Do you think they’ll give us a GSR kiss before CSI Vegas’ season ends? They’ve called back to most GSR moments from the original series thus far so it’s only a matter of time right? And, any idea why the kissing scene might have been cut out of 1.04? I’m assuming they needed to meet the time on the ep and GSR kissing would’ve offered no info to progress the plot, which is why they cut it out and kept the face touch scene.
hi, @vmreborn!
i honestly have no idea if we'll ever see another kiss (and am feeling pretty pessimistic after they cut the kiss from last week, tbh).
as for why they cut the kiss from episode 01x04 "long pig":
when they first started filming this season, i wondered if maybe we wouldn't get to see any gsr kisses because covid restrictions wouldn't allow for the filming of them in the first place.
however, obviously no such restrictions exist, as a kiss was (to the best of our knowledge) filmed.
and that's what i can't wrap my head around—the fact that there was a kiss recorded but they didn't end up using it.
why bother to film AND advertise something like that and then not show it?
—and especially when they absolutely had to have known how highly it was being anticipated.
the second the near-kiss promo dropped, the entire "csi vegas" tag on twitter turned into a gsr fandom jubilation. the showrunners track their social media (or at least have interns who do so for them and report back on what they find). they know that people were excited. it's not a fucking secret. that's why they included that image in the promo to begin with—because they knew it'd be a draw.
usually when things get cut, it's either for time (like you mention) or because something about the scene isn't right, in terms of aesthetics/acoustics or storytelling or portrayal or dialogue.
tptb obviously liked the kiss enough that it made it into a fairly late version of the episode—hence why it was used in the promos pretty much all the way up until the episode finally aired. to me, that fact suggests that there was probably nothing wrong with the kiss in terms of how it looked, aesthetic-wise. it wasn't a bad take with poor lighting or a botched angle or anything along those lines. and considering that the rest of the scene around where the kiss would have been sounds good, the audio probably wasn't off, either.
maybe there was a storytelling problem, though given that the kiss seemed to be a quick "sara is walking out the door, so she gives grissom a peck goodbye" thing, i have a hard time imagining what kind of problem that could be.
i mean, they're married. married people kiss each other goodbye. it's not like that's going to seem wrong given the context of the scene.
as for a portrayal issue, i mean, i know sometimes when actors don't really have chemistry (or even actively dislike each other, despite the fact that their characters are meant to be together), on-screen kisses can come across both looking and feeling uncomfortable—unbelievable at best and excruciatingly awkward at worst.
but here's the thing: billy and jorja have fabulous chemistry. they kiss each other socially as friends when they're out-of-character, so kissing is obviously something they're comfortable doing; they don't have any qualms about it. also, they've kissed in-character before, and it was aces. i'd find it hard to believe that they had lost enough step in that regard that they'd be significantly worse at depicting a kiss now than they were back in 2009.
perhaps dialogue, then?
i mean, based on what we see in the promo, sara is talking when she leans in for the kiss. maybe she's saying the "you know how persuasive i can be" part of the line that in the final version of the scene is overlaid with her leaving (when her back is turned to the camera, so we can't see her mouth moving). however, it's also possible that maybe there was an additional line that got cut in-between her saying "have some faith" and "you know how persuasive i can be" that somehow felt off or didn't work. if so, then there is at least a possibility that the kiss got cut along with the line as a "baby out with the bathwater" kind of deal.
still, just like i have a hard time thinking of a storytelling problem significant enough that it would justify cutting the kiss, the same goes for a bad line.
i mean, what could sara have possibly have said that was that objectionable? and why wouldn't they have caught it during filming and simply dropped it then?
of course, like you mention, it also may have been a time issue, but if it was, that's just—
i mean, unless the kiss was actually a full make-out scene, it probably only lasted for a couple of seconds at most.
if the episode were running long, why cut that particular three-second snippet of footage? why not pare down one of the "exterior vegas" transition shots or have three fewer seconds of grissom reacting to max and allie's conversation about the note-taking or make the montage of allie and max hitting the dummy include one less weapon?
there were a million other editing choices they could've made besides that one! there were other things that didn't progress the story that could've been taken out or shortened instead!
why deprive the fandom of the thing that everyone was desperate to see?
and especially when, at this point, a significant portion, if not the majority, of this show's audience is comprised of gsr fans or at least people who are gsr-friendly, meaning that it's not as if there are lots of people watching who don't want to see grissom and sara kiss.
i get that way back when, the production team on the original show got a lot of mileage out of teasing us by withholding gsr kisses.
the unfilled anticipation of the "pin me down" scene in episode 04x07 "invisible evidence" smoldered.
the beekeeping helmets mishap in episode 08x04 "the case of the cross-dressing carp" was cute.
plus, i mean, there was the whole thing of, "since we didn't actually show the 'moment of consummation' where these two characters involved in a very slow-burn romance finally get together—which would have been the natural point for a first on-screen kiss otherwise—we now find ourselves in a position where they've been together for a long time and are in the habit of regularly kissing, but our audience still hasn't seen them do so yet, which means we need to pick a significant moment to debut a first on-screen kiss in order to justify our having withheld the kiss to this point."
i mean, that all makes sense.
but that was a long time ago, you know?
things are different now.
we have seen grissom and sara kiss before—albeit fucking rarely—so it's not like they have to build up to a kiss in the same way they did in the original series. they could just "fold one in" and not really make it a thing, and it'd be fine, because we've seen kisses before and we know that kisses are something that are already happening between grissom and sara off-screen.
at this point, it's just getting fucking weird not to have two characters who have canonically been in love with each other for twenty-three years, who obviously adore each other, who've been together on-and-off since 2005, who've been married TWICE, and who are presently very happily together, not ever kiss on-screen, even at times when them doing so would be entirely natural (like, for instance, when they're saying goodbye to each other for the day).
do they think we can't handle seeing it?
are they still adhering to some bizarre variation on the hayes code, where instead of "the married couple shall not be shown in bed together," it's "the married couple shall not be shown locking lips"?
come to think of it, so far, every "in bed together" scene we've been shown in the reboot does follow the hayes code rules, as grissom always has one or more feet on the floor at all times. huh.
do they still think that every kiss needs to be an event™ and/or are they laboring under the delusion that we're not interested in seeing average, run-of-the-mill, everyday, comparatively "tame" kisses?
is there some kind of arbitrary limit that the network has placed on how many kisses can be shown between a married couple in a 10pm est time-slot show that we are unaware of?
i am beside myself.
no matter how i try to rationalize the decision to cut the kiss, i can't do it.
—and especially not because they advertised it so heavily.
like.
if they weren't going to use it, it shouldn't have been in the promos.
to get our hopes up like that and then not follow through is just cruel.
why fuck with the fans that way? why misuse our excitement?
all i can hope is that they somehow make it up to us by having other kisses elsewhere in the season—though, as stated before, at this point, i don't necessarily trust that they will, as we've been baited too many times.
i wish there were some way for us to assure the production team that we are all adult enough to handle seeing two happily married people lock lips on tv and in fact would be glad to witness any kind of kiss between them, be it a big event or a small "just because" thing, and that we'd make it worth their while to show us such an interaction by reacting favorably on social media.
help me, jason tracey. you're my only hope.
anyway.
sorry to be so salty.
here's fingers crossed that they do eventually give us at least one more gsr kiss—bringing the grand total up to three!—before the season is over.
thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.












