What do you think Grissom’s mother thought about the divorce? What was the conversation between her and Grissom like? Do you think she had or kept contact with Sara post divorce?
hi, anon!
this question is a difficult one to answer, as canon really doesn't give us a lot to go on in order to answer it.
as i've talked about here, what little information the show gives us about betty, her relationship with her son, her relationship with her daughter-in-law, and her thoughts on their marriage is scant and even at times somewhat contradictory.
though she is mentioned occasionally during the course of the show's early seasons, most often, it is in the context of grissom's memories of her from youth rather than his current relationship with her as an adult—the one exception being in episode 03x02 "the accused is entitled," when he passes along her greetings to phillip gerard—so we can't glean much about what their dynamic may be like or even how much they may or may not be in contact.
see the above-linked post for discussion on what i've termed “the rusty asl paradox,” which calls into question just how much betty and grissom actually communicate with each other during those earlier seasons of the show.
we also don't get any information on what her relationship with sara is like once grissom and sara start dating and later get engaged and marry—to the point that we can't even be sure of when she actually learns that sara is a part of grissom's life in the first place.
(does grissom tell her right away when he and sara initially get together? once they get engaged? only after their wedding? at any points in-between?)
not until much later on are we given access to any more direct evidence as to the nature of these relationships: episode 11x13 "the two mrs. grissoms" is the only time we as viewers ever get to meet betty and observe her interactions with grissom and sara directly.
it also is the last time she is ever mentioned on the show again.
the episode begins with her expressing strong disapproval of the logistics of grissom and sara's unconventional marriage and coming down hard on sara herself and ends with her and sara seemingly both resolved to work on improving their relationship and with her agreeing to accept the weird logistics of grissom and sara's marriage (even if she doesn't understand them).
however, since we've never privy to any follow-up on these developments, it's next to impossible for us to say how she might react to the news of grissom and sara's divorce almost exactly two years later in show time.
whatever her reaction might be would probably depend on what her opinion was of sara at that point, whether or not she had ever actually come to believe in the legitimacy of grissom and sara's love for and devotion to each other during those two intervening years, how aware she was of the deterioration of their marriage prior to the divorce itself, what kinds of information she had access to with regards to the divorce and grissom's reasoning behind initiating it, whether or not she believed that grissom bore any of the blame in the situation or she only blamed sara, when she learned about the divorce (either before it happened or after the fact), her views on the sanctity of marriage and the practice of divorce itself, and what was going on in her own life at that point—if she was even still alive and cognizant to see the divorce go down*.
* fwiw, phyllis frelich, the actress who played betty, died in real life in 2014, about a year after the divorce takes place in canon.
since we literally have no clues to go on here, headcanon rules.
more thoughts on the potentialities under the “keep reading,” if you’re interested.
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so.
in the event that betty isn't in fact either incapacitated or deceased by the time the divorce takes place, then there are many potential ways she might react, depending on how one weights the variables in the equation.
if one believes that after the events of episode 11x13 "the two mrs. grissoms," betty actually makes good on her promise to try harder with sara and to respect her and grissom's marriage, then maybe there's a chance that by 2013, their relationship has significantly improved, to the point where she actually loves sara like a daughter and is in favor of grissom and sara being married.
she might even still be holding her breath for grandchildren.
in that case, it's possible that she might be very upset about the news of the divorce and that even try to prevent it from happening, trying to talk grissom (and possibly sara) out of what they’re doing.
however, if one believes that even after the events of episode 11x13 "the two mrs. grissoms," though betty perhaps applies more effort to being civil with sara, she nevertheless never develops any genuine affection for the girl (and never actually becomes any more convinced that the way grissom and sara are conducting their marriage, living across the world from each other, is valid), then maybe come 2013 her reaction might be more along the lines of "i always knew this was going to happen! i told them this ‘living on separate continents as a married couple’ nonsense would never work in the long run, and i was right."
with perhaps even a soupçon of “i always knew that sara wasn't good enough for my gilbert anyhow” thrown in for good measure.
of course, depending on when in the process she learns about the divorce, she also might be more or less understanding (or even potentially confused).
if as far as she knows, everything has been going fine between grissom and sara and then all of a sudden—out of nowhere, from her pov—grissom is calling her to say he and sara are getting (or even have gotten) divorced, her primary reaction might just be shock. but conversely, if she has been aware of some of the warning signs (e.g., knowing that they haven’t actually spoken in a while, picking up on that current of anxiety and doubt that carries through the both of them in early s13), then maybe she might be less surprised.
if, in typical grissom fashion, he tells betty little about the particulars of the divorce—what has led up to it, why it is happening, what his true feelings about the whole situation (and sara) really are—then betty might be left to draw her own conclusions, and, if so, who knows whether or not she would get anywhere close to being right in them?
for example, she might assume there’d been an affair or that maybe grissom and sara had fought about whether or not to have children or something along those lines. maybe she’d even believe that sara had been the one to initiate the split due to the “fickleness of youth” or whatever.
however, if grissom actually confides in her and tells her that it he’s the initiator and why and maybe even that he is still very much in love with sara (but firmly believes that he has an obligation to “set her free”), then betty might have a more accurate assessment of the whole situation, to the point where she might even be able to see grissom’s missteps for what they are.
“if you still love her, why not just go to her, gilbert? why are you halfway across the world on a computer call with your mother when you could be making amends to your wife? get on a plane!”
honestly, though, even if grissom does provide betty with his take on the situation, her perspective on the divorce still might be skewed, given that grissom’s own perspective is itself inaccurate. if he tells her that it seems to him that sara has grown tired of having him in her life and that he needs to do the right thing for her by severing ties and allowing her to go off without him, betty might (again, depending on her view of sara) accept that reading as truth, never knowing that in actuality sara wants nothing more than for her and grissom to be reconciled and that she would gladly give up everything she has in vegas if only grissom would provide her with any indication that he wanted her around him again.
maybe at some point, depending on what her relationship with sara was like, betty might try turning to sara for answers. if she were to, what sara said to her and in what tone would probably very much depend on the attitude of her approach itself.
if she stormed in in full mama-bear “why are you breaking my son’s heart, you little jezebel?” mode, that might get sara’s hackles up, but if it were more of a fact-finding, “why is this happening? sara, please talk to me! tell me what’s going on!” kind of mission, then maybe sara would just respond in that same heartbroken sort of “i don’t know. you’d have to ask him” way that we see when she reveals the truth about the divorce to nick, greg, and russell in episode 13x15 “forget me not.”
whether or not betty might try to intervene in the situation or encourage grissom and sara to pursue reconciliation would of course depend on many of the factors described above. on the one hand, someone as take-charge as she is might be inclined to try to insert herself in the situation, particularly if she actually did feel that grissom and sara were making a mistake. on the other, given her old-fashioned views, she might also consider that it was not her place to get in the middle of their personal business, particularly as they are both adults; she also might not feel compelled to try to save the marriage if she still disliked sara and/or felt that the marriage weren’t a good one.
maybe her main concern would just be to support her son, however she could—as much as he would let her.
a lot might also depend on her views on divorce itself.
as a staunch catholic, she might not approve of divorce, so maybe even if she didn’t like sara or think well of the marriage, she still might be against the divorce, just based on the principle of the thing.
depending on whether or not she felt anyone was to blame, she might get defensive of whomever she felt were the “wronged party.” nine times out of ten, it’d probably be grissom whom she’d champion just because he’s her son, but she’s also no-nonsense enough that if she got the impression that he’d fucked up, she might get mad at him instead and lay into him for how he was treating sara.
whether or not she keeps in contact with sara post-divorce undoubtedly depends on what their post-episode 11x13 “the two mrs. grissoms” relationship is actually like and her understanding of the divorce and its dynamics and whether or not she finds that sara is to blame. maybe, as seems to have been the case with julia holden following her and grissom’s failed relationship of yore, she continues to maintain ties with sara and treat her like family. but she could also cut off contact.
a lot would probably depend on sara’s reaction—whether or not she was still comfortable around betty (if she had ever been at all).
if they did end up stopping contact after 2013, either by betty’s choice, sara’s, or both, either in acrimony, awkwardness, or just the reality of the situation, how might they react if for some reason they ran into each other again later on?
in this post, i imagine a hypothetical scenario where maybe if grissom and sara happened to be still somewhat “legally entwined” even after the divorce, serving as each other’s de facto “in case of emergency” contacts, sara might end up being called if betty were ever sent to the hospital and grissom couldn’t be located, just because her name was still on the list.
what would they say? how would they regard each other?
to what extent betty eventually accepts the divorce after whatever her initial reaction may be is also subject to debate. if she were at first opposed to it, does she eventually make peace with the idea, or does she still harp to grissom about the colossal mistake that he made, even two years later? if she were at first in favor of it, does she eventually change her tune once she recognizes how miserable grissom is in sara’s absence?
if he never confessed it to her himself, would she be able to tell that grissom was still in love with sara, even after all was said and done? or would it be more of a mystery to her why he suddenly shipped off to sea, seeming to come around less and less?
would she have hopes that someday he would remarry?
maybe give things another go with julia?
what would her primary emotion about the whole situation be? compassion? sorrow? regret? anger? confusion? defensiveness? frustration?
who knows how she reacts when, in 2015, grissom and sara first reunite and then remarry (if she is still around by then)—if she is mortified or happy, disparaging or supportive?
frankly, there are no right or wrong answers to these questions. since the writers left the page blank, we can write pretty much any story that we want here.
there’s the potential for a story where betty, like the audience, is vehemently opposed to the divorce and can’t for the life of her wrap her head around how two such very intelligent people can be acting so foolishly. but there’s also the potential for a story where betty’s reaction to the news is to feel not necessarily happy—because of course she’d never celebrate her son going through a hardship—but at least somewhat vindicated, because she’d always considered that the marriage was a mistake and/or that sara wasn’t right for grissom, and now she had proof that she’d been right to feel that way all along.
there’s the potential for a story about a betty who gets so little information about the whole situation that it just never makes sense to her, so mostly she’s just more bewildered than anything, and the potential for one about a betty who is just quietly sad because she’d really hoped they’d prove her wrong and make the marriage work, and now they haven’t, and it just seems like such a waste, because they really did love each other.
there could be a version where betty is so eager to forget that there ever was a sara that she starts trying to line grissom up on blind dates every time he visits her or there could be one where she never tells him, but she still sends sara a birthday card every year, secretly hoping that one day, there still might be hope for a reconciliation.
it all depends on a multiplicity of factors.
personally, i don't really have a particular headcanon for this scenario because i, as a rule, straight-up ignore that the divorce ever happened, so the questions of betty's thoughts on the matter are a moot point to me. i don't really care to imagine how she may have reacted to the situation because the situation itself is something i reject.
anyway, sorry i can’t give you a more definitive answer!
thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.
Hi! Been so long since I sent an ask. Hope you are doing well. I saw this list of questions and I want to know what's your headcanon on GSR and why. Always looking forward to your answers.
• Who's the cuddler?
• Who makes the bed?
• Who wakes up first?
• Who has the weird taste in music?
• Who is more protective?
• Who sings in the shower?
• Who cries during movies?
• Who spends the most while out shopping?
• Who kisses more roughly?
• Who is more dominant? ( in bed?)
• Rating of the ship from 1-10.
hi, @hiei29!
good to hear from you! i hope you’re well, too.
to the surprise of literally no one, my answers ran long.
under the “keep reading” for those interested.
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who's the cuddler?
they both are.
i mean, it’s canon.
considering how physically affectionate with each other they have always been even since long before they had any right to be, i’ve just gotta believe that once they’re actually able to be with each other in the way that they’ve always wanted and can express their feelings more directly through physical touch without having to censor and/or restrain themselves, they take every opportunity to do so.
i imagine that they watch movies curled up together on the couch, that in bed they spoon, that they constantly swoop in to give each other little hugs throughout the day, etc., etc.
they’ve been violating each other’s personal space since day #1—it’s part of their love language with each other—so i’m pretty convinced that once they’re married, they’re just all over each other as much as they can be.
who makes the bed?
i think they make it together.
no elaborate reason why—they just wake up together and go to sleep together, so it makes sense that they would, and especially since (at least when they’re living on land) it’s a big, ol’ king-sized mattress, so it’d be easier to get the fitted sheet and quilt on with two people than one.
and we know they do make their bed based on what we see in episodes 06x24 “way to go” and 07x22 “leapin’ lizards.”
who wakes up first?
i think they usually wake up together.
i mean, after all, for years they work the same shift, so unless one of them gets called in early, they typically have to go to work at the same time, so it’d make sense to just set one alarm.
on some occasions, one of them might have trouble sleeping and get up before the other one does. but most days, i think it’s fairly simultaneous.
who has the weird taste in music?
i don’t think either one of them has a musical taste that is particularly “out there.”
grissom primarily listens to classical music and opera and also has broad familiarity with “the music of his childhood” (i.e., pop music from the 50s, 60s, and 70s). sara seems to be kind of a top-40 radio kinda gal whose preferences crystallized when she was young in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
while of course classical and opera music aren’t everyone’s favorite genres and pop has its fair share of detractors, all of it is pretty standard. it’s not like either one of them is into super underground/indie/experimental stuff.
who is more protective?
they’re both incredibly protective of each other.
while we’ve had more opportunity in canon to see grissom be physically protective of sara (see episode 01x23 “the strip strangler,” for example) than she be physically protective of him, we have had the chance to see her be emotionally protective of him, both in the face of his own doubts and self-criticisms (see episode 02x05 “scuba doobie-doo”) and others who would try to disparage his character (see reboot episode 01x04 “long pig,” when she defends his reputation to nora cross).
time and time again, the show has proven that these two will go to the mat for each other’s sakes—they just tend to go about doing so somewhat differently, based on differing emotional needs.
due to sara’s traumatic history, she needs grissom to make her feel safe, both physically and emotionally. due to grissom’s poor self-esteem, he needs sara to buoy him up and champion him.
his protection of her manifests more in the form of “i’m going to be a shield for you. i won’t let anything hurt you.” hers for him manifests more as “i’m going to be your life vest. i’ll keep your head above water when the swimming gets tough.” they each meet each other’s emotional needs in this way.
who sings in the shower?
it’s canon that sara sings to herself (see episode 01x16 “too tough to die”), so i tend to think it’s probably her.
side note: whatever you do, don’t think about the fact that sara probably originally developed a habit of singing to herself out of loneliness—as a way to fill the silence of living by herself and having no one to talk to when she wasn’t on the job.
while grissom sings to sara sometimes—and god love that he does—i don’t imagine he sings much without her as his audience, whereas she probably sings just whenever the mood strikes her. (as she tells nick, it’s a subconscious habit, and half the time, she doesn’t even realize that she’s doing it.)
side note: whatever you do, do think about how grissom probably loves few things more than walking by the bathroom and catching a snatch of sara’s voice mingling with the sound of the running water as she croons out some 90s song he’s never heard before but suddenly finds himself inordinately fond of.
who cries during movies?
the girl who feels sympathy for the monster in the monster movies, anyone?
i mean, sara is just a crier kinda in general. she’s quick to tears when she’s angry, when she’s sad, when she’s scared, when she’s happy, and basically any time she experiences strong emotion of any kind—she just has a reactive temperament, you know? very much wears her heart on her sleeve—so it’d make sense that she’d cry over movies, too.
thankfully, grissom is always there to wipe her tears and kiss her head and make some purposefully horrific pun in order to get her laughing afterward.
who spends the most while out shopping?
prior to getting together with grissom, sara had been poor for her entire life—as the child of mentally-ill, alcoholic hospitality workers who ran their own business out of their home, she likely spent the first few years of her life living around or below the poverty line, a situation which wasn’t improved upon once she entered the notoriously underfunded us foster care system; then, she got out of the foster system at age sixteen with literally just the clothes on her back and maybe a few personal items to her name and had to spend most of her formative years scrimping and saving to “climb out of the hole,” first while going to college and graduate school full-time and then while working what is (as the canon of the early seasons often reminds us) a relatively low-paying job while still not yet fully credentialed*—so i tend to think she is pretty frugal.
* remember, baby girl didn’t become a csi level iii until sometime after she moved to vegas, so she didn’t get the raise nick and warrick talk about in the pilot until at least 2000/2001; she was still getting a more entry-level salary prior to that point.
she’s probably spent her whole life budgeting and thrifting and just generally trying to make her money stretch as far as possible, using what little “extra” she may make to pay off loans and make “rainy day” purchases when needed.
that so, i just can’t imagine she’s ever very comfortable making big purchases, even once she does move into a higher income bracket, just because it’s so ingrained in her to save, save, save.
meanwhile, while i don’t think grissom is by any means a big spender himself and certainly is not someone who throws his money around carelessly AT ALL*, i do think that since (at least in adulthood) he is fairly financially comfortable, to the point where he is accustomed to having disposable income, he is disposed to spend a little bit more for the sake of quality.
* though he admits to having spent money somewhat more recklessly in college, purchasing cadavers and fetal pigs for the sake of his experiments, i think he’s grown out of that habit as he’s matured, particularly now that he can get access to much of the scientific equipment that he needs through the lab.
though not an everyday thing, he will “put in the extra penny” for big-ticket items like furniture, cars, appliances, etc.* in order to make sure that what he’s getting lasts, and when he does, i don’t think he feels bad about it whatsoever.
* for example, we know that at one point he drove a mercedes (see episode 02x21 “anatomy of a lye”), and the furniture in his apartment is all high-end leather.
conversely, sara, who, even though she has moved up the economic ladder both by virtue of advancing her career and marrying someone more financially solvent than herself*, is still always kind of that poor girl at heart, probably has trouble justifying purchases with too many zeroes on the price tag, even if doing so will be “an investment in quality.”
* of course, we don’t know if grissom and sara ever do combine their bank accounts.
while i don’t think it’s something they necessarily fight about, i do think there are times when they’ll be considering a big purchase and grissom will have to present a fairly compelling argument to sara as to why it’s actually worthwhile for them to buy new rather than used or name brand rather than generic.
though in time, i think she does start to see the logic of buying something nicer (but pricier) that lasts longer—the whole “sam vimes boots theory”—and especially because they do actually have the means to do so, and so becomes easier to persuade in this regard, i also imagine that that old “save, don’t spend” instinct never fully goes away for her.
so even if in practice neither one of them is actually too much of a spendthrift, grissom is the one who is more mentally disposed toward spending, whereas sara is pretty resistant to it.
who kisses more roughly?
they’re not rough with each other physically, like, at all.
passionate at times, yes, but given sara’s family history, i don’t think either one of them is really comfortable introducing any kind of aggression/pain into their intimate behaviors, including kissing.
grissom would rather die than hurt or scare sara in any way, and sara’s whole mo with grissom is just to be so soft and gentle with him.
so to my mind, it’s just not in their lexicon of physical touch to be bruising or hard or rough with each other.
i mean, we can see in canon that even with their big parting and reunion kisses, while they may be intense/desperate/pleading/emotional, they’re not cracking teeth or drawing blood or blurring lines between aggression and affection.
as i talk about here,
one only need look at how grissom expresses love for sara outside of bedroom [or in this case, kissing] contexts in order to get a feel for what love is to him: this is a man who speaks to his wife using all manner of tender endearments, who is incredibly protective of her, who wants her to feel safe with him, who strives to place her needs ahead of his own, who delights in nothing more than making her smile, who treats her with respect, and who is just generally so incredibly soft with her on the whole that it seems incredibly unlikely that he would ever be comfortable with (let alone actively interested in) introducing any kind of harshness or degradation or violence even of a controlled variety into their sex life [or kisses]—and especially not because he knows that sara grew up in a home where intimate partner violence was a norm and that she is therefore incredibly averse to unequal power dynamics, as well as to aggressive sexual behaviors, between romantic partners.
what he wants is to care for her and make her feel good, showing her how much he loves her through his attention to her needs.
that's what gets him going.
that's the whole point of sex [and showing any kind of physical affection to her], as far as he's concerned.
—which is also where sara's at, as well...
like grissom, she wants their sex life [and kissing] to be about connection and expressing love to each other and building each other up.
again, one need only look at how she treats grissom outside of bedroom [and kissing] situations to see what love is to her: she is gentle with him and his feelings, she tries to bolster him and encourage him to feel good about himself, she is consistently soft in how she touches him, she loves making him smile, she's defensive of him to others, and she is open about showing him just how much she delights in the things that he does, always wanting him to know just how happy he makes her.
so the way i see things, while they’ve had plenty of electrifying kisses over the course of their relationship, “rough” isn’t a descriptor that would generally apply to them.
for them, passion translates to something that is intense but still gentle.
who is more dominant in bed?
like my answer above, i don’t think “dominant” is a word that really applies with them once they get together, either sexually or otherwise.
theirs is a very equal partnership, and neither one of them is necessarily “more powerful” than the other.
to quote again from the post just linked in the last answer,
while grissom does find bdsm fascinating from an anthropological perspective—just like he finds all aspects of human sexuality (including furry culture, swinging, staging elaborate fantasy scenes, various fetishes, etc.) fascinating—i don't think he gets off on the idea of manipulating sexual power dynamics or on inflicting or receiving pain as part of sex himself...
[likewise,] due to her family history, i just can't see sara ever being all right with the idea of deliberately introducing power imbalances into what she and grissom do in the bedroom, either, nor with enacting any kind of violence while they're in the act. she gets really freaked out by male aggression—just see how triggered she is in episode 01x10 "sex, lies, & larvae"—and doesn't find domineering behavior attractive in the least. seeing the way her dad treated her mom, there's just nothing sexy about one partner controlling another in her mind...
not only would she never herself want to be dominated, but she'd also never for her part want to dominate grissom—not when she knows how he struggles with his self-esteem and how much he wants to please her; not when he's so precious with and sweet to her. she has no desire for them to humiliate or harm each other, even within boundaries.
while i do believe that, due to the fact that (as i headcanon things) grissom is demisexual and sara is allosexual, and she is somewhat more sexually confident than he is, particularly at the start of their sexual relationship, she is often the “initiator” of their sexual encounters, i also don’t believe that’s always necessarily the case.
grissom definitely gets ideas all on his own and starts things going frequently.
i also think that when they’re together, it’s not situation where one of them is the “top” or “bottom” all the time or where one is more enthusiastic and/or adventuresome and/or intrepid than the other. they both enjoy their sex life a lot and probably alternate the roles and actions they take depending on circumstances, mood, etc.
i’m sure there are times when sara comes onto grissom very strongly, saying something provocative as she takes him by the hand to pull him away from whatever project he’s working on, guiding him down so she can straddle him on the couch, just like i am sure there are times when grissom looks at sara from across the room and all of a sudden is all silent, steely determination, coming over to her and kissing her all the way into the bedroom, peeling her clothes off of her as they go.
“for me, csi has always been a love story. the story that people can find love in the darkest of places and times. and the story that love, even in the darkest of places and times, can expand and grow roots and endure… so goes grissom, so goes sara. wherever they go, they belong together.”—jorja fox
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