This isn't a question, but I haven't seen anyone else freaking out over the scene in the whatever is the police station equivalent to a waiting room. To me it had to be a deliberate call back to Bloodlines. The room looks almost identical (it could conceivably be the same room years later) and the way Sara and Grissom are positioned in the shot is absolutely identical to the way they are sitting in Bloodlines. It felt like a little GSR gift. Thoughts? (There's a question finally.)
hi, @nrh61!
while the waiting room itself is definitely not the same as the one in episode 04x23 "bloodlines" (this one has benches and is in the clark county jail, whereas the one from s4 had chairs and was at the lvpd station), the way grissom and sara are positioned is, as you say, identical, so whether or not it was a deliberate callback, i think for longtime fans, the insinuation is there, and particularly given the thing that they are there to do (i.e., bail hodges out from potentially career-ending trouble).
i don't know that these thoughts make a lot of sense, but seeing that parallel got me thinking about some of sara's motivations throughout this episode.
it's occurred to me that in addition to just the fact of her extremely loyal, "ride or die" nature, another reason why sara is so adamant that hodges is innocent is because she is someone who has needed "bailing out" before herself.
in episode 04x23 "bloodlines," she did actually do a bad thing (drunk driving), and yet grissom showed up for her and, with no strings attached or questions asked, got her out of the trouble she was in and took her home. had he at all hesitated or been more careful of his own reputation with regards to associating himself with her, the trouble she was in then both could have and probably should have ended her career, but he immediately gave her a second chance, and his unfailing belief in her was one of the things that not only paved the way for her eventual longevity in the field but which ultimately turned her whole life around, leading to the happiness she and grissom enjoy together today.
that she would want to show up for hodges in that same way, believing that he deserved a similar kind of "the help and belief are automatic, never mind the optics" response to the one she got and benefitted from with grissom is therefore unsurprising.
she knows how salvific that type of "all in" help can be.
of course, she also knows what it feels like to be framed for a crime she didn't commit.
for as much as i hate to acknowledge anything that happened in s13 of the original series and particularly the shitshow that is episode 13x15 "forget me not," the fact remains that it is ultimately canon: sara has been the object of an elaborate set up (complete with fabricated evidence) herself.
that so, she can absolutely empathize with hodges in this case.
she gets how baffling it must be for him to have no explanation for why things look the way they do but only to know for himself that there's no way he could have done what he stands accused of doing.
she understands how abandoned and heartsick he must feel watching his friends and colleagues doubt and even turn against him based on counterfeit evidence.
she knows how humiliating and scary it is to be processed and thrown into central holding at the jailhouse alongside many of the same criminals one helped to put away.
she can still remember how frantic hodges must be, racking his brain to try to figure out who might hate him enough to destroy his life this way.
his sense of utter helplessness is something she has experience with.
ditto for his horror at staring down the potential outcomes if his name isn't ultimately cleared, which include possibly spending the rest of his natural life behind bars.
his fear and anger and desperation are all things with which she can empathize.
she knows exactly what he's going through because on one of the worst days of her life, she went through it, too.
and while hodges certainly was himself far from kind to her when she was caught in ronald basderic's crosshairs, he did nevertheless take the job of processing the evidence in her case in a fair and impartial manner very seriously.
he allowed that she could potentially be innocent of the crime of which she stood accused and if so that she deserved the opportunity to have her innocence proven so she could be exonerated of the charges leveled against her.
for however angry he was with her based on his belief that she had cheated on grissom, he nevertheless scrubbed his trace lab of all touches from her (twice!) for the express purpose of letting the evidence speak for itself in her case.
and once it did speak for itself, proving her innocent, he eventually came around to her again; he didn't let what she'd been wrongfully accused of color his good opinion of her going forward.
so given that experience, sara's quickness to champion hodges takes on an extra level of meaning.
it calls to mind nick's famous line to sara from episode 06x05 "gum drops":
"i was rescued."
sara has herself been pulled out of the same hell hodges currently finds himself in. her colleagues didn't give up on her. they proved her innocence, even when it seemed incredibly doubtful. she was given a second chance. she was allowed to have a happy ending, even after everything once felt so lost for her.
she believes that hodges deserves the same.
—and that brings us back to grissom and her response to him throughout this episode.
she knows, of course, that it's in grissom's nature to be skeptical and to place his faith in empirical evidence rather than in gut feelings or personal belief systems, so, frankly, despite the annoyance she professes, she's not even really mad about his insistence on wanting to see proof in this case, either; she gets that that's just how he is and is always going to be.
that said, she also knows that grissom has the ability to be a really fierce advocate and that he has it in him to see past the damaged reputations, mistakes, and flaws of the people he cares about, believing in them fully and stubbornly and in a way that changes lives for the better.
she's benefitted from that quality in him personally, but she's also seen it benefit others—from warrick to nick to catherine to greg.
everyone on their team has been "rescued" by grissom at some point or another, and now she wants him to help her rescue hodges.
she remembers what it felt like, having grissom take her hand in that waiting room in pd and tell her, with no equivocation or conditions, "i'll take you home," and she believes hodges deserves to know what that feels like, too.
she believes he deserves that second chance.
anyway.
like i said, i'm not sure that these thoughts are especially cogent (and i know they're not even really relevant to the original content of your message, so my apologies for going off on a tangent).
i just have a lot of "sara feels connected to this case on a deeply personal level" impressions, i guess.
thanks for the message! please feel welcome to send another any time.
