Fantastic five years and more to come

The fifth year got off to a rocky start for CSI:Crime scene investigation. Two of their actors - Jorja Fox and George Eads - were fired and then rehired due to contract negotiations disputes. The rash decision was a shock to fans of the no.1 TV series in the world.

"The beginning of the season sucked," Fox succintly tells Galaxie during the CSI press junket, which was held at the swanky W Hotel in Los Angeles.
"There is no way of getting around it. I think everybody felt it though. We are a pretty tight-knit family. I don't know what the hell happened. I found myself sort of with a target on my back. It was weird and I don't think we have totally recovered from that."

Eads, who plays the close-cropped Nick Stokes, echoes her sentiment: "It was a nightmare. It is pretty much horrible to think that quite frankly, you are disposable. The fan support blew me away. I was kind of freaked out that over 10.000 people would sign a petition for us to come back to work. On top of that, (I knew I had) the support of the cast if anything happened."

"There was a lot of electricity those first few weeks when we came back ( due to the firing and hiring)," adds Marg Helgenberger, who plays the sexy ex-stripper Catherine Willows.

But like the professionists they are, emotions were kept in check when it was time for production. Season five has proven to be as good, if not better than the years before.

CSI has now crossed the 100-episode milestone and the explosive season finale saw the audience number hit a new high - a whopping 35 milion viewers in America. Naturally, the show will be back for a sixth season Stateside this September.

The stories in season five have been consistently intriguing with stunning visuals and the requisite amount of blood and gore. The makers continue to push the envelope, digging deep into their cache of cases to produce thought-provoking plotlines surrounding such hot button topics like transgender surgery, infantilism and narcocorrido - Mexican ballads of drugs, guns, guerrillas and the underworld.

This year also marks the first time the thrice-nominated series actualy walks away with a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series. "Well, the SAG win was a surprise," recalls William Petersen, who plays graveyard shift supervisor and resident bug expert Gil Grissom. "When we got to the award ceremony, we got the first table. It's a sign that you might win because they don't want you to say 'hi' to all your friends on the way to the stage. But you have to look surprised at these things or they won't invite you back." he adds jokingly between takes on the set of CSI at the Santa Clarita Studios.

The biggest shake-up on the show this season has got to be the split-up of the team and Catherine's (Helgenberger) promotion to swing shift supervisor. Hunky CSIs Warrick Brown (Gary Dourdan) and Nick ended up under Catherine while workaholic Sara Sidle (Fox), lab technician-turned-field forensics scientis Greg Sanders (Eric Szmanda) and demoted dayshift investigator Sofia Curtis (Louise Lombard) remained in Grissom's team.

"We talked about going back to our roots, going back to the feel of season one. The fans said they loved it when everybody loved one another; when they were really a team. And there was a lot of humor," explains CSI executive producer Carol Mendelsohn.

"The idea was to recapture some of that and then break it apart," continues executive producer Naren Shankar. "It gives Catherine a chance to be her own supervisor in an interesting way and develop something we had not seen before."

Apparently the technical advisors said that shifts do not stay together this long. And before you jump to any conclusion, the decision was made prior to any of these contract negotiations, says Mendelsohn.

The cast members however, met the introduction of the swing shift with mixed reactions. Eads thought it was a good move: "Through the years, our audience has grown with us. And there is a bit of love affair with the characters. The split-up was great for the audience because they took it up very personally. So as in any good break-up the best part is getting back together. It will just be that much more fun to see us in a room together or see us all working on a case together."

Szmanda too saw the pros of the decision to split: "It has been strange not working with half of the cast that much. I don't know if I have had scenes with some of the guys all season. But it is nice that we split the workload now. It is kind of like we get more time off."

"I really miss working with Marg, Gary and George," says a pensive Fox. "I've worked so closely with them over the years. That is the sad part of it. The upside is Sara gets to develop a beautiful intimacy with Greg (Szmanda). And I had some great stuff to do with Billy (Grissom) this year because we've been working much less with him."

Meanwhile, Helgenberger lives with hope that the swing shift story arc will come to an end soon. "I don't know necessarily if this whole shift thing is going to stick because I feel the writers have backed away from it," she discloses.

However, the split-up in the team does not affect everyone directly.
Paul Guilfoyle, who plays Captain Jim Brass, says he "interacts with the same people" while Robert David Hall, who plays coroner Dr. Albert Robbins, maintains that he "sees the same number of bodies".
Guilfoyle believes that the whole shift thing was a heavy-handed way of dealing with Petersen's cutting back on work time due to health issues.

It was only the second episode into season five and something peculiar happened between two very attactive CSIs. Catherine (Helgenberger) accidentally fell into Warrick's (Dourdan) arms while they were working on a case and they shared a brief moment looking into each other's eyes. In that instant, the first thing that went through the minds of most fans was: will there be a romance between Catherine and Warrick?

"That's an excellent question. I was told by Carol (Mendelsohn) that there was going to be some kind of tryst but I have yet to see it on paper. I mean, I am all for it," laughs Helgenberger. "The two characters being who they are, I think they understand each other on a level that the others don't relate to, given our past - his addiction to gambling and my coming from a world of taking my clothes off in front of a group of men. We have gone through sort of the underbelly of life. We can communicate without saying a whole lot. So, I was looking forward to playing out the subtext."

Dourdan too sees the sparks. "I think we have a great chemistry together. The characters complement each other very well."

Of course, there is the problem of Catherine being Warrick's boss. "I would have to check my feelings with one of my co-workers, especially somebody who I am supposed to be in charge of," Helgenberger admits later.

But Mendelsohn readily clarifies Catherine's position. "Catherine is a very sexual being. She has always had chemistry with Warrick. Catherine is someone with who boundaries are crossed more than with any of the other characters. Wether she will ever really cross that line, I think, is something that will be explored in many seasons to come.

Will she cross the line too many times that it will compromise her ability to do her job? Will we get to a place where Warrick might put a stop to it? Do Warrick and Nick feel as comfortable with Catherine now as they felt with her when she was their equal?"
Interestingly, when the CSI pilot was initially being made, there was an intimate scene involving Nick and Catherine, and not Warrick and Catherine.
"In the Pilot, it was Marg and me making out," reveals Eads.
That was the scene that got cut out of the episode. Don't get me wrong, I would love to be frisked by Marg but for (my character) Nick, an office love affair is just not something that would really work for him."

Meanwhile Sara has her own share of men to deal with as well.
One one hand there is Grissom, emotionally distant and much older, and on the other is Greg, the young guy who had a crush on Sara a while back.

"Haven't we all had crushes at work? Sara has always placed Grissom on a pedestal," reasons Mendelsohn. "We found out this season that she didn't have a father figure because her mother murdered her father. So, it is very complicated, her relationship with Grissom. She's attacted to the unattainable man. Wether she will ever act on that is an open issue."

Petersen sees the potential in Gil Grissom - Sara Sidle relationship but feels Grissom is not prepared to jump into something so risky. "I like that Grissom is an enigma. It's the real reason he hasn't kissed Sara yet, because he has to keep something back. But, I'd like to kiss her before the show ends," Petersen confesses.

When it comes to the pairing of Greg and Sara, Fox does not dismiss the fact that it is possible for them to share something more than friendship, even though on-screen Greg appears to have cooled his heels with Sara. "I think Sara's heart is still sort of broken over Grissom," Fox voices. "I know that Sara has been taking some second and third glances at Greg this year. He looks good in jumpsuits.

Sara got lucky in season two. There was a second when Greg had a crush on her. She really enjoyed that. Back then, she thought that he might be a little too young for her. But as time passes, people grow. And you are working such long hours together."

Talk of relationships seems so implausible when it comes to the characters of the original CSI. Remember, this is CSI, a show that prides itself on concentrating on the 'howdunits' (i.e. how a crime is committed and solved), and the likelihood of any romance taking centre stage is slim to none.

"If organically in a story two people reach out to each other, then you may see something," confirms Mendelsohn. "It is not going to be a show about Catherine and Warrick taking a trip. (Anyway) It was just a desire to keep the show evolving and exciting for our actors too. We are blessed with such a talented cast," she says.

Shankar concours, "After five years, you want to get a little bit more of a sense of the characters as people. You want to catch a little glimpse of someone's inner life in the context of the story or something that's going on. It is a good thing for the show in general."

As the season draws to a close at the end of July, be prepared to be blown away by a very special two-hour finale directed by Quentin Tarantino (Pulp fiction, Kill BIll: Vol. I and II) entitled Grave danger Vol. I and II.

One of our favourite CSIs is kidnapped and ends up in a life-or-death situation. The swing and graveyard shifts combine their resources to catch the bad guy and get their own back safely.

If you love Tarantino's style in films, you will see him stamp his mark on this show. What's more, he came up with the storyline and since he is a big fan of the series (apparently, he has watched every single episode), he knows all the character inside out.
With a true fan writing and directing, how can it go wrong?

"It is much more of a thriller than (the ones) we normally do. It is probably closed in spirit to something like The finger in season two where Catherine was kidnapped by a rich guy," Shankar relates.

So how did the eccentric Tarantino land the job of directing CSI, you ask?

"On and off over the years we talked about bringing him on. Then Bill Petersen gave him a call. We were shooting in Las Vegas when one of our technical advisors, Larry Mitchell, met this cool guy named Quentin," recounts Shankar.

"Larry didn't know who he was but offered to hook him up and get him on the set. That Monday after we came back from Vegas, we got a call from Quentin's people and he came up. He sat down with the writers and had an idea for a story. We loved it. We loved his energy and enthusiasm."

And the rest, as they say, is history.