#fcebl

[addictedtostorytelling]

"[bobby] was pretending for you. that was another one of our secrets: i was supposed to not let you be sad. i was supposed to make you forget. to make you happy. he made me promise to make you happy. i'm sorry, mom."

[addictedtostorytelling]

[addictedtostorytelling]

the way she just immediately goes after him, no hesitation she's his person and she knows it

[addictedtostorytelling]

gil grissom + 💔💔💔

[addictedtostorytelling]

Hi! Thank you for answering my questions. I hope this "ask" finds you well. I just finished CSI S15 and I would like to know your opinion on these issues:

Why is Sara Sidle so angry? I have seen her spiraling with alcohol, depressed on her love for Boss G and anger about everything in general on S4 & S8 but the angry Sara on S15 is vicious and violent. Assaulting suspects on PD hallways, shouting during interrogation, slamming her hand on the interrogation table... Seriously, Sara Sidle is scary, way out of line and borderline unprofessional. The Angry Sara on the earlier CSI seasons are usually cause by Domestic Violence but the Angry Sara on S15, I can't explain the motivation. It's confusing.

And Greg Sanders is so dull. What happened to the rock and roll head banging, Las Vegas History lovin' Lab Tech turned CSI? His hair used to be so distinct and lively but on S15, his hair is dull and parted sideways. He looks so sad. Like life as CSI has sucked all the fun out of him.

(no complains about Pancho Nicky though 😁)

And every CSI is moonlighting as Lab Techs. No more Gun-expert Bobby, Tech Savvy Archie and Finger Print Reader Mandy/Jackie...now all lab tech duties are divided to Hodges, Henry and the CSI.

Also, I would like to comment on the writers of CSI S15. They are lazy. One case in an episode then a serial killer arc for the entire season. The tangents and possible explanation why a person is a viable suspect is confusing. Whatever happened to the 2 cases per episode concept? That concept worked with high ratings for so many years/seasons so why change it? Now, all CSI worked in 1 case per episode, it seems they are passing tasks with each other that they can do themselves. No wonder it ended on a low rating. I cannot see/feel the magic of CSI anymore. The episodes looks tired and dragging.

I am very sorry for the rant but I stopped watching when Gil Grissom left in S9E10. After multiple watching of CSI Vegas, CSI S01 to S9E10 and CSI Immortality, I finally got the courage to watch all episodes after GG left starting S15. Gosh, my disappointment and frustration were so high that I had to go back and rewatch all GSR scenes on CSI Vegas so I can remind myself that Sara Sidle is not angry and so beautifully in love with her hubby Gil Grissom.

I finished S15 but I am afraid of all the disappointment and frustration I will feel on S14. Still, I will push through so I can say I have watched all CSI Episodes from S01 to S15.

Again, apologies for the rant.

hi, @hiei29!

i’m gonna put my answers under the “keep reading” so as not to poison anyone’s dash, okay?

warning: this post is extremely critical of the writing in the later seasons of the show and especially of the characterization in those seasons. if you are a fan of those seasons, you probably shouldn’t read this post, as it contains a literal salt mine of negativity regarding them.

__

so, uh, i make no secret of the fact that i hate the later seasons of csi with all the salt that is in me, finding them to be some of the worst-written and most disappointing television i have ever watched, a downgrade in every possible way from the early seasons of the show.

there is literally nothing about them i find enjoyable, and i refuse to rewatch them because to me they are so contemptible.

i am afraid to say, but i think you'll discover (since you're watching in reverse chronological order) that things are only going to get worse for you as you delve now into s14 and then s13, which is the absolute nadir of the series and by far the hardest season to watch as a gsr/sara sidle fan.

anyway.

to answer some of your questions, i will first direct you to several posts that cover a lot of the same topics:

this one talks about the poor writing and multiplicity of storytelling problems in the later seasons of the show, explaining why they came about from an outside-of-the-story world perspective. though a lot of the post relates specifically to s10 (and the clumsy way the writers wield ray langston as a character), the same concepts also apply throughout s11-s15, as well.

this one was written after the end of s15 but before news of the show's cancellation had come out and so is in some ways out of date, but it does outline many of the general problems with csi's writing during that late-game era, including its eschewing of character development, how only working on a single case per episode reduced many of the characters to "glorified lab tech" and/or "courier" status (as you describe above), its over-reliance on spectacle, its lack of serialization/continuity, etc.

this one explains in more detail the shift from the traditional a plot/b plot narrative format into the "one case per episode" one and what this move's effects on the show were overall.

this one talks about how greg's characterization and development were first flattened and then dropped in the later seasons of the show, while this one explains how he got stuck in an interminable holding pattern as part of a never-fully-resolved love triangle with him, morgan, and hodges, which ultimately contributed to his "unfinished" feeling as a character at the end of the series.

as for the topic of sara and her anger in the late series:

that issue is one that has its roots in many of the other issues discussed above.

as new writers came onto the show and, steered by their generally poor writing instincts, made the mistake of focusing their attentions on introducing and highlighting the newer characters (first langston, then russell, finn, and morgan) rather than dividing their attentions equally among the whole cast, they neglected the old characters, essentially relegating them to minor character status. though by all rights, once grissom and catherine had left the show, nick, sara, and greg should have moved to center stage just by virtue of their seniority and how invested the audience was in them, they were largely ignored.

nick got the most development out of the trio post-s12 (when catherine left the show and russell, finn, and morgan replaced her), which is perhaps why you find yourself the least disappointed with his characterization out of anyone's, though even he featured far less prominently and received less development than he should have.

in the meanwhile, sara and greg's development completely fell by the wayside.

while greg's "benching" happened in the wake of the failed love triangle storyline of s12 (as described in the post above), sara's came about following her s13 divorce, after which she never really was given another personal storyline again.

though they would both occasionally be the subject of individual "focus episodes" (e.g., see episode 14x16 "killer moves" for greg or episode 15x12 "dead woods" for sara), any and all development they underwent was consigned to those episodes only; all emotional changes, lessons learned or unlearned, progress/regression, etc. they experienced lasted just until the end credits rolled and then was summarily forgotten about going forward, as if it had never happened to begin with. neither one of them had any kinds of serialized arcs to speak of for the last several seasons of the show.

but here's the thing: not only did they not get any character development in the last several seasons of the show, but their characters themselves were also flattened, reduced down to be caricatures of their former selves.

the new writers who came onto the show following the 2008 writers' strike and later (see the first post linked above) hadn't done their homework. none of them read the show bible or really got a feel for the old characters; they knew them only in a very superficial way.

frankly, all of the characters of the later seasons, both old and new, have the same standard base personality: a very one-note, sitcom-esque “quirky smartness” with a uniform sense of humor, uniform approach to problem solving, uniform professional skillset, and uniform “good guy-ness,” which results in them all tending to speak and act mostly the same across scenes, to the point of interchangeability.

seriously: in 80% of the scenes in the later seasons, you could swap out any one character for any other and the tone, timbre, and outcome of the scene would not be altered at all. there’s no perceptible difference between how sara talks and how finn does, how greg would approach an issue versus how nick would, etc.; they’d all make the same quips and take the same actions across the majority of all scenes. 

the writers then tacked on maybe one or two “extra” character traits to each character* in order to “distinguish” them from one another (so that russell becomes base personality + hippie dad, finn becomes base personality + maneater, hodges becomes base personality + self-important weirdo, etc.) and considered their characterization work done, making no further efforts to develop or change anyone over time.

* except for morgan, who is literally just the base personality and nothing else. i mean, seriously, aside from being “nice,” what even is she? how would one describe her? she has no distinguishing characteristics.

compare this very stock characterization in the later seasons to the rich characterization of the early ones: in s1-s8 of the original series, each main character has a very distinctive personality, worldview, and even diction. greg never would or even could have approached solving a problem in the same way that grissom would/could, nick’s dialogue didn’t sound the same across the board as warrick’s, etc. even grissom and sara, who were the two most similar characters, in terms of the basic temperaments, intelligence levels, ways of speaking and comporting themselves, etc., weren’t 1:1 the same as each other; they had enough that varied between them so as not to be mistakable for each other. the main cast felt like six different people, not six versions of the same person. and the storytelling was so much better and more compelling for it! even just on an emotional level, there was so much more dynamism and room for multiple reactions. not everyone was going to bust out the exact same quip at the exact same time, you know?

but whereas the new characters were never anything but this base personality + [insert the one individual characteristic they may or may not possess here], meaning that for as boring as they may be, there’s nothing really to mourn with them in terms of “lost potential,” with the old characters, this adherence to the stock formula is something far more devastating, as in order to make them fit the mold, the writers had to strip them of so much of their former characterizations, divesting them of all of the intricacies that had been part of them throughout the early seasons of the show, leaving them shadows of their former selves.

nick became “standard later seasons personality” plus

nice 

texan

traumatized but we’re not quite sure how/in what ways/to what degree and aren’t consistent about depicting him as such

sara became “standard later seasons personality” plus

uncool/nerdy

sarcastic

angry

greg became “standard later seasons personality” plus

has a crush on morgan??????

(that’s really his only “distinguishing” character trait in the last several seasons.)

and all of them shifted from being dramatic characters who had occasional comedic beats to being comedic characters who had occasional dramatic ones. it was like they had been transposed into a sitcom world, despite the very macabre nature of what their procedural was all about; i call it the “ncis-ification of csi.”

it was as if never having watched the early seasons of the show themselves (or only having watched a few episodes here and there), the later seasons writers turned to the wikipedia character summaries for nick, sara, and greg and then based their entire depictions of the characters going forward on what they found in those few paragraphs of description.

there was no nuance or multivalence to how they handled the characters at all, no sense of recourse to their past developments, no sense of history with them, certainly no development going forward, etc.

so.

for as much as i hate the later seasons for what they did to gsr, i hate them even more for what they did to sara sidle, taking the most wonderfully complex, interesting, realistic, subtle, dynamic, well-wrought character i’d ever had the pleasure of watching on tv and turning her into what was essentially just “angry girl, version 1.0,” totally generic in every way.

i still remember my first time watching the scene in episode 15x12 “dead woods” in which sara stalks abby’s boyfriend slade down the hall at pd, runs him up against the wall, and threatens him. while my first reaction was to full-body cringe because, holy god, that was embarrassingly badly written!, my second reaction was to feel heartbreak, because what i was seeing was such a bastardization of my favorite character that she was almost unrecognizable to me, and it was such a shame.

it was like the writers were vaguely aware of older scenes like the one in episode 01x10 “sex, lies, & larvae,” where sara gets in scott shelton’s face, and wanted to replicate them, but they had no idea what would actually make sara tick or what her mechanics were. 

theirs was just a bad impression of “sara being triggered,” lacking all understanding of her inner emotional world.

and that’s how sara is throughout the later seasons: most often, just the standard base personality, but with occasional flashes of intense and largely unexplained anger thrown in.

and, i mean—

had they wanted to, they maybe could’ve been more deliberate about depicting sara’s anger, making it an actual plot point that after the divorce, she started to be much more hair-trigger and prone to outbursts, constantly simmering with a low current of frustration that sometimes ignited into full-on flares of fiery temper in cases where she was provoked.

they could’ve shown nick and greg worrying about how on-edge she seemed and maybe even herself fretting over her inability to control herself.

they eventually could’ve written something about how the truth was, she found it easier to be angry at the world than to feel her actual, underlying emotion, i.e., heartbreak over losing the love of her life—because at least the anger was somewhat “empowering,” whereas the heartbreak just made her feel small, helpless, hopeless, and vulnerable, and particularly since she feared it might be unending.

because how could she ever be happy again without grissom?   

at some point, they could’ve had the storyline come to a head, maybe with sara crossing a line with a suspect or even one of her team members, being confronted about it (or even faced with suspension) and then breaking down, finally admitting just how hurt she was, maybe going into anger management or therapy or at least just giving voice to her feelings for once.

like.

it wouldn’t have been a storyline i would have favored for her, but it could have been a thing if the writers had wanted to make it one.

it could have been some actual storywork.

but of course it wasn’t.

they never made anything of it.

there was never any sense that the writing of sara as angry was at all purposeful or that it had anything to do with events from her past, either from her childhood or more recently with the divorce.

in the later seasons writers’ incompetent hands, “angry sara” was always just a haphazard thing, something they did with her when the case-of-the-week called for it or when they didn’t know what to do with her otherwise.

never was it delved into.

never was it treated as the problem it was.

since in their minds, sara was just an angry person—ignoring all of her post-episode 05x13 “nesting dolls” development in the earlier seasons of the show—there was no reason to question or probe or explore her anger; it was just a given, something they could fall back on whenever they needed a quick and easy way to ratchet up the emotional tension in a particular episode.

the reason you find yourself unable to explain the motivations behind sara’s anger in s15 is because there aren’t any.

unlike gil grissom, the writers of that season are unwilling to ask what’s made sara so angry. they don’t ever go there, and neither do they want to.

they have no intention to ever look beneath the surface with her.

so they just don’t.

i wish i could tell you that there’s something to look forward to with s14, but there really isn’t. the writing is just as bad and the characterization is just as nonexistent as is the case with s15. sara is certainly just as wasted.

anyway.

thanks for the questions! please feel welcome to send more any time.

[addictedtostorytelling]

Hi! Thank you for answering my questions. I have valued your insight on GSR. I hope you will have time to enlighten me with your perspective regarding this matter.

Sara Sidle grew up in a chaotic household with an abusive father and a schizophrenic mother. I think Sara was drawn to Gil because Gil Grissom is the opposite of chaos. He is a man with a calming voice and presence. However, Sara had relationships prior to Gil and based on her relationship with Hank, she is blind when a man is cheating/using her.

Do you think Sara Sidle is the type of woman who would allow a man to be abusive to her, physical/emotional/verbal?

I'd like to think that Sara Sidle will never allow a man to be abusive to her given her past but I would like to know your thoughts.

hi, @hiei29!

note: abuse is something that can happen to anyone, no matter what their background or personal attributes may be. there is no way to tell if someone is an abuser just by looking at them, and not all would-be abusers show signs of being abusers from the start. this post is not at all meant to suggest that abuse victims choose to be abused nor that they could avoid being abused by being “smarter” or “stronger,” making better life choices, altering their behavior in some way, etc. the onus of abuse is always on the abuser themselves, never on the victims. all that is being discussed here is the hypothetical question of if sara sidle would stay with a significant other who had in any way begun to physically, emotionally, and/or verbally abuse her.

because of the subject matter, i’m gonna put this one under the “keep reading,” okay?

__

so.

sara would not tolerate any kind of physical, emotional, or verbal abuse.

full stop.

no matter who he was or how long they had been together or how much she had liked him previously, the first time a boyfriend even started to gesture in the direction of potentially abusing her (e.g., raising his voice at her during an argument or getting in her face about something, purposefully trying to intimidate her, attempting to restrict or control her behavior in some way, getting too rough with her in the bedroom, talking to her disparagingly or using derogatory language toward her, setting his hands on her in an aggressive way, trying to gaslight her, etc.), she'd be out the door so damn fast, and she would give him no second chances.

abuse is 100% a deal-breaker for her, something she cannot and will not abide under any circumstances.

she has a zero tolerance policy.

probably a less than zero tolerance policy, if we’re honest—like even to the point where behaviors that are not actually themselves abusive or even necessarily tending that way but which are just generally kind of triggering for her might be enough to trip her alarm systems and make her call things quits (e.g., a guy being just kinda somewhat too loud all the time, not even necessarily in an aggressive or angry way but just with his regular speaking volume, might make her say, “you know what? i’m not doing this relationship” and cut ties because she finds herself too on edge around him). 

being in the presence of abusive men is just too triggering to her for her to allow it even a little (see episode 01x10 "sex, lies, & larvae"). it's something she's promised herself she'll never excuse away or allow in her life. she never wants to end up like her mother.

now.

these statements are not to suggest that sara could necessarily tell who has the potential to be an abuser from the get-go, because she can’t.

like, yes, she’s hypervigilant about the warning signs, and, yes, she would never date a guy who seemed aggressive or domineering or violent or misogynistic from the get-go. but even for as aware as she is and for as much as she typically only pairs with men she views as being initially docile/nonaggressive/nonthreatening, she’s still not prescient, and she can’t always know how someone is going to behave behind closed doors before she goes behind those closed doors with him. 

none of this discussion is to say that sara is immune to the potential to date someone who could be abusive.

frankly, it’s possible she has dated a guy or two who has started to eventually behave abusively toward her before.

rather, it’s just to say that at the first sign of any even remotely abusive behavior from someone she were dating, she would—as soon as it were safe for her to do so—get herself the fuck away from that person and never look back.

i’ve written somewhat about how her sex life with grissom is probably very decidedly (but wonderfully) “vanilla,” and, realistically, i think that’s true of all of her sexual relationships, even before she’s with him: she’s not into power play or bdsm or humiliation in the bedroom at all. she doesn’t even probably like having guys use degrading language in that setting.

as she mentions in episode 02x07 “caged,” she hates it when men call women the c-word. 

the guys she’s with have got to be gentle, and, if they’re not, i think she bounces pretty quick.

there’s nothing less attractive to her than a man who is controlling or overpowering or who is comfortable trying to intimidate her as a woman.

to that end, i think she tends to engineer the logistics of her relationships to make it possible for her to exit them quickly if needed.

prior to grissom, she never enmeshes her life with the life of anyone she is dating. she tends to date casually as opposed to getting into serious, long-term relationships—while i can’t fully substantiate this claim, i strongly believe that hank is probably the boyfriend she dates the longest prior to grissom, and even after over a year of being with him, she still very much is keeping him at arm’s length—eschewing more formal commitments. it’s doubtful she ever gives out keys to her apartment, even to guys she dates for a while. she’s definitely never lived with a romantic partner pre-grissom. definitely never shared a bank account. she’s likely incredibly fastidious about using birth control. ditto for making sure that she never gets too predictable in her routines with any given guy or drops her guard too much. she almost certainly doesn’t let herself go home with anyone when she’s drunk*. in general, she probably requires that her boyfriend be okay with giving her lots of “alone time” and letting her keep her own schedule. refuses to let him know everywhere she’s going or everything she’s doing. never truly allows herself to become too emotionally involved (and certainly before grissom never falls in love with anyone or even gets close to it). she keeps her secrets entirely to herself**.

* that’s part of why i say her behavior in episode 13x15 “forget me not” is so wildly ooc: even when she’s emotionally spiraling, she’d never go into a strange man’s hotel room blackout drunk. that’s just not something that someone with her background would ever be okay with, no matter how emotionally distraught she were otherwise.

** as she reveals in episode 05x01 “viva las vegas,” before grissom, she had never told anyone else her life story.     

she also has fail-safes in place for worst-case scenarios: as she mentions many times throughout the show, she’s trained in weaponless defense so she can fight back, if she needs to. she also has a permit to carry and keeps a gun at her place which she wouldn’t hesitate to use should a situation arise.

especially early on in her relationships, when she’s still getting to know the guy, she likely insists on public meeting places and won’t go off alone with him—honestly, good safety practices in any new social situation—and is probably slow to start inviting men into her personal life.

she’s got to really feel comfortable, just on a physical level, before she’s gonna actually relax enough to have fun with a new partner.

—but, of course, for as careful as she is regarding the red flags of potential abuse, she does have other potential blind spots.

as you mention, for as hypervigilant as she is re: abusive behavior, she’s somewhat oblivious to the warning signs of infidelity. 

as she mentions in episode 07x17 “fallen idols,” hank is not the first boyfriend she’s had who’s cheated on her.

the cheating is a kind of unfortunate symptom of the kinds of men she tends to date and the types of relationships she tends to enter into pre-grissom: something she’s somewhat vulnerable to because she forms shallow, noncommittal connections with guys she chooses specifically because they are unlikely to form serious attachments to her. 

it’s not that she actively chooses cads or is “okay with” being cheated on—even if she’s not in love with the guys who cheat on her, it’s still embarrassing/hurtful—but rather just that sometimes the lack of commitment in her relationships comes back to bite her in the ass.

of course, just like she wouldn’t hesitate to cut ties with any man who showed signs of potentially being abusive, she also won’t hesitate to cut ties with any man who cheats on her.

once she realizes what’s happening, it’s another deal-breaker for her.

it’s not something she’ll “allow” to happen to herself.

thankfully, for all sara has had bad luck with men in the past and for as hard as it is for her to find relationships she feels safe in, eventually she gets everything she is looking for in grissom. 

as i talk about in the previously-linked post:

as for the matter of sara falling for someone who is the “opposite of chaos,” i think one has to look no further than her childhood to see why grissom’s evenness and stability would appeal to her.

i have always thought that sara could never love a man who reminded her of her father.

while grissom will at times express righteous indignation and even raise his voice when he is upset (see episode 02x05 “scuba doobie-doo”), the man has no violence in him; he would never fly completely off the handle or lose himself to rage with another human being in the same way that sara’s father did with her mother when sara was a child.

though grissom himself fears his own “darkness” and “misanthropic nature” and worries that he may somehow be capable of evil deeds, sara sees him as intrinsically gentle and believes strongly in his capacity to control himself. she knows him as a measured and deliberate man who is uncomfortable carrying a service sidearm despite working a sometimes dangerous job in law enforcement and who could never willingly hurt a woman, much less the woman he loved.

she also knows, in an instinctive, i-see-what-is-in-your-heart kind of way, that while he will sometimes rant and rave about injustices in the world or the brazenness of certain criminals (such as in episode 01x19 “gentle, gentle”), getting worked up while in her presence, he never truly yells at her, even when she has done something to scare him (such as in episode 05x02 “down the drain”) or to challenge him (such as in episode 04x07 “invisible evidence”); somehow he seems to intuit that his doing so would frighten her, so he finds other ways to express his displeasure. he goes with silky instead of loud, hands-in-pockets instead of wild gesticulations, measured reason instead of impulsive reaction.

though she trusts no one else in the world, sara trusts grissom—and not only because she knows that he is incapable of being abusive, but also because she knows she can depend on him.

even when they’re not together, even at times when they’re not on good terms, he always shows up for her when she needs him (see, for example, episodes 01x23 “strip strangler” and 04x23 “bloodlines”). he so consistently cares about her and will move heaven and earth to make things right in her world when everything seems wrong (see episodes 01x10 “sex, lies, & larvae” and 01x16 “too tough to die”). even when she successfully fools others with her old favorite lie of “i’m fine,” she can never fully fool him, because he sees her, even in darkness. he may not always know exactly what’s wrong—and especially prior to the time when she reveals her past to him—but he cares enough to keep searching. he cares enough to stick with her in the meanwhile.

and for someone who has been abandoned by every single other person who was ever supposed to love and care for her, to have someone just be consistently present for her—who will never just peace out when life gets rough—means absolutely everything to her.

grissom is something solid to hold onto in a world where everything else just slips through sara’s fingers.

and especially because, despite all of her flaws, he perpetually believes in her, never wavering in his confidence that she is, at her heart, a good person, worthy of respect, loyalty, and love.

that he can look her in the eyes and without hesitation tell her that he doesn’t believe that she is somehow inherently flawed or broken based on what she came from is the be-all and end-all for her (see episode 05x13 “nesting dolls”).

for a girl whose whole life has been chaos and who often herself feels out of control, loving a man who centers her makes all of the sense in the world.

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

[addictedtostorytelling]

[addictedtostorytelling]

What do you think about this quote. It’s from season 4 and pre nesting dolls and Sara’s past reveal. Catherine: your father ever tell you you were pretty? Did he ever tell you you were smart?

hi, anon!

i think that since, outside of the universe of the show, when the line was written, the writers didn't yet know sara's backstory in full, they likely meant her answers ("i guess... yeah... *head nod*") to be more straightforward ones: i.e., yes, sara's father did occasionally praise her beauty, but he probably even more consistently praised her intelligence, so sara didn't doubt that one day she'd be successful.

however, inside of the universe of the show, in light of the later revelation of sara's backstory in s5, i've always thought that the way jorja fox plays sara's answer bespeaks some discomfort on her part, at least regarding the "pretty" part and the part where she nods her head in response to catherine asserting she probably always knew she'd be successful; she acts just a little bit shifty and noncommittal about what she's saying and implying, not meeting catherine's eyes, the tone of her voice suggesting a degree of uncertainty and/or hesitation.

that so, if one were so inclined, i think that one could—and, certainly, i do—read the line as sara lying, or at least bending (or omitting) some of the truth.

fwiw, while i think sara is probably lying about the "pretty" and "successful" parts of her answer, i think she's telling the truth when she says her father did at least occasionally tell her she was smart—because that part she says more confidently ("yeah")—albeit, even there, there may be some context for her answer that goes unsaid (more on that possibility below).

she's not about to tell catherine anything about what her father was really like or reveal the fact that she had plenty of reasons to doubt that she'd even survive in life, let alone be successful, so she gives the answer she thinks will end the conversation quickest rather than the one that is actually true.

now.

whether or not one believes jorja fox purposefully inflected sara's answer with that element of dubiousness—while sara's backstory certainly hadn't been concretized or fleshed out at this point, both the writers and jorja fox did nevertheless have some idea, and had since s1, that sara's past involved abuse and that her father was the likely culprit, given that she had always been shown to be so consistently triggered by ipv cases, so it's not outside of the realm of possibility that jorja fox (knowing sara as well as she does) purposefully inflected her performance to reflect some valence of uncertainty on sara's part—or that it's just a consequence of the line itself ("i guess" is a phrase that, just by its nature, never sounds particularly sure) is a matter of personal interpretation.

it's also a matter of personal interpretation how one views the nature of sara's lie, if one does in fact believe she's lying*.

* admittedly, even in light of the fact that sara's father was canonically abusive (at least toward her mother, if not also toward her), there is still the possibility that he may have at times praised both her looks and her smarts, nevertheless.

is she full-on saying the opposite of what is true—i.e., claiming he praised her beauty when in reality he was insulting of her looks (i.e., called her ugly)? or is she bending the truth (which is that even though he may have once or twice called her pretty and multiple times called her smart, the fact that he did so ultimately mattered way less than the fact of his abuse in terms of shaping sara's views on whether or not she might ever be successful in life)? or is she only "lying by omission" (i.e., while he never insulted her, he also never praised her; he was just distant and didn't really comment on her appearance one way or the other)?

it's also worth noting that sara, of course, provides no context for any of the parts of her answer, so even though she cops to her father telling her she was smart, she doesn't explain how often or in what circumstances he did so—which means that even though she answers in the affirmative, it still may be the case that his comments on her intelligence were less than laudatory (i.e., there's a big difference between being told, in a complimentary way, "honey, you're so smart! you can be anything you want when you grow up!" and being told, in a derogatory way, "you've always been too damn smart for your own good").

there's also something to be said for the fact that in situations of abuse, even if an abuser is technically being complimentary, what they say may not land as compliment for the person they're complimenting because actions ultimately speak louder than words. ditto for the fact that whatever compliments they give may later be undone by insults.

if your father tells you you're pretty and smart once or twice but then curses you out or insults you a hundred times, the scales are ultimately going to be tipped more toward the negative than the positive, in terms of your self-views.

hell, even if he is more often complimentary than insulting, if the compliments all come across as disingenuous but the insults all seem like they're truly meant, then you'll probably take the insults to heart more than the compliments, ratios notwithstanding.

anyway, suffice it to say that while on a surface level, sara's responses to catherine's questions here may seem not to mesh with what we later learn about her childhood, i think there is a lens through which one can view her answers as still accounting for her family history of abuse.

to me, what we see here is catherine asking sara, "did your father ever tell you you were pretty?... did he ever tell you you were smart?" and then asserting "so it probably never occurred to you that you wouldn't be successful" and assuming that sara's answers to those questions are going to be resounding yeses and that her response to the assertion will be a resounding no, it never did.

however, what she gets instead is a classic sara "i don't talk about my past" dodge, with sara giving an answer to the first question which allows for plausible deniability, an answer to the second question that comes without any sort of context, and a nonanswer to the assertion (i.e., that little head bob essentially communicates, "well, that's what you would think, wouldn't you?" much more so than it does, "no, i never for a second doubted i would be successful"). since catherine is ultimately much more interested in making the point she wants to make—which is that julie waters, who had only ever been valued for her physical beauty, was vulnerable in a way that sara probably can't relate to, so sara shouldn't judge her too harshly—than she is in sara's answers in themselves, sara's evasions and obfuscations end up flying with her.

anyway, long story long, point is: i think that if one is so inclined, one can very much read sara's backstory into this scene if one wants to, even if it hadn't technically been written yet at the time when said scene was being filmed; jorja fox's acting choices make it possible to do so retroactively.

also, this point is neither here nor there, but i’ve always thought it was slightly ooc for catherine to make the assumption that a woman’s confidence would come primarily from her father’s views of her when she is herself a confident woman who grew up without a father. (i mean, technically sam was in her life when she was a little girl, but she didn’t realize he was her father back then.) to me, it would have been much more natural for her to say something more along the lines of, “when you were growing up, did anyone ever tell you you were pretty? how about smart?” leaving the “father” part out of the equation altogether. 

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.