No anxiety for Catherine

This article is from the Toronto Sun. It is more focused on Grissom’s departure, and the author asked some of the cast members and executive producers Carol Mendelsohn and Naren Shankar about William Petersen’s departure.

Goodbye Gil Grissom

CSI star William Petersen makes emotional exit from popular series

By BILL HARRIS, SUN MEDIA
Last Updated: 14th January 2009, 3:53am

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. — Sometimes when emotions are at their most raw, adults revert to the language of children.

“The bad guys will win more if we don’t have you,” says a distraught David Hodges, played by Wallace Langham, to Gil Grissom, played by William Petersen, in tomorrow night’s episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CTV, CBS).

But indeed, tomorrow night marks Grissom’s departure as a regular cast member on CSI.

During a visit to the CSI set this week, executive producer Carol Mendelsohn confirmed that Grissom probably will be back from time to time “in an organic way, to visit or to work on a case.” That certainly won’t be happening this season, though.

So fans of the venerable series — and there still are millions and millions of them on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border — simply have to deal with it. Grissom’s gone.

To be blunt, Hodges’ use of the term “bad guys” could be referring to two things at once. Are the “bad guys” the criminals on the show, or are the “bad guys” the people who run the other big TV networks, who can’t wait to pounce if the loss of Grissom takes a big chunk out of CSI’s popularity?

On the set this week, the remaining cast members, including Petersen’s numerical replacement Laurence Fishburne, did their best to put up a “business as usual” front, while at the same time acknowledging the emotion.

“No anxiety whatsoever,” said Marg Helgenberger, who was speaking for her character — Catherine Willows — rather than personally. “Catherine has been kind of in charge already even when Grissom was around, because he didn’t particularly like all of the tasks of running a crime lab.

“I’ll just kind of pick up like most wives do. Not that we were married on the show, but the relationship was somewhat like that, a marriage.”

George Eads, who plays Nick Stokes, said there was a weird atmosphere on Petersen’s final day on the set.

“It was kind of awkward, because we all wanted a moment alone with him to kind of unzip ourselves and tell him how we felt,” Eads said.

“But (Petersen) didn’t want that. He’s not that kind of guy. So for that week there was almost that tension of sadness, really.”

On the other hand, Paul Guilfoyle, who plays Jim Brass, suggested change isn’t so hard when there’s a lot of lead time.

“Billy has been planning his exit for the past three seasons, so this didn’t catch us by surprise,” Guilfoyle said. “It seemed very natural and easy. He left us whole. There was nothing removed.

“He threw a nice party for all of us, cast and crew together, which is very much in keeping with his character.”

Fishburne, who has joined the cast as Dr. Raymond Langston, is not, well … how should we say this … lacking in confidence about his own abilities.

“No,” Fishburne said flatly when asked if he was intimidated by the notion of replacing Petersen among a tight-knit cast on a show that has been highly successful for close to a decade.

“I’ll tell you why. I was invited, graciously. And I have tried to blend in, harmoniously.”

It’s too bad Petersen and Fishburne aren’t sticking around together, actually, because their scenes together are very good.

Tomorrow night, Grissom says to Langston, “People lie, professor. The only thing we can count on is the evidence.”

CSI always has been able to count on Grissom. But no longer.

“It has been a very emotional year for us,” executive producer Naren Shankar said. “When we were putting (Grissom’s final episode) together, there were many times we had tears in our eyes.”

Source: Toronto Sun

If you are recording Grissom’s last episode, you might want to re-check the time setting because most broadcast shows after 8pm (ET) will be postponed by President Bush’s farewell speech.