Hi! Thank you for your amazing analyses and writing! I'd love your thoughts on when Grissom asks Sara about her PEAP counseling in Snakes and she says "let's just say I sometimes look for validation in inappropriate places." Obviously she's referring to Grissom, but is it connected somehow to (her S.4/5 arc and) what we know from 5x01 her PEAP counseling hit on - i.e. family/past/etc.? Or is she just diffusing the tension? The way she gets lost in thought seems like more than just a deflection.
hi, @deeplyridiculouslyinlove!
sara does have attachment issues that relate back to her family traumas, certainly, and she may even try to process them as part of her peap counseling. however, when it comes to that statement in particular (“let's just say i sometimes look for validation in inappropriate places”), my view is that she’s taking terminology her counselor probably first applied to her unhealthy work-life balance and generalizing it to her personal relationship with grissom more so than she is making reference to her past.
i also think that she looks “lost in thought” after she says those words not because she’s remembering her childhood but because she’s thinking about the current state of her relationship with grissom, which is bittersweet, particularly at the moment.
more discussion after the “keep reading,” if you’re interested.
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sara definitely has attachment issues that relate back to her traumatic childhood.
the first sixteen years of her life basically teach her that even the people who should (by all accounts) be her caretakers/protectors can’t be counted on to be there for her when she needs them and that everyone she cares about will eventually bail on her, particularly if looking after her proves at all “difficult,” and those lessons carry with her well into adulthood.
that's why she tends to socially isolate herself even from people she genuinely likes or even loves, refusing to let them truly get to know her: because she fears rejection and ostracization.
—hence why despite having worked at the lvpd for four and a half years by the time the events of episode 05x12 “snakes” take place, she’s never told any of her coworkers about her history or willingly let on to them when she is struggling (even at times when she is decidedly “not okay”).
essentially, she is afraid that if she ever lets on about her past or any of her ongoing problems, it will cause people to leave her. it all comes back to her sense that when the going gets rough, people bounce.
—hence why she builds such thick walls around herself: to preempt the rejection she feels would otherwise inevitably come.
so that’s a general issue with her and a repeated pattern of behavior throughout her adult life.
whether or not she discusses this pattern specifically with her peap counselor, i think she’s very much aware of that she has it. however, i also think it’s not the exact thing she’s referring to in the scene in question. instead, i think she’s making an oblique reference to something related to the original reason why she was referred to counseling in the first place.
here's how i figure:
when sara is assigned to attend required peap counseling, the assignment is made on the grounds that she was pulled over for drinking and driving—so that’s undoubtedly one of the topics of conversation she probably covers with her counselor throughout the course of her sessions.
of course, problem drinking behaviors don’t typically occur in a vacuum, so her counselor probably tries to get sara to interrogate the underlying factors that led to her poor decision-making on the night when she got pulled over—i.e., what was going on in her life that influenced her to do something so reckless, self-destructive, dangerous, dumb, etc.
in talking with her counselor about why she made the poor decision to drink and drive, it’s likely that she brings up some of the stressors in her life that led her to the bar that night—such as the fact that she had been skipped over for a promotion she thought she was totally qualified for, as well as perhaps her general sense that her career is (and probably for a while now has been) stagnating.
her counselor might then ask her about other things going on in her life—such as with her friends and family or with her romantic relationships.
if her counselor does ask about these topics, my gut instinct is that sara is probably not very effusive in answering. she might mutter something about how she doesn’t really have any family and that work keeps her too busy to socialize. maybe, at most, she might admit to having some recent bad luck in the romance department (i.e., being cheated on by her boyfriend of over a year and then shot down by another long-term prospect shortly thereafter and not really getting much play since).
if sara does answer in this way, then her counselor is probably able to—rightly—surmise that she doesn’t really have much going on in her life besides her work and from there determine that since such is the case, she places increased importance on her career-based achievements, or (in other words) that her primary form of personal validation comes from her sense of professional accomplishment.
obviously, having one’s whole sense of self-worth be dependent on how well one does at their job isn’t a healthy thing.
—hence the counselor talking to sara about looking for validation in “inappropriate places.”
while most people want to do well and succeed in their careers (or at least do well enough that they don’t get fired) and there’s nothing wrong with setting lofty professional goals for oneself, basing one’s entire concept of one’s self and one’s self-worth on whether or not the boss seems to approve of one or how one fares in one’s job performance reviews or whether or not one gets a promotion is not a sustainable way to go through life. it leads to the overemphasis of work-based achievements and from there to emotional crisis when things at work aren’t going well.
particularly if one has no other outlets—which is definitely the case with sara—one bad turn on the job can end up feeling like the end of the world, hence her problem drinking behavior after losing out on the key position.
hell, even if things are going well at work, it’s still not a good idea to have work be one’s only source of validation—because the truth is that while professional accomplishment can feel good and in some sense can even be important, it can’t substitute for human connection; it isn’t an antidote for loneliness or a replacement for love.
there are so many people out there who are at the tops of their fields, professionally speaking, but are nevertheless miserable.
so that’s the context in which i think sara first picks up that terminology of “looking for validation in inappropriate places”: in discussing with her counselor the need for her to develop a better work-life balance and find other sources of fulfillment in her life besides her career.
of course, sara has heard this advice before, from grissom, of all people (see episode 01x16 “too tough to die”).
however, while in giving the advice that sara needs to stop looking to sources that can never truly fulfill her to make her happy, the counselor is probably only really making reference to sara’s unhealthy views on her career, sara herself knows that there’s more going on.
for one thing, she knows about how her personal and family history underpins this whole situation—that a big part of the reason why she has nothing in her life besides her work is because of how isolated she has made herself in trying to guard her past.
for another thing, she is painfully aware that, for her, the concept of a “work-life balance” isn’t so simple, as the most important relationship she has in her life just so happens to be with the man who is at present her boss, and it’s complicated as fuck, as while both of them are deeply in love with each other—a fact she knows for certain after having overheard grissom’s confession to lurie in episode 04x12 “butterflied”—and patently unwilling to walk away from each other entirely, both department policy and their own hang-ups prevent them from being together in any kind of official way.
while she may talk to the counselor about her past and her tendency to try to bury it*, i don’t think she is likely to divulge much of anything about the grissom side of the equation (and particularly not as these peap sessions are department-mandated, meaning that admitting that she was in love with her supervisor could potentially lead to some professional consequences, such as her being switched to a different shift at the counselor’s recommendation).
* if you really look at what sara says while giving herself her locker room pep talk in episode 05x01 “viva las vegas,” her wording is somewhat ambiguous. while it’s clear that she intends to talk to grissom about her family history and past, nowhere in her pep talk does she specify that her counselor actually told her to talk about those things to grissom specifically; rather, what she says is that “[her] peap counselor suggested that it would be a good idea for [her] to talk to [her] supervisor” in a more general way. while it’s of course possible that sara and her counselor do go over her life story and work through some of those old traumas together during her sessions and that her counselor then tells her to disclose this information to grissom as her supervisor, it’s also possible that they don't and that the counselor’s advice to talk to grissom is more of the broader “you should follow up on these sessions by reporting back to your supervisor that you actually attended them” variety. if so, then that might explain why she specifies in her pep talk that she’s never previously told “anyone” before grissom (presumably including her counselor) about her past. in that case, we could infer that sara chooses to disclose her past to grissom of her own volition, as opposed to because she has specifically been instructed to do so.
still.
even if she doesn’t talk to her counselor about grissom, sara is smart enough to extrapolate on her own; she can put two and two together and see that grissom is probably another one of those “inappropriate places” to look for validation, all things considered.
and that’s where gsr’s recent history (as of mid-s5) comes in.
to review:
in 1998, grissom and sara meet and fall in love at first sight. at this time, sara is living in san francisco.
between 1998 and 2000, they have some kind of ill-defined relationship, somewhere between “romantic friendship and long-distance dating.”
in 2000, grissom becomes the night shift supervisor at the lvpd crime lab, and in his first move as management hires sara to join his new team. sara, being madly in love with grissom and convinced that he wants her to move to his city at least in part because he intends to up the ante in their (to this point) ill-defined relationship, happily and eagerly quits her job and moves across state lines to join him, all within a matter of two weeks. grissom, on his end of things, does in fact have romantic intentions in getting sara closer to him.
however, once sara is actually in las vegas and working for him, grissom starts to realize just how complicated their situation truly is, not only in the sense that he is now her boss (meaning that department policy forbids any kind of romantic relationship between them) but also in the sense that he now has a better idea of just how much is at stake for him emotionally when it comes to “taking a chance on them;” while he is still just as in love with her as ever, he is also scared to death that if he risks everything to be with her (i.e., his job, his reputation, his sense of self, his comfortable lifestyle, his heart), he’ll lose out in the end. consequently, not long after sara joins his team, grissom starts to emotionally withdraw from her.
—or at least that what he tries to do, because the thing is, for as much as he is afraid of the consequences of being with her, he also does still want to be with her very much, and he can therefore never truly bring himself to break things off with her completely; in the end, he awkwardly and haphazardly splits the difference, straddling the line between having a romantic relationship with her and not, blurring their personal and professional boundaries, and just generally giving her the emotional runaround. he’ll bark orders at her like she’s just another subordinate one minute and send her flowers a green plant the next (see episode 02x15 “burden of proof”); depending on the time and circumstances, he’ll vacillate wildly between boyfriend-mode and boss-mode for reasons typically knowable only to him.
meanwhile, on sara’s end of things, having no idea what grissom’s intentions are but still being as in love with him as ever, it’s all she can do just to react to his inconsistent behavior toward her. were he always in boss-mode with her, she would probably take the hint and give up hoping that there could ever be anything romantic between them, but because he does still often act like her boyfriend—or like he wants to be her boyfriend—she can never quite convince herself that what they started in san francisco is over for good.
for a year and a half, between 2000 and 2001, grissom and sara’s relationship exists in a state of limbo.
however, eventually, sara tires of the back-and-forth and decides that if grissom isn’t ever going to fill her needs and actually be with her, then she should seek out someone else who will (see episode 02x12 “you’ve got male”); at this point, she starts dating paramedic hank peddigrew.
sara dating hank sets off a concatenation of events that eventually leads to the conversation in question in episode 05x12 “snakes,” namely:
when grissom learns that sara is dating hank, he becomes intensely jealous of their relationship and starts behaving punitively toward sara (see early s3);
sara eventually calls grissom out on his confusing and hypocritical behavior toward her (see episode 03x03 “let the seller beware”), at which point grissom reforms, starting to treat her better going forward (see the rest of s3);
his warm treatment of sara from then on causes her to question if maybe she was wrong to assume that he didn’t ever intend to date her after all (see episode 03x09 “blood lust”);
however, since she is still, at the time, with hank, nothing really changes between them until after she and hank break up (see episode 03x17 “crash and burn”) and she gathers her courage to make a move, asking grissom out (see episode 03x22 “play with fire”);
of course, unbeknownst to sara, but at the time when she asks grissom out, he has been losing his hearing over the course of the last year, and his confidence and sense of self-esteem are at an all-time low. fearful that if he were to give into his heart and date her, he would just as soon lose her (once he became fully deaf), grissom therefore declines her offer, seemingly closing the door on any kind of romantic relationship between them forever;
though grissom undergoes surgery which restores his hearing not long after he declines sara’s offer (see episode 03x23 “inside the box”), he nevertheless considers that, going forward, he has lost his chance to be with sara forever. that so, throughout the course of the next year (see s4), he makes a concerted effort to try to keep his distance from her, operating under the belief that if he is still too much of a coward to be with her, then the only fair and ethical thing for him to do is to try to allow her the freedom to seek happiness elsewhere, outside of with him.
of course, just as he was only marginally successful in trying to enforce professional boundaries between himself and sara previously, the same goes here—just on a more extreme scale. in this case, he shifts between coming down hard on sara (like in episode 04x08 “after the show”), ignoring her, and then (as always) showing her unmistakable affection.
to say that his behavior at this time is confusing and hurtful to sara, would be an understatement. the second he declined her dinner invitation at the end of s3, she knew that she had overstepped and tried her best to retreat. however, going forward, it seems that she cannot retreat far enough—that he’s still pissed at her, no matter what she does to prove to him that she’s willing to toe the line.
from his pov, he thinks he’s trying to do what’s best for both of them; it’s just that he keeps getting thrown into situations (such as in episodes 04x03 “homebodies,” 04x07 “invisible evidence,” 04x12 “butterflied,” etc.) that make it impossible for him to detach in the way that he intends to. however, from her pov, it seems as if he’s punishing her for asking him out and refusing to let bygones be bygones, even though she’s trying her damnedest to be professional and to respect his boundaries.
the whole situation is very fraught, and at no time more so than during the events of episode 04x12 “butterflied,” when grissom is confronted by the realization of how deeply he regrets rejecting sara’s offer for them to be together, and sara learns that grissom does in fact fully reciprocate her love; he’s just can't bring himself to be with her.
learning that grissom loves her but still won’t be with her wounds sara to the core and contributes to her worsening depression throughout s4. during this time, she starts behaving recklessly and engaging in the problem drinking behaviors that eventually result in her near-dui and her being required to attend mandatory peap sessions (see episode 04x23 “bloodlines”).
at this point, grissom realizes that sara is faring poorly—and that his behavior toward her is at least in part a reason why she is. knowing that his hot-and-cold routine with her over the years has hurt her (and particularly over the course of the last year), grissom arrives at the conclusion that he can’t keep playing things close to the chest with sara anymore; he has to be more transparent in his care for her. for the first time, his love starts to win out over his fear.
going forward through the tail end of 2004 and into 2005, he performs a kind of about-face and starts behaving toward sara in a way that is in keeping with how he actually feels about her: showing her care and concern, being open in his praise of her, actually showing up for her when she needs him, not hiding the fact that he adores and loves her, etc.
his change in attitude goes a long way to repairing their relationship; throughout the first half of s5, for the first time since sara moved from san francisco, they start to have a real friendship again. however, they are still not “together” in the romantic sense, despite being as in love with each other as ever.
and that brings us to the events of episode 05x12 “snakes.”
at this point in time, from sara’s perspective, she and grissom have turned a corner. while in early 2004, he was treating her as badly as he had ever treated her, stomping all over her heart left and right and even taking out his personal frustrations on her in a professional way, he has in, ever since her near-dui in may ’04, shifted his behavior toward her completely, to the point where now, in january '05, he is nothing but sweet to her all around.
while of course because she is in love with him, her reflexive response to this sweetness on his part is to hope that it means he might finally be ready for them to be together as a couple, she is also experienced enough with him at this point to check that initial reaction and (at least try to) convince herself that even though he’s being nice to her again, that doesn’t necessarily mean he wants to date her.
after all, she heard what he said to dr. lurie, so it’s probably best not to expect anything, right?
it might be that this kind of in-between state—of just being good friends who are in love with each other but are nevertheless not actually in a romantic relationship with each other—is “the best there is” for them; that it is all he is capable of giving her.
that so, for as much as she longs for that same “something more” she originally moved to las vegas expecting, sara does attempt to restrain herself; certainly, she isn’t about to try to push grissom again after what happened the last time she tried to be the one to take their relationship to that next level (see episode 03x22 “play with fire”).
so.
that’s sara’s m.o. at the time when the events of episode 05x12 “snakes” take place: she’s enjoying grissom’s renewed friendship with and recent sweetness toward her for what it is while trying to be mindful of the fact that (in all likelihood) what they feel for each other is never going to transpire into an actual romantic relationship of the type she still so desperately wants them to have. she’s trying to just be cool with this whole “we’re in love with each other but we’re never going to actually be together” deal.
now.
around this time, ecklie ends up splitting team graveyard, moving catherine, warrick, and nick onto the swing shift and turfing sofia curtis, his own previous assistant shift supervisor from days, onto nights to join grissom, sara, and greg.
though certainly not his intention, in so doing, he creates a situation where grissom and sara find themselves working together more closely than ever. though technically sofia becomes the second highest-ranked csi on the team at this point, sara moves into what is essentially (not in any official capacity but in terms of what kind of role she’s playing) the position that catherine used to occupy, becoming grissom’s right hand and most frequent partner.
whereas in s4, being forced to work in such close quarters might have been unbearable for grissom and sara, at present, the arrangement actually works really, really well; they’re getting along better than ever, pulling together to train greg and keep the shift on track, developing the professional shorthand they’ve always had even beyond what it’s been before, and just generally making an excellent team.
obviously, they still miss catherine, warrick, and nick and both wish that ecklie hadn’t “broken up the band,” but, all things considered, if the way things are now is the way they have to be (per ecklie), then it’s not a bad setup.
that said.
i think that sara in particular feels that the situation is a somewhat precarious one, inasmuch as while it’s wonderful that they’re able to spend so much time together at work, the more time that they do spend together, the harder it becomes for them to “keep their wires from crossing.”
they are, after all, still in a position where they are in love with each other but not dating—and, as far as she knows, grissom most likely has no interest in changing the status quo.
in the past, she’s sometimes taken his positive responses to her on the job as evidence of his romantic intentions with her, and back in ’03 in particular, she jumped the gun, asking him out when he wasn’t ready and scaring the hell out of him in the process.
she doesn’t want to repeat that mistake again. she doesn’t want to confuse what their dynamic is now (and must always remain) for what she wants it to be (but it isn’t and can't be).
so that’s why she goes to talk to him in episode 05x12 “snakes”—as kind of a preemptive thing, a way for her to demonstrate to him that she is committed to keeping their dynamic safely within the realm of the professional.
now.
i don’t know that her original intention in talking to grissom is to specifically bring up her peap sessions or to talk to him about anything that was said in them*, much less to discuss the finer points of their relationship problems over the years; instead, i think her goal is to a) apologize for anything she may have done to contribute to this whole “team splitting” nonsense with ecklie, b) assure him that she is a team player and willing to do whatever is necessary to help him, and c) make it clear that she is capable of behaving professionally and abiding this “new normal” between them.
* as for potentially telling grissom about her family, while she did want to do so during the events of episode 05x01 “viva las vegas,” not so anymore; so much time has passed that whatever courage and inclination she had mustered to tell him the truth has fled her. she’s back to operating under the assumption that she’s going to take that secret to her grave.
of course, the best laid plans of csis in love often go awry, so regardless of what sara’s original intentions in coming in to talk to grissom may have been, what actually ends up happening is her peap counseling gets brought up, and the next thing she knows, she’s telling grissom that he has always been more than a boss to her.
she then ends up babbling to him* about how she is (in her opinion) the one responsible for making their relationship “complicated” over the years, trying to assume the blame onto herself in an effort to show him that she’s got a grip on things now and will do better going forward.
* “i am always over-talking around you.”
sara ends up saying way more and getting much more personal than she initially meant to, digging in so deep that her only option is to cop to everything—that she first moved to vegas under the assumption that they would be together; that over the years she has sought to make more of their relationship than he’s been willing to meet her in; and even that she does (despite everything) still love him, though she is trying her damnedest to keep things in check and maintain a strictly professional rapport.
because grissom is his typical tongue-tied self, she assumes that with each new revelation she accidentally makes, she’s freaking him out more and more—hence why she eventually cuts the conversation off and essentially flees his office, hoping against hope that she hasn’t just ruined everything by being too forward with him (again).
but.
here's the thing: for as much as sara feels as if she’s being too raw and wearing her heart too much on her sleeve, it turns out that what she’s saying is in many ways exactly what grissom needs to hear.
though he may not find the words to respond to her in the moment, make no mistake: it is her telling him (how circuitously) that she is still in love with him and moved to vegas to be with him that gives him the courage to, just a few weeks later in show time, go to her apartment and confront her about her past (see episode 05x13 “nesting dolls”), an event which, if it doesn’t mark the start of their official romantic relationship itself, does directly precipitate that moment sometime shortly afterward in late s5 or early s6.
—and that brings us to the conversation itself, and the line in question:
(sara enters grissom’s office, and grissom invites her to sit down)
s: “we really haven’t had a chance to talk since the staff changes. i, uh—i wanted to let you know that i said some things to ecklie that might have done the team a disservice.”
g: “ecklie wanted to break up the team, and he did.”
s: “he asked me if you and i had had our post-peap counseling session—”
g: “—and we didn’t. regardless, you should never have to cover for your boss. i’m sorry.”
s: (sweetly) “you’ve always been a little more than a boss to me.”
(she offers grissom a timid smile, unsure if she’s said too much. she tries to make a joke)
s: “why do you think i moved to vegas?” (she smirks, trying to play off the enormity of what she’s just said. grissom starts; he’s not sure how to respond to her admission. luckily, she saves him, looking down at the desk as she ventures) “look, i know our relationship has been complicated. it’s probably my fault. it’s probably definitely my fault.”
(it’s the most confessional and personal sara has been with grissom in a long time, and it discomforts him that such is the case, mostly because he knows that what she says isn’t entirely true. yes, their relationship is complicated, but it’s not all sara’s fault that it is so. for the last while, ever since sara’s vacation over the summer, things have been going really well between them, like back in the old days, during the first two years sara was in vegas. grissom has allowed himself to be almost effusive with her. he’s worn his heart on his sleeve more than he’s intended to. if things are complicated, then he certainly shares the blame—maybe even takes it. it’s just that sometimes he forgets that they’re supposed to have boundaries, is all—)
(boundaries)
(grissom quickly resorts to them—bringing the conversation back into the realm of the professional, where he is her boss and she is his subordinate)
g: (flustered) “you, uh, completed your counseling, right?”
s: “yeah. yes.”
g: “and?”
s: (she meets grissom’s eyes) “let’s just say that sometimes i look for validation in inappropriate places.”
(grissom stares at her, surprised by her frankness)
(his attention is too much for her to bear, so she looks away, suddenly distant. she is always saying too much around him, isn’t she? god, she wishes he would quit looking at her like that, like—)
(grissom quirks an eyebrow, swallows, opens and closes his mouth, glances to his hands, folded over the desk. he’s gathering his thoughts, trying to think of how to respond, of what to say. the problem is, and always has been, that he loves her, but he doesn’t know what to do about it, what he can and can’t say—)
(the awkwardness is almost palpable. sara starts to squirm. won’t he just say something? please?)
g: “look. let’s, um—”
(grissom struggles to find the words. he wants too many things, and he doesn’t know how to express any of them. where would he even begin?)
(sara perceives his indecision. she draws a breath—rescues him from saying something he might later regret)
s: (softly, sweetly) “it’s okay, okay? you know what? we did our session.” (she tries to ease the tension with a joke) “don’t forget to document this for ecklie.”
(she smiles. see? it’s okay. if he needs it to be okay, it’s okay. it’s fine)
g: (taken aback) “right.”
s: “thanks.”
(she exits, flustered)
(the camera holds on grissom. he couldn’t say it. he couldn’t just say—)
(god)
let's take this scene a piece at a time:
“we really haven’t had a chance to talk since the staff changes” to “you’ve always been a little more than a boss to me.”
after their brief, initial discussion of her run-in with ecklie, the conversation quickly veers away from what sara had originally intended it to be, when she admits how deeply she cares for grissom (“you’ve always been a little more than a boss to me”).
in my view, that statement is 100% an “in the moment,” “it just popped out of my mouth” thing—and it basically amounts to her telling him by accident that she is in love with him.
sara is so surprised at herself for saying something so brazen—remember, her #1 goal going into this discussion was to convince grissom that she is committed to behaving professionally!—that her only recourse is to try to cover it with a joke (“why do you think i moved to vegas?”).
“why do you think i moved to vegas?” to “look, i know our relationship has been complicated. it’s probably my fault. it’s probably definitely my fault.”
unfortunately for her, the “joke” she attempts to land is probably just as telling as the statement she means to land it on, as she tells grissom that her original reason for moving to vegas was that she was in love with him.
having dug herself in pretty deep now (in terms of revealing feelings she wanted to keep private), she levels: she knows she always does this—always comes on too strong, too much and too fast (“look, i know our relationship has been complicated. it's probably my fault”).
she is aware that there have been times in the past when she has pushed grissom to act before he felt ready to do so or even when he had no intention to ever do so at all. she understands now that though she moved to vegas under the impression that they would be together once she got there, he never promised her anything along those lines. she also understands that when she asked him out after the lab explosion, he couldn’t say yes to her. for as much as the way he treated her after she asked him out hurt, she gets now that he probably felt he had no other choice than to be so firm with her—because every time he shows her any modicum of human kindness, she always seems to take it as a sign that he wants to date her, even if that’s not the case. she blames herself for all of the awkwardness between them between 2000 and 2005.
she’s always wanted him to be something that he isn’t, and it’s taken her until now to realize as much and accept that while she wishes they could be a couple, they’re never going to be; it’s friendship or nothing.
—and this is her, in her gawky, roundabout way, trying to express that she chooses friendship, even though she is still in love with him.
at this point, of course, sara has now made about three enormous and uncomfortable admissions in a row, so grissom chimes in, asking her if she completed her counseling.
“you, uh, completed your counseling, right?” to “let’s just say that sometimes i look for validation in inappropriate places.”
though we’re talking about sara’s words here, i think it’s important to note that at this point in time, grissom is very conscious of the power dynamics in play between him and sara in terms of him being her boss.
he gets that in the past, there have been occasions when he has abused his power over her, such as during s3, when he punished her for being with hank by giving her unsavory assignments and exiling her from team assignments, and in s4, when he thwarted her attempts to secure the promotion because he couldn’t abide the thought of working more closely with her than he already was.
now that he’s turned over his new leaf and is trying to do right by her, he doesn’t want to leverage his professional weight against her anymore.
she’s sitting here in front of him, rambling about how she may have done a disservice to the team by not talking to him about her counseling, making some very intimate confessions about how she’s always made professional decisions in response to her personal feelings for him, admitting (basically) that she’s still in love with him—and he’s getting the feeling that maybe she’s still scared of him; that maybe after the way he treated her last year, she is still experiencing guilt over things that aren’t her fault, believing that she’s done something wrong just by feeling the way she feels (even though he has been right there with her and has definitely encouraged her feelings through his behavior).
he hates to think that she has any reason to worry that he will punish her for the team split or what she's said here.
that's why he moves to ask her about the counseling—because he wants to prove to her that she hasn’t done anything wrong and that he isn’t going to punish her.
she was supposed to attend sessions, and she did.
she even tried to report back to him about them immediately after the fact, but their discussion got preempted (see episode 05x01 “viva las vegas”).
though she’s blaming herself for never getting back to the subject, the truth is that it was his job, as the supervisor, to follow-up with her, and he didn’t. he let the conversation fall by the wayside.
it's not a mistake he intends to continue making, hence why he asks her about her counseling now.
of course, grissom is aware that at least part of the reason why they never talked about her counseling before was because hers wasn’t a simple case of an employee having a work-related issue, addressing that issue through work-sponsored counseling, and then returning to work to tell her boss how the counseling shook out.
just as sara realizes that for her the professional and the personal will always be tied up in each other for as long as she is in love with her boss (making a “work-life balance” difficult or even impossible for her to achieve), grissom realizes the same.
he gets that a major factor in the reckless behavior which put her job in jeopardy last year was the fact that he—as both the man she loves and her boss—had been cruel to her.
in his view, she might have never resorted to drinking and driving that night had she not been nursing the heart he’d broken.
he’s very sorry about that now.
that’s why he’s trying so hard to be gentle with her here.
of course, sara is already self-conscious of herself in this moment, so what he intends and what she hears end up being two different things. though he’s asking about her counseling to try and put her mind at ease and convince her she’s not in the wrong, she interprets his question to mean, “you’re acting erratic right now. did you actually go to the therapy you were supposed to (because it doesn’t seem like you did)?”
she thinks she’s freaking him out.
her answer—“let’s just say that sometimes i look for validation in inappropriate places”—is an attempt on her part to put him at ease.
she's trying to be self-deprecating, to show him that she is fully aware of her tendency to ask too much of him, to look to him to be more for her than he is willing to be.
her saying “let’s just say that sometimes i look for validation in inappropriate places” is tantamount to her telling him “you've made it perfectly clear that you have no interest in being my boyfriend, so i need to stop being hung-up on the fact that you’re not. it’s not right for me to keep trying to force something that you don’t want. i shouldn’t keep looking to you to be my man, not only because department policy forbids it, but also because you (personally) aren’t willing to be in a relationship with me. for almost five years, i’ve been barking up the wrong tree with you, but no more.”
though she and her counselor probably never directly discussed grissom as an “inappropriate” source to seek validation from, she can still see how the terminology applies here.
just like trying to find happiness exclusively in her work is a recipe for disappointment, so is trying to find happiness in a committed romantic relationship that doesn’t actually exist.
yes, she’s in love with grissom, and, yes, he’s in love with her, but they’re not actually together, so she can’t expect to have all the same needs filled in her relationship with him as she would within the context of an actual romantic partnership.
that’s what she’s saying.
and the reason she looks distant afterward?
well, for one thing, it’s because that’s probably the first time she’s made that kind of statement out loud—that she’s admitted to him and herself that for however much what they have may sometimes feel like a committed romantic relationship, it isn’t one, and she can’t continue treating it like it is.
for another thing, it’s because even though what she’s saying is logical and ostensibly true and even a healthy perspective to have, there is still nevertheless a part of her—and even a big part—that feels like maybe there’s hope for her and grissom in the long run, meaning that even as the words are coming out of her mouth, she’s already second-guessing them.
is grissom really an inappropriate source to look for for validation (which here is synonymous with “happiness”) after all? or is there maybe still some chance that one day this ill-defined, nebulous, years-long ~thing~ that they’ve had will actually turn into what it’s always seemed to want to be—namely, a love story with a happy ending?
in this moment, she’s torn between the present she thinks she should accept and the possible future that she still very much wants—and particularly given the current state of her and grissom’s relationship.
almost a year ago to the day*, sara heard grissom tell vincent lurie that though he loved her, he was too scared to be with her, using the past tense to indicate that the choice had already been made and his decision was set in stone; that he and sara were never going to be together because he couldn’t stand the thought of losing out.
* within the universe of the show, episode 04x12 “butterflied” takes place on 01.15.04, while episode 05x12 “snakes” takes place 01.12.05.
by all accounts, that experience should have shut the door on any possibility for “them” in her mind; she should have realized, standing on that observation deck, listening in on that confession, that all hope for her and grissom to be together was then lost.
and maybe for a minute, that was the conclusion that she came to.
in the immediate aftermath of that revelation, she did feel hopeless.
hence the depression. hence the drinking and driving.
but that’s the thing: ever since her near-dui, for the last eight months, grissom has been treating her so beautifully that she can’t help but have hope again. everything that’s happening between them now feels like a kind of restart, like a resumption of the same fairy tale they were in in the beginning.
that so, she finds herself telling him with one breath “i get that what we are now is all we ever will be, and i'm trying to be okay with that; i think i can be okay with that” but with the next breath wishing desperately that he will prove her wrong.
being closer now to what she wants than she has perhaps ever been but still as far away from it as always is heartbreaking and confusing for her.
the moment is bittersweet to the max.
on the one hand, she’s finally said some of the things she’s always needed to say but before had never been able to. on the other hand, she’s still six inches to the left of happiness with him.
for a few brief seconds after she speaks, she hopes that maybe grissom will say something equally telling—will make a move.
but he doesn’t.
“look. let’s, um—” to “thanks.”
—of course, what she doesn’t realize it that he wants to; she just preempts him before he can work up the nerve to do so.
as i talk about in this post,
the more awkward sara feels, the more she babbles, and the more she babbles, the more she wishes that grissom would stop her from babbling.
when he cuts in with his question about whether or not she’s completed her counseling, she thinks, “oh god, i sound nuts,” and tries to course correct by going meta: i.e., by pointing out that she knows she’s often weird and inappropriate with him and that she asks him for things he is unwilling and/or unable to give her.
by pointing out the fact that she seeks validation in appropriate places herself, she hopes that grissom won’t have to make a thing of it—that he can just say, “okay, sara. glad that’s settled.”
of course, she also subconsciously hopes that maybe he’ll correct her: i.e., that he’ll tell her that she’s not wrong to have feelings for him because he reciprocates her feelings himself; i.e., that he’ll say, “no, sara, you’re not crazy. it makes sense that you act the way you do because i’ve been encouraging it.”
but that’s just a subconscious feeling probably more than a thought.
mostly she just wants grissom to quit staring and start talking because, honestly, she can’t read him when he just stares, and it freaks her out in about a thousand different ways. is he mad at her for bringing up their past? does he think she’s nuts? is he going to pull out the supervisor card on her? and, god, why does that look in his eyes seem so much like adoration? is she seeing things? fooling herself? she’s just trying to do the right thing here by owning up to her part in their complicated relationship. can’t he acknowledge the gesture in some way?
she’s practically squirming in her seat, expecting the worst, vaguely hoping for the best, and then he starts stammering.
“look. let’s, um—,” he says.
and that’s when sara can’t stand it anymore. she thinks she’s forced grissom into a corner where he has to say something that he knows is going to devastate her, and he’s trying to find a way not to be cruel, and she doesn’t want to wait around for him to figure out the words because, honestly, she just doesn’t want to hear them, and she also doesn’t want him to feel like he’s stuck.
she feels like an idiot: a schoolgirl with a crush on her teacher.
she gets that it’s weird for him.
so she rescues him—tells him it’s okay, that she gets it, that this meeting can be over, and they can both return to the status quo. they don’t have to make a bigger thing of this than she already has, right? they can just forget it happened, all of it, from san francisco to this moment. they can be professional. they have to be professional, you know? if he doesn’t want to make anything of it, then that’s the only way to go.
they moved past her asking him out a few years ago, and they can move past this “over-talking” moment between them, too. things have actually been well for them lately, in terms of how they’ve been getting along; sara doesn’t want to fuck that up. and that’s why she gives grissom an out, you know? so that they can continue on as if nothing’s happened, because that’s what they always do, isn’t it?
of course, what sara doesn’t realize is that grissom wasn’t trying to find a gentle way to shoot her down; he was trying to work up the courage to maybe ask her out or to say something similarly revealing. she has no idea that ever since he picked her up from p.d. after she got pulled over, he’s been thinking a lot about his feelings for her and what he wants from their relationship, and he is right on the brink of telling her how much he wants her and actively pursuing a relationship with her outside of work.
—and that’s kind of a recurrent theme in these situations where sara “rescues” grissom: i.e., that sara thinks that grissom is gearing up to let her down, when really he’s gearing up to put his heart on his sleeve.
if sara would just allow grissom a few more seconds to stammer and work up his courage, he might say something truly revelatory. unfortunately, her insecurities limit her patience. she can’t imagine that things are about to go right for her—because things never go right for her—so she preempts the moment, breaks it up, lessens the blow for herself, and ameliorates, ameliorates, ameliorates.
and the second she does? grissom loses his nerve.
so.
all of this overlong discussion is to say that while i don’t think sara’s quip about seeking validation in inappropriate places is directly related to her past, i do think there is a thread that runs from her trauma responses to her uneven work-life balance to her counseling to the language she picks up there to her fraught relationship with grissom to what she says to him in this conversation.
it all, in a way, connects.
that acknowledged, for my money, what her comment is really in reference to is her relationship patterns with grissom—and her sense that over the last several years, she has repeatedly asked him for something he is either unwilling or unable to give her, which is an action that she needs to stop taking now both for the sake of her own sanity and also to maintain their new (and improved) status quo.
for as fumbling as it is, this conversation is her way of saying, “look, i know these last few years have been rough for us, but i'm going to do better from now on. please just give me a chance to show you i can do this ‘friends and colleagues’ thing right.”
of course, the irony is that as soon as sara seems to come to a place where she at least tacitly accepts the idea that she and grissom are never going to have a romantic relationship, the very act of her saying as much is what opens grissom’s eyes to the idea that it’s still possible for them to do so.
ever since the events of episode 03x22 “play with fire,” he had been operating under the assumption that any chances he’d ever had with sara had been spent, but when she looks him in the eyes in this scene and essentially tells him, “i still love you, even though i know you don’t want to be with me, and i can be all right with that,” his hope is suddenly renewed.
i'm not sure that all of the pieces fall into place for him at once, but at some point between this conversation in his office and whenever it is that he and sara officially commence their romantic relationship, he seems to arrive at the conclusion that if sara is still in love with him and has only given up on pursuing him because she’s laboring under the false belief that he doesn’t want to be with her and he is still in love with her and has only given up on pursuing her because he’s laboring under the false belief that she doesn’t want to be with him, then the only thing that’s actually stopping them from being together is their own hesitation.
if one of them just made a move, they could both get what they wanted.
so as soon as he has courage/motivation enough, that’s what he does.
anyway, that’s my take on this scene, for what it’s worth.
your mileage may vary, of course.
thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.
