF is more of a girly girl—but if JF believes it then so do I.)

But we also know that Sara spent time in foster care. She’s a bit of an awkward loner. She never told anyone but Grissom about her family. I don’t really imagine her having any significant mentor figures. I think she probably didn’t really have any good role models for how to be an adult. (We can maybe see this in all the takeout she eats, although to be fair my mother is a great cook—literally taught foods and nutrition—and I am still highly takeout dependent.) She also wouldn’t have had much money, and I imagine her still not spending a lot of money on unnecessary things. Moreover, I don’t imagine her having had any significant romantic relationships before Grissom.

All of that is to say that . . . I think she’s advanced intellectually / academically / professionally. I think in some ways, in terms of all she went through as a child, she has wisdom and experiences beyond her years. I even think she’s a bit of an old soul. (She’d kind of have to be, to vibe with Grissom.) But in other ways . . . I think in her personal life, she’s maybe been a bit behind what one might expect, because, like I mentioned, she just never had any good role models for how to be an adult.

But now she’s finally in the first real romantic relationship of her life—with a man who’s about to turn 50, no less—so I think it finally makes sense to her to try to step it up a notch, and that’s why the bed setup is maybe trying to be a bit fancier than what she has likely had in the past. But, looking at everything I described about the linens, they (as does the rest of the decor) seem both fancier than what she might have had in the past and at the same time not as sophisticated as what we see in the bedroom in 07x22 and onward. So I actually think these bed linens (and the decor) do a really great job of depicting where Sara is in her life in that moment.

Also: vegetation!

(None of what I’m saying here is meant to imply any general expectations for where people are or are not meant to be at a particular age or time in their lives—I’m like a permanent boomerang child, so I would never. The expectations conveyed are specifically based on how long Sara’s been on her own, how long she’s been employed as a professional, where she lives (Vegas), where else we see her live (other homes), etc.)

Decor:

The bedside tables both have a lamp and are covered in a lot of framed pictures and knickknacks. Honestly they’re not very functional; they’re way too full of stuff. (The one beside Grissom looks like it may have a book on it, but no room for anything else, like a glass of water.) They also look like they’ve been decorated by the same (one!) person, and (though I don’t like to stereotype by gender) I think they have a decidedly more feminine vibe.

I can’t imagine these bedside tables (very fully decorated, not very functional) in a hotel, again unless maybe it were a very particular kind of bed and breakfast. (Does anyone else remember the Brooklyn Nine-Nine episode with the bed and breakfast with all the dolls?)

I also can’t imagine Grissom having chosen that decor for his own bedside table, whether it be in his own bedroom while on his own or in a shared bedroom with Sara.

I think it fits perfectly for what I’ve described above for Sara, though, as someone who’s trying to make her space nicer now that she’s finally regularly entertaining the love of her life but hasn’t quite hit the level of sophistication we see in the bedroom in 07x22 and onward.

Moreover, the scarf (or whatever) over the lamp to create more ambient lighting, which we see on Grissom’s side of the bed, has definite “woman entertaining a man” vibes. Vibes are not definitive—nothing I’ve described here really is definitive—but there is nothing presented to us, before, during, or after this scene, to suggest that we are not supposed to follow the most natural and obvious interpretations. So, you know, when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras—unless maybe you’re in Africa.

Clothing:

Sara is wearing a robe with a floral decoration. Grissom is wearing WP’s favourite shirt plus a pair of jeans. (The jeans aren’t visible in the episode but are seen in still shots of the scene.)

Sara’s robe is not of the kind I would expect to be provided by a hotel. I also find it unlikely that she and Grissom would have gone home and packed these very specific items then gone to a hotel after Brass’s shooting.

Sara could have a robe she keeps at Grissom’s, since they’ve been dating for about a year. She could also have a robe at her own home, obviously. If anything, Sara being in a robe and Grissom being in street clothes would maybe also suggest that this is most likely Sara’s apartment, but I don’t think that’s a very strong suggestion.

OVERALL IMPRESSION AND CONCLUSION:

Context:

But what are we actually talking about here? Do I mean that Sara and Grissom have sex exactly once (at one extreme) or that, e.g., Grissom is flying into San Francisco for twice monthly booty calls? Neither exactly, although, if I had to pick, I’d say something closer to the former than to the latter.

My very specific headcanon is that they have sex repeatedly over a period of several days on three separate occasions (which is how I wrote it into my story of how they first meet). The first time is at the February 1998 AAFS conference in San Francisco, the second is when Grissom is giving a week of lectures at Berkeley in fall 1998 (and kind of subconsciously looking for an opportunity to see Sara), and the third is when Sara comes to Vegas in fall 2000 to assist following the shooting of Holly Gribbs but has not yet officially accepted her permanent position with the Vegas crime lab. (There’s also some occasional phone sex in which Grissom is a strictly silent participant.)

What I’ve just outlined is very much a headcanon, though, and not an interpretation. The important points—the points that I would say come closer to interpretation, or are the underpinnings of my interpretation, at least—are (1) that they have sex and (2) that this is not a regular occurrence or part of an officially recognized ongoing romantic relationship.

Also underpinning this interpretation is my understanding that the characters have a somewhat instant connection and (though I do not go in for literal “love at first sight”) begin to fall in love with each other as soon as they meet at that 1998 AAFS conference. I further believe that they cross whatever the threshold is for actually being in love long before Sara moves to Vegas, that Sara recognizes that she is in love with Grissom by the time she moves to Vegas, and that Grissom takes several more years to admit it to himself in exactly those words.

I sort of assume that anyone who’s here on Tumblr bothering to read GSR meta probably agrees that they started to fall in love in San Francisco? That’s not really the topic of this post, though—that could surely be a post of its own—so for now I’ll just point to “A La Cart” (08x02) and the discussions contained therein: “we’ve always had a relationship,” “nine years,” trying to get the nerve to ask him to dinner, she had a ponytail (said with such softness), etc.

I’ll also mention that I think that Grissom reaches his conclusion (per “Ending Happy,” 07x21)—or really his personal understanding—that love without sex makes one sad only after he is in a committed, long-term romantic / sexual relationship with Sara in Las Vegas. I think that, by that time, when he looks back at the history of his relationship with Sara, he is no longer able to separate out knowing Sara from loving her; he feels he has always loved her.

Thus Grissom sees an inextricable connection between (1) being in love and (2) sex that makes him happy. I might separate out Sara and Grissom’s initial sexual encounters in February 1998 and say that, while at that point Grissom is still in the process of falling in love for the first time, the connection between him and Sara is significant enough for the encounters to be meaningful and enjoyable (happy!) for him. But he looks back upon it and sees only Sara and love; he is unable to draw any distinction between the two.

(I’m not meaning to imply a large difference between what Grissom says and how I understand it. This is just an explanation of how I see Sara and Grissom having sex the week they meet as fitting with Grissom’s belief that sex without love makes you sad, despite my own lack of belief in love (or anything really worthy of that name) at first sight.)

Canon evidence:

Although I think canon itself has a paucity of evidence on this subject either way (albeit, with an abundance of evidence that could perhaps be marshaled in either direction), several interactions between Sara and Grissom strike me more and more upon each rewatch as being most compatible with the conclusion that they’ve previously slept together (and even occasionally incompatible with the idea that they haven’t).

The “cite your source” airplane bathroom scene in “Unfriendly Skies” (01x09) is really the scene that says to me that they must have slept together before. Yes, that was always super flirty. But, every time I think about that scene, I become more convinced that Gil Grissom would not pressure his new, young subordinate (even someone who has also previously been his friend) to “cite her source” on her “high altitude” sexual experience (mile high club airplane bathroom sex) had they not previously had a relationship that was sexual or that they’d explicitly acknowledged wanting to make sexual (and somehow the latter seems more awkward and unlikely than the former).

For almost any other male lead on any other TV show, this could be some sort of par for the course inappropriate workplace flirtation. But not for Gil Grissom—not for the Gil Grissom we come to know and to love so well. Okay, that actually isn’t really our Gil Grissom yet, though! This is still the first half of the first season, and Grissom has started out a lot more like your traditional detective show male lead! Yeah . . . but I am not in back in the first season. And, looking back on the whole thing, in the context of the series (and what we subsequently learn about Grissom) as a whole, this scene only makes sense to me if they’ve already had that kind of intimacy.

“Burden of Proof” (02x15) is another episode that leads me to believe the characters have had a previous intimate relationship. Sara’s frustration with Grissom in this episode, for example, makes the most sense in the context of her having had some expectations for him that on some level go beyond professional or professional friendship. Moreover, in my opinion, Grissom’s appeal is at its nadir for the whole series here, yet Sara is still there lustfully shoving her breasts into the man’s arm even as she’s getting really pissed and frustrated with him, and . . . I don’t know. There’s just something about the whole thing that makes me feel like he’s shown her a good time.

Then there’s “Primum Non Nocere” (02x16): “Since I met you,” my beloved. But honestly, given Sara and Grissom’s professional / workplace relationship, I also find that interaction quite unlikely if they don’t have some previously acknowledged desire for each other (because, if she weren’t into him—which obviously she is!—that interaction would be a kind of weird thing). And I have a more difficult time believing these two awkward science nerds have openly talked about being into each other romantically / sexually but not had sex than just believing that they’ve had sex.  (Have you seen what happens when that man tries to talk to her???)

It's not a lot, I know, but these are the three episodes that particularly make me think . . . okay, for my understanding of the characters and their relationship, these two must have had sex before.

The evolution of the relationship:

I’ve been told that some people have a difficult time believing that our two lovely science nerds could have started having sex and then stopped for five to seven years. I feel like I could answer that concern with one word (Grissom), but I’ll try to explain in more detail how I imagine the relationship evolving and why I don’t see that concern as any sort of obstacle to my interpretation. (I actually consider that issue consistent with my headcanon.)

For a start, if you’re interested, I’ll refer you to this post on how I imagine Grissom’s background and how he came to be the man with a shell around his heart, a man who’s fully convinced himself that he’s unsuitable for any kind of romantic relationship.

Second, I’ll quote this explanation for my headcanon that Grissom comes to see Sara in San Francisco in fall 1998 but then does not see her again until fall 2000, when she comes to Las Vegas after the shooting of Holly Gribbs (from here):

On why they didn’t see each other for two years; or, The Grissom of it all: To be clear, I didn’t just get bored and decide to skip ahead two years. I wanted Sara and Grissom to get a little early intimacy but not a lot; I didn’t want them to have (for lack of a better description) a relationship relationship; and I didn’t want Sara to have moved to Vegas with the definite expectation that they would (even if she was moving for Grissom). So why didn’t they see each other for two years? Sara, as we know, was really playing the long game here; she knew better than to scare off her eminent entomologist with any fast moves. So it all came down to Grissom. But Grissom found an excuse to see Sara the second time (the Berkeley opportunity in fall 1998), despite always being busy, so why nothing more for the two years that followed? Obviously the trip to Berkeley was just a pretext to see Sara again, but I’m not sure he realized (or realized the full extent to which) this was the case. The way I see it, on a very surface level, Grissom may have realized this girl had made him feel something unusual (for him), and he liked her, so, when he got the invitation to Berkeley, he thought it would be nice to see her again (fall 1998). I think, though, that slightly below the surface his reason for wanting to see Sara again was to disprove his feelings for her—to show himself that he had imagined things; that it was all in his head; that he liked, admired, and respected Sara and her brilliance as a scientist; but that what he felt for her wasn’t really all that different from what he felt for, e.g., Catherine or Warrick. But we know that’s not what he found. My most sincere apologies, because from here on in I am really going to mangle a physics metaphor, and I have not studied physics since high school. On a deeply subconscious level, Grissom was, on the one hand, falling madly in love with Sara (even more so after he spent that second week with her in fall 1998) and, on the other hand, profoundly terrified by this. These are the equal and opposite forces that acted upon him for many years. Objects in motion stay in motion and objects at rest stay at rest, unless acted upon by an outside force. In this case, Grissom’s two opposing sentiments cancelled each other out; the net force was zero. As the magnitude of one force—the love—increased, so did that of the other—the fear. Grissom kept moving much in the same way he always had; he maintained the status quo. Sometimes, though, something would happen to disrupt that status quo—the intervention of an outside force. In this case, it happened to be the shooting of Holly Gribbs. If Holly Gribbs hadn’t come along, though, it would have been something else—a different change in his life, or even (as it would be on later occasions) an action by Sara herself. Again, apologies: I know the metaphor was mangled, but I hope the idea came through!

Overall, I think Grissom’s background is important here in that sex has never been an important part of his life. It’s also important in terms of the fear he has of how he would screw up any real romantic relationship with this woman for whom he has all these feelings he doesn’t quite understand.

That Sara and Grissom are never having sex on a regular basis is probably also crucial. These encounters between the two of them have been isolated incidents—incidents that take place as exceptions to, not as part of, their normal, everyday lives; so, by not pursing a romantic / sexual relationship, Sara and Grissom are not quitting cold turkey something to which they’ve become accustomed but rather maintaining what has been by and large their status quo (yearning, yo). Moreover, while I think that at the time of their sexual encounters Grissom finds himself unable to resist Sara, I also think this has all been quite unsettling for him, and that he is in many ways content to return to the steady, emotionally uneventful life he’s created for himself.

Okay, you say, but that’s the point—Grissom isn’t able to resist Sara when he sees her! So how does he manage to resist her now that she’s in Vegas? Well, 9,999 men might not be able to resist—might not even try. But this is Grissom.

Grissom is, as addictedtostorytelling has stated, pretty much the king of compartmentalization; he’s big on control in that respect, big on drawing boundaries. (I’d recommend the linked post—and its linked posts—if you want to read more discussion of that topic.) He’s exactly the guy who would think he could set up boundaries and compartmentalize whatever relationship he’s had with Sara, whatever feelings he’s had for Sara. He thinks so very highly of Sara, and he believes he’d fail at a real long-term romantic relationship with her. But I think he fully believes that he can invite this lovely young woman to Vegas, enjoy working with her, and draw this very strict boundary that (as per the crime lab’s official policy!) nothing romantic / sexual can happen between them. (And he’s delusional enough in this respect to think he can be content with that.)

In “Sex, Lies, and Larvae” (01x10), for example, we see Grissom looking very shocked when Sara asks if he wants to sleep with her. In my headcanon, he has indeed explicitly stated that nothing sexual can happen between them once she’s working for him at the lab (which she still considers to be a more advantageous situation than the two of them living in different states). So, if he thinks it’s settled and understood between the two of them that any romantic / sexual relationship between them cannot take place or be discussed while she is working for him, he would indeed be shocked by her violating that boundary and raising the topic at work with such a brazen question.

As I mentioned above, in my discussion of why (in my headcanon) Sara and Grissom don’t see each for two years, Grissom is terrified of his feelings. The more he feels for Sara, the more scared he gets, and the more conflicted he gets. He’s not a guy who’s never been in love, finally falls in love, and acts accordingly; he doesn’t fall in love and immediately try to marry the girl. He finally falls in love and then spends seven years convinced he’d screw up any real romantic relationship with this so very good, so very lovely, so very perfect woman; he spends seven years denying and suppressing and repressing how he feels about her. He’s got this repressed / suppressed war raging inside himself.

So the more he falls for her, the more he feels, the more he tries to suppress his feelings, the more he drives himself a little crazy. He thinks he can control it—control all these feelings—but occasionally he can’t—he loves her too much for that, in the end. And I think that’s part of why he’s so push and pull, why he ends up doing this whole hot / cold dance with her for so long. He thinks he can set up these boundaries, compartmentalize, etc. But his love for Sara is too strong; he can’t, in the end.

In that way the sexual component actually reinforces my understanding of the love component (the progression of his feelings). The fact that he’s suppressing all these feelings and emotions and urges—all these things with which for over forty years he’s never really had to deal—are what lead him into his sometimes inconsistent behaviour towards Sara in the years before they enter a romantic / sexual relationship in Las Vegas. We see throughout those first years of canon how he struggles to deal with all of this. (FWIW, I am really not looking for a discussion of this very particular aspect of our topic right now, please and thank you.)

Moreover (a last-minute addition, though I have kind of thought about it before):

I haven’t fully fleshed this one out, but . . . the way he definitely wants to **** her from the minute she shows up in town, even though all his non-Sara sexual experiences have made him sad . . . well, I just kind of think he subconsciously already knows from past experience that ******* her is going to be good for him—even if that fact terrifies him, and even if he thinks he’d screw it all up.

And while we’re here, on the subject:

The following paragraph was not originally part of this post as my thoughts here are a bit more nebulous, but I wanted to add it in per my agreement with what was said in the comments:

Their sort of instant intellectual / mental / emotional connection (same interests, operating on the same wavelength, that kind of thing) is what allows them to get close enough for the sexual / physical connection, but the sexual / physical connection is what fully entangles them and cements the bond. Otherwise it’s hard to imagine these two awkward loners staying so familiar / intimate (in a non-sexual / physical sense) over all that time and distance. It reminds me of that expression about how, if you shoot for the stars, you might just hit the moon. So, even though the sexual / physical aspect of the relationship doesn’t become a permanent thing initially, it’s what allows them to become close enough for that long-term intellectual / mental / emotional bond to continue developing, which is what eventually (yes, after a really long time, Dr. Grissom) leads to their official romantic / sexual / physical relationship.

But does it matter:

Okay, I’ve devoted a somewhat lengthy post to the topic, but in the end I have to say . . . I really don’t think the question of whether our two lovely science nerds had sex in San Francisco is the most important point; sex is not the most important part of their connection.

As much as I have a lot of feelings on the sex question, it’s secondary to the fact of them falling in love. As I mentioned above, Grissom falls in love for the first time at the age of 41. He feels a connection to Sara that he’s never felt to anyone else before. Yet he still doesn’t have what one might think would be the natural response to this—deciding he wants to date the girl, deciding he wants to marry the girl, deciding he will do whatever it takes to make the girl his for life, etc. Instead he proceeds to spend seven years repressing, trying to suppress, and trying to compartmentalize his feelings about it. Let’s be real, that’s oddball behaviour whether Sara and Grissom had sex in San Francisco or not.

(I love it, obviously. It wouldn’t have been a good story if he’d had the typical response and just tried to marry the girl immediately, if he’d been the kind of guy who would have had the typical response and just tried to marry the girl immediately. I love both these nerds so much. And I love their love story.)

Of course, I’d also say that, the sex question being secondary to the love question, if Grissom can repress / try to suppress his love for Sara for that many years, he can also repress / try to suppress his lust for her. Those are both boundaries he thinks he can keep, but he is never fully successful—his feelings for her can never be fully suppressed. His love for Sara is too strong—and I say specifically his love. Though I think his love for Sara is a precondition to his lust, I believe he could more easily have spent a lifetime suppressing that lust. It is his love that inevitably and irrevocably breaks down his barriers and boundaries, that breaks the dam of his feelings. His love for Sara is too strong, and eventually he must face his fears and do his best for the woman he loves.

Conclusion:

Do I think my interpretation is the best? Yeah, of course, I do! That’s just kind of how these things work. But really I think you should go with whatever interpretation or headcanon makes *you* happiest—there’s nothing clear-cut enough about canon that you can’t make an argument either way. Fans have made arguments either way. Fics have been written with all sorts of interpretations. The CSI writers themselves weren’t even in agreement.

11. hobbies and interests (sara)

In this response, I discussed my headcanon about Sara and surfing, so now I’m going to talk a bit about Sara and the arts/pop culture (namely, TV, movies, books, and music).

TV:

I think Sara’s pretty literate when it comes to pop culture and the arts. Her literal first line is a reference to the 1970s-1980s sitcom Three’s Company. (See here.) She knows who Jordan Catalano is.

I see Sara as quite a loner, and I can imagine her maybe having had a lot of random TV shows on in the background when she was studying or relaxing after work. I can also imagine her maybe previously having gotten attached to some random TV show while she was in foster care and never had proper control of the TV to ensure she could watch to it; maybe there was even an older show that depicted the kind of nice, supposedly happy family Sara wished she’d had (although I simultaneously can see her thinking all those shows were b.s.). But I have a hard time seeing CSI-era Sara getting attached to specific TV shows the way we all do.

That said, I can see her possibly getting into The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report (pulling from my own love of the former and JF’s love of the latter, as well as my view of Sara as someone with progressive politics); I think those used to be (maybe still are?) repeated a couple of times throughout the day (or at least they were where I live), which would be helpful with her schedule. I also headcanon Sara and Grissom watching The West Wing together one or more times because I think Grissom would have an uncharacteristic partiality for the young secret service agent in the first season and that amuses me.

Movies:

I read an interview with JF in which she said that she would watch romcoms after work as a way of relaxing and distancing herself from all the serious subject matter of the show. I think maybe after a few years in Vegas Sara realizes she can’t just read crime books and listen to her police scanner and starts to do the same. I don’t think she’d be into newer romcoms, though; it’d all be stuff from the 1980s and older (you know, everything from City Lights and It Happened One Night to The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally). (She’s got to be a bit of an old soul to vibe with Grissom, right?)

Books:

In addition to her fondness for crime books, she must have some literary tastes. She read Moby-Dick, presumably of her own initiative from the way she speaks of it, when she was in the fifth grade (and that is not an insubstantial book). I don’t know what Harvard required of its science undergrads at the time, but she read Thoreau in college. She’s familiar with The Turn of the Screw. She knows her Poe. She’s able to finish Milton’s recitation of Longfellow’s “The Arrow and the Song.” She seems to get Grissom’s references.

I also have a really specific headcanon (the really specific headcanons come from things I’ve incorporated into stories) that Sara read the Anne of Green Gables books as a kid and looked up to Anne (and had a crush on Gilbert, obviously). I mean, I think there are some fun parallels there: orphan Anne Shirley and her beloved Dr. Gilbert Blythe, pseudo-orphan Sara Ann Sidle and her beloved Dr. Gilbert Grissom.

Music:

Sara shows, by my estimation, possibly the most diverse musical knowledge and appreciation of anyone in the series. The girl could reference the Grateful Dead, understand Grissom’s operatic brooding, serenade herself with Blondie, sing Meshell Ndegeocello lyrics along with Archie, correct Greg’s pronunciation of Tupac, call on her knowledge of satanists from her summer spent loving Black Sabbath, enjoy (and maybe—or maybe not—put on) Beck’s “The Information” shortly after it was released, and seemingly listen to Iron & Wine’s The Shepherd’s Dog not long after its release. (According to the DVD commentaries, the Tupac pronunciation correction was based on JF correcting ES’s pronunciation of Tupac in rehearsal, a piece of trivia I love. We know JF loves music.) I happen to have a very salty (with respect to the later seasons) post on Sara Sidle + music appreciation here.

I also have some extremely specific headcanons about Sara and music (again, from stories I’ve written):

Her mom loved Linda Ronstadt, and she took Sara to see Ronstadt perform at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley when Ronstadt was touring for Simple Dreams. This was Sara’s first concert; it was the day after her sixth birthday, and they spent the day in San Francisco first. (Yes, this is based on real tour dates.)

Sara attended Lilith Fair at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California (part of the Bay Area) on July 8, 1997. She went with some casual friends from work or on her own. While there, she bought a Lilith Fair t-shirt, which (due to her having been unexpectedly called into work late on February 8, 1998) she was wearing when she first met Dr. Gil Grissom. (Yes, this too is based on real tour dates.)

Consistent with the previous point, Sara is a fan of Sarah McLachlan (and a lot of the other artists who performed at Lilith Fair). On more than one occasion, when crying over (or trying not to cry over) Gil Grissom, Sara puts on McLachlan’s album Fumbling Towards Ecstasy.

18. beloved or important items or property (sara)

I think that, first growing up (and moving around a lot) in the foster care system, and then making the most of whatever resources she has as she complete her undergrad degree and then her Master’s, Sara generally learns not to become too attached to physical things.

After she started working an adult job with a regular pay cheque, she could have gone the other way, but I think, well, basically everything we see and know about her tells us she didn’t—her choice of a public sector career, her first two apartments on the show, the way she dresses.

I have a lot of thoughts on Sara Sidle’s sartorial choices, but I’ll save most of those for another post. I know her wardrobe has been described as kind of on the gender-neutral side, and it is, but I also always want to point out that that this is also pretty consistent with what the style was at the time. (See, for example, LFO, “Summer Girls”: “I like girls who wear Abercrombie & Fitch,” which was a lot of cargo pants and track pants and the like. See, you know, the aftereffects of the grunge movement.) I also think she is very practical in this respect and would be wearing stuff for work that is (1) comfortable and (2) inexpensive and somewhat disposable to her. In this fictional world where CSIs don’t just wear coveralls for everything, at least she’s not going to care if she contaminates or otherwise ruins any of this stuff with her messy job, you know? Additionally, she goes through a variety of sunglasses, which tells me she’s not choosing expensive ones but rather pairs she can lose or break without being too upset about it.

(I’m really getting away from the point here, but I think that when she was in San Francisco she probably dressed in a way that was a bit more polished for work, because that would be the expectation in that kind of city, and that you can still see that a bit when she first starts in Vegas.)

Okay, so that’s what’s not important to her. What is important to her? I think she has nice clothes for nice purposes: court (as we see in canon), maybe going out on a nice date (as we see in later seasons, but that stuff is at most like pseudo-canon to me), etc. I don’t know if she she’s managed to keep hold of anything that might remind her of any more positive times in her childhood. Unsurprisingly, the things I imagine being important to her are things she may have received from Grissom—plants, books, small mementos, possibly even personal notes or letters, as well as (later) clothing and jewelry. I have a half-formed headcanon that he gave her the robe she wears in “Way to Go” (06x24) and a fully formed headcanon that he continues buying her nice robes, scarves, lingerie, necklaces, etc. for the rest of their lives together. (The man may not have gone into “Swap Meet” (05x05) knowing what La Perla was, but he was taking notes; he 100% knew by the end.) I also think the two of them collect photos and mementos from their travels together.

(Side note, but cortecks/cortexx has a really fun take on Sara and her vegetation here.)

The objects on which I should have some sort of headcanon are Sara’s necklaces, and I just don’t, really? When and why did she start collecting them? (You’d think I’d have at least read a fic that suggested an origin story, but I really don’t remember one?) Did she perhaps decide to buy herself one with her first pay cheque from her first proper job? Did she like having something pretty to wear even when she didn’t want to spend a lot of money on clothes, something that would be less likely to become damaged? Did that become her go-to reward, something special that wouldn’t cost too much and wouldn’t take up too much space in whatever small apartment she was renting because she could never see the point in paying for anything bigger?

Okay, I inevitably had some more thoughts on this subject, so I am adding in my own words from the comments:

I was thinking more about the necklace thing, and I was like … maybe it starts at Harvard. She has basically no money to spare and her wardrobe is so, so basic, but she puts together the cash to buy some pretty but inexpensive necklace—something classic-looking—at some local vintage/thrift shop, so she can have at least one thing with which to accessorize that very basic wardrobe. Maybe the next semester she manages another. She buys 2-3 per year? She wears them on a rotating basis, so whenever she gets another she just adds it to the rotation. Once the collection gets a bit larger, she’s able to choose a few that are on the more trendy side. But they basically all always stay in the rotation. And then by the time we get to 2000 and Sara Sidle’s arrival in Vegas, she’s got a pretty decent collection, but she still just always keeps them in rotation. It’s kind of become her thing. And it’s why she never really seems to expand into any other jewellery (like earrings, for example).

I don’t think any of the necklaces are very expensive, aside from a small collection of very nice ones that Grissom buys her. I don’t know that any of them are particularly special to her, aside of course from any—expensive or otherwise—that Grissom buys her. I have a very specific headcanon that, in honour of their second wedding/marriage, he does eventually buy her that bracelet with her birthstone in it (as he imagined in the original “Butterflied” (04x12) monologue)/a diamond bracelet (as we see him contemplating near the end of “Time of Your Death” (06x22)); specifically, it’s a vintage sapphire and diamond bracelet with a matching necklace. I also headcanon that, in honour of their second wedding/marriage, Betty finally gives Grissom his grandmother’s ring (the one he gave Nicole Daley in the second grand) to give to Sara and that Sara is very moved by this and really feels likes she’s been made part of their family; that would then become one of her most prized possessions.

Oh, wait, scratch all that. Her wedding ring. She cares about her wedding ring.

20. love language/way they show affection (sara)

So I’m going to approach this a little bit differently. I did a search to remind myself what the love languages were, and I came across this journal article, which explains how there is little empirical support for the original love languages theory and suggests an alternative that the authors believe “more accurately reflects a large body of empirical research on relationships”:

Love is not akin to a language one needs to learn to speak but can be more appropriately understood as a balanced diet in which people need a full range of essential nutrients to cultivate lasting love.

(Sorry, I’m not trying to take the fun out of this question, but I thought this was interesting!)

So does Sara provide Grissom with a balanced diet for love?

Pre-relationship:

(I’m going to adapt my answers to what is possible given the parameters of their relationship at the time.)

(a) words of affirmation (verbal expressions of appreciation, compliments, or encouragement): “Yes, sir,” “You’re too hard on yourself,” repeating his own words back to him as if she recorded everything he said, etc. There are limits to how open she can be in her affection for him, yet she does the best she can within the limits of their professional relationship.

(b) quality time (intentional time spent together with undivided attention): It doesn’t technically meet the requirements set out here, but the way they relish working together 100% counts to me (and, I think, them!) under the circumstances. I mean, she literally moves to Vegas for that.

(c) receiving [giving, here] gifts (visual tokens of appreciation): She likes presenting him with information, like stuff she’s learned from her reading (e.g., change of recovery of DNA off different surfaces) or developments in the case.

(d) acts of service (practical support through actions): Obviously it’s quite literally her job, as his employee, to serve him, but even for being a natural keener she has a particular enthusiasm for doing everything she can to please him. I don’t think she’d have been quite that gung-ho with anyone else.

(e) physical touch (from holding hands to sexual interactions): Personal space? What is personal space? They can’t touch, but they still get as close as they possibly can.

Post-“Immortality”:

(a) words of affirmation (verbal expressions of appreciation, compliments, or encouragement): “We'll figure it out, okay? I'll never go away. If you need to hold on to something, hold on to me.” A+++ I think that, during their first marriage, they always held a little something back. But the way they are with each other in CSIV tells me they finally learned how to be completely open and honest with each other, and I think neither of them is shy about telling the other how much they care.

(b) quality time (intentional time spent together with undivided attention): They choose to live alone together on a small boat at sea, so A+++++.

(c) receiving [giving, here] gifts (visual tokens of appreciation): I don’t think she’d be big on giving big gifts, but I think she still delivers him the gift of knowledge (interesting information she picks up in her reading, etc.) and, say, brings home his favourite treats from the market, or a rare or unusual book she thinks he might like, that kind of thing.

(d) acts of service (practical support through actions): I think they are always working together and working to support each other out on the boat. They like doing things for each other and share/work together on domestic tasks (cooking, cleaning, etc.), too.

(e) physical touch (from holding hands to sexual interactions): All the touch. They engage in all the touch. Hugging in the lab. Handholding in the lab (canon to me). Kissing on the roller coaster. They are 100% making good on all that sexual chemistry on the regular. They are 100% making use of all that alone time at sea. My personal belief is that she literally can never be close enough to her man; she would crawl under his skin if she could.

I tend to think of physical touch and quality time as being Sara’s strongest methods of communicating love, followed by words of affirmation, then acts of service and gifts, but, breaking it down like this, I feel like this is a pretty well-rounded diet?

(I will add the same disclaimer that I did at the end of my last post: This is a bit more rambling and less cohesive than I would like, but I really am just trying to get some thoughts out of my head this year without being all perfectionist about it. 😭😭😭)

-12- skills and abilities

No disrespect to any of the other characters intended, but I headcanon Sara being the smartest of the CSIs, from an academic/book smart perspective. For me, it would be between her and Grissom, and, since he will always have the age/experience advantage in matters of science, I like giving her that little edge in this respect.

But also, our girl really is brilliant. She must have skipped a grade in school at some point. She graduates and is her high school valedictorian at the age of 16. She goes off to Harvard on a full scholarship, still at the age of 16 (just weeks before her 17th birthday). She studies physics at Harvard and graduates magna cum laude. She then moves back to the Bay area and obtains her master’s (still in physics) from UC Berkeley.

Of course, @addictedtostorytelling has done the research on this (so thankful always!), and Berkeley doesn’t offer a standalone master’s degree in physics; it only offers that master’s as part of a doctoral program. So, if we assume those real life conditions existed in the CSI universe, she must have been working on her doctorate, and I headcanon that eventually she finds she likes her work at the San Francisco coroner’s officer so much that she leaves her doctoral program following the completion of her master’s degree in physics and goes to work for the San Francisco crime lab.

And she does all this on top of the most unimaginably traumatic childhood. She also must be working while she does all this, because scholarship money is only going so far. Truly she must have insane drive, insane levels of dedication.

And we know she does. Want someone to stay up for three nights straight? Ask Sara! Want someone to jump into a dumpster? Ask Sara. Want someone to climb under a house or a car? Ask Sara! Want someone to put her own life on pause and work tirelessly to make sure you’re not convicted for a crime you didn’t commit? Ask Sara!

-13- ideals or philosophies

I also headcanon Sara as being the most progressive (politically-speaking) of all the CSIs (although we know Grissom is an extremely open-minded individual and occasionally Sara is not). This feels consistent (yes, I did have a typo here!) with her Bay area upbringing and is another place where, in my mind, character and actor kind of converge.

JF has said that one of the first things she knew about Sara was that she came from San Francisco, so I wonder how much of that progressivism was already planned for the character and how much of that was brought in from JF’s own ideals. For example, in season 1, Sara says she wants a steak and a shot, but by mid-season 2 we learn that Sara has stopped eating meat, ever since she and Grissom spent their night watching a dead pig being consumed by insects. (Of course, it’s five episodes after that night with the pig that Sara wants her steak, and she also eats sea bass that episode. But it was the first season. They were still figuring things out.)

Anway, Sara is a vegetarian. She cares deeply about animals. Back in 2004, she is one of the members of the lab who has the sense of how to gender correctly a transgender victim. She is very aware of the way that popular conceptions of beauty (in the form of high heels) may quite literally hurt women. She doesn’t think people should follow traditions (like marriage) without reason. She drives a Prius (hybrid) car all the way back in 2007. She doesn’t hesitate to investigate a police officer’s mistreatment of a deceased homeless man. She fantasizes about going off on the Sea Shepherd to walk in the footsteps of Darwin, and I always presume her to be doing some sort of ecological research when she’s in Costa Rica. (The Sea Shepherd is a marine conservation activism organization that employs direct action tactics to achieve its goals, and I don’t know if that’s what CSI intended when Sara makes that reference back in 2008, but it does have a lot in common with what Grissom is doing in 2015.) She always keeps her own name, despite its negative associations (i.e., that it was bestowed upon her by her violent father).

One thing that is a bit at odds with Sara’s general activism is her attitude towards criminal defence lawyers, but, you know, people have multitudes and often contain contradictory attitudes within themselves. In this case, I think Sara’s attitude to criminal defence lawyers is (1) extremely wrong-headed (criminal defence lawyers protect constitutional rights, like those to a fair trial, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, etc.!) but also (2) consistent with her background and how she came to choose a career in forensics.

Of course, I like to think that, since leaving the lab ten years ago, and the actions of Anson Wix notwithstanding, she has had the opportunity to rethink this attitude a bit (as well as that toward law enforcement). I also think that whatever she and Grissom are working on these days (which, in my mind, includes Sara finally having gotten her PhD, though not in physics) includes marine conservation, so that too is consistent with a progressive agenda.

-14- goals and intentions

 I think this answer is going to be part ideals or philosophies and part goals and intentions.

Sara is a roots for the underdog, tries to speak for those who can’t speak for themselves kind of girl. I think that she gets into forensics because she wants to speak for the victims. I know she references Grissom having said, “We're the victim's last voice,” but I think—be it explicit or implicit—that that has to have been her motivator. After the suffering she saw in her own home (“The fights, the yelling, the trips to the hospital”)—along with what she must have seen or at least heard about during her time in the foster care system—this may, given her personality, have been almost inevitable.

(In “Eleven Angry Jurors” (04x11), Nick says, “I'm always getting criticized for empathizing with the victims and their families,” but I think Nick tends to empathize more with the families and the living whereas Sara empathizes more with the victims and those who can no longer speak for themselves, although of course there is overlap in that.)

While camping over the summer, I spent a couple of days contemplating whether I saw Sara as essentially an optimist or essentially a pessimist. And, you know, as with everything else, it’s complicated; we contain multitudes—she contains multitudes.

I don’t think that, whenever she sees supposedly happy homes and supposedly happy families, she generally envies them (although, you know what . . . I think maybe every once in a while, in very special circumstances, she does); instead, she tends to imagine the lies and secrets and violence lurking below the surface. She is familiar with the worst of what humanity has to offer.

Yet she sees purpose in working so tirelessly at an exhausting, often horrifying, pretty thankless job. She sees value in speaking for the victims. I think that must contain an inherent optimism. Moreover, she never gives up on Grissom—she waits years for him, never gets over him even after they divorce—and that too must contain an inherent optimism.

I don’t think she sees the moral arc of the universe as bending naturally towards justice. But she will do whatever she can to help others all the same; she will do whatever she can to help bend that arc. And that attitude contains something inherently both pessimistic and optimistic. There has to be something optimistic about carrying on in those circumstances.

I also don’t think that when she was younger she ever really imagined much of a happy life or a happy ending for herself. She didn’t care a ton about nice things. She planned to work hard, and maybe, if she was lucky, occasionally she would get to experience some pleasant things along the way.

I don’t think she ever planned to grow up and get married and have kids. After everything she’d been through and everything she’d seen, she was a firm no on kids. She entered relationships—for the sex, for the companionship—but this was never real companionship with men with whom she’d be willing to open up; rather, it was very token companionship with men with whom she’d never be prepared to open up. Basically she just wanted a warm body to prove someone could want her (even if she didn’t realize it at the time).

I do think, though, that she had this incredibly latent, incredibly repressed desire to be seen and known and trusted and loved and cherished. But this desire was only activated—only began to become conscious—when she finally met the one man (perhaps the only man) whom she could finally see and know and trust and love and cherish. She must realize, at least on a subconscious level, how rare a connection that would be for the two of them, and, from what we see in canon (twice leaving her job and moving states, if not more, for him, for example), that becomes one of the most significant motivators (if not the most significant motivator) of her life. JF once said that Sara, being a very rational individual, would choose love over a job. One of those things can be relatively easily replaced; one of those things cannot. For people like Sara and Grissom, that kind of connection is once in a lifetime.

(This is a bit more rambling and less cohesive than I would like, but I really am just trying to get some thoughts out of my head this year without being all perfectionist about it. 😭😭😭)