#vmreborn

[addictedtostorytelling]

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.

[addictedtostorytelling]

Wait so from some of the shots we’ve seen of Hodges so far… he’s a CSI level 3?! No longer a lab tech? I mean I always thought Hodges liked being in the safe clean lab versus field work….. it did seem ooc to me to make the lab techs CSIs when Sara took over and handed out the assignments in the deleted scene.

hi, @vmreborn!

i'm not sure if he's supposed to have been a csi level iii or not, as

the "immortality" scene where sara issues the "field promotions" to hodges and henry never made it on screen, so its canonicity is dubious;

also, even if that scene were considered canonical, sara literally quits that job about ten minutes after she tells hodges and henry the news, so it's hard to believe that her decision would have stuck, and particularly as it was kind of a bad one, given that neither hodges nor henry were actually trained for the roles that she'd given them AND they would have both had to be replaced as lab techs anyway, meaning that ultimately it would have been cheaper/more efficient to keep them in the lab and hire a couple of new field csis (ranked level ii or higher) to fill out the team instead;

moreover, like you say, throughout his time on the original show, hodges had no interest in fieldwork (and even actively disdained it), so it's difficult to believe that he would have wanted to move out into the field even had he been presented with the opportunity to do so;

furthermore, a lot of the props they've been using in the reboot so far have been, uh, less than carefully made, to say the least. for example, hodges's driver's license that we see photocopied in the storage unit owner's records expires in 1997 and sports a picture of hodges from when he was clearly much younger than he is now (to the point where he still had color in his hair, like when he first started on the show), even though it's the id he supposedly used to rent his storage unit much more recently. it also places hodges's birthday in 1969 rather than in wally langham's actual birth year of 1965, which, while not necessarily proof positive that the id is spurious in and of itself (as, after all, csi does sometimes make its characters younger than their real life portrayers, as is the case with sara/jorja), when taken in conjunction with the other incongruities does also suggest that the license isn't actually specific to the character. likewise, the "nevada's star witness" article hanging on the department news board is a hot mess, with the text not even mentioning hodges despite the article ostensibly being about him, talking about grissom and his team as if they're all still presently working, describing an original team graveyard case as one recently wrapped, reading more like a narrative than a journalistic article, etc. while it's possible that maybe the driver's license is meant to be wonky because whomever is framing hodges used an old copy or a fake in order to rent the storage unit in his name (presumably making arrangements for the rental remotely, so that no one could tell that the photo on the id didn't match the person taking part in the transaction), the article is less explicable from an in-world pov, which calls into question whether or not the production team actually wants us to be looking at these props as "clues" in the case. if we're not supposed to be focused on that stuff—after all, neither item is shown on screen long enough for one to really get a good look at it without pausing the episode—then it's possible that the production team made them by "recycling" other materials, just cutting and pasting hodges's image and name onto things that otherwise have little to do with him. if so, then the same may be true of his work badge, as well;

as for the work badge itself, it also contains some notable discrepancies besides that it calls hodges a csi level iii, as it says he has brown hair and brown eyes, neither of which facts are actually true. (hodges's hair was totally gray at the time he would've started working as a csi level iii, if in fact he did so, and his eyes are blue.) again, the fact that the work badge contains these obvious mistakes calls into question how much the information it displays is supposed to be taken as canonical or even really registered. it's very possible that this badge was one that originally belonged to another character, like sara or nick (both of whom have brown hair and brown eyes), and the props folks just repurposed it for what was meant to be a two-second shot of hodges's things without changing the relevant details to better match his description;

finally, from a storytelling perspective, it works better for hodges to have been a lab tech than a field csi in terms of him being a suspect in the fabrication case, as he would have "had his hands on" many more cases in the former position than in the latter one. lab techs take part in like five to ten different investigations for every one investigation a field csi takes part in, so if the reboot writers really want to ratchet up the urgency of this whole "every case hodges ever worked is potentially compromised" thing, they'd be smarter to have him in trace than outside of the lab, as there'd be more potential exonerations that way (and also more opportunity for him to have possibly doctored various evidence undetected).

all said, while it's technically possible that hodges did become a field csi level iii at some point between the events of "immortality" and the present, it's not 100% certain that he did, and in fact the notion that he did may even be somewhat doubtful, considering that the prop that conveys that information is of indeterminate nature.

of course, until the show tells us more about hodges, there's obviously no way for us to know for sure.

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

[addictedtostorytelling]

With the pending IATSE strike on Oct 18th, you think that would affect CSI Vegas? Or they already finished filming all 10 eps?

hi, @vmreborn!

mandeep dhillon's instagram account seemed to confirm that they'd concluded filming some time ago, though whether or not they've completed all of the work that might also require the efforts of iatse union members to complete, i'm not sure.

the main cast may be done filming the principle scenes, but that's not to say there aren't production and broadcast techs, animators, audiovisual designers, etc. who still have projects that would need to be finished before the episodes can actually air.

while i think they probably have at least the next couple of episodes ready (in the sense that they can be shown "as is"), i'm not sure that's true for the entire rest of the season.

in any case, here is wishing the iatse workers swift and total success in their efforts. they deserve healthy working hours, time to eat during their shifts, fair compensation, and better regulation in their industry.

[addictedtostorytelling]

Is it bad that we’re three episodes in and I’m still largely focusing on GSR? I mean Maxine Roby is the only one who has won me over from the new team so far. The cases of the week are so weak. Also, How were Grissom and Sara even able to work on that case with the video gamer in last night’s episode? Especially with their strong association to Hodges. I get the dog case, but not how they were able to jump onto that one… especially if they need to testify on that case in the future.

hi, @vmreborn!

thoughts under the "keep reading," if you're interested.

__

so i don't want to neg too much because i know there are lots of folks who are enjoying the totality of the show (as opposed to just the gsr notes) a lot more than i am, but, suffice it to say, i'm right there with you: max is the only one of the new characters i find compelling at all, and the cases of the week are not doing it for me. overall, i'm still, to this point, really only in this experience for the grissoms.

though, thankfully, there's a lot that i'm incredibly, completely, over-the-moon happy about with them.

as for particulars of their clearance, i don't know that there is a lot of sense to be made unless we just chalk it up to "max is playing things fast and loose because she trusts them (even when maybe it would be wiser for her not to, politically speaking)."

technically, at the moment, the only case that the grissoms are absolutely forbidden from working by the powers that be is the hodges case; otherwise, they are available to consult as they like.

max hired grissom as an "entomological consultant to the lab," so though his focus is on the animal cruelty case, he can also offer his expertise with regards to other investigations, as well. the same goes for sara as a currently credentialed expert criminalist.

of course, as you point out, just because the grissoms are technically available to max to make use of as she will, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's prudent for her to have two people who are intimately associated with the david hodges case running hither, thither, and yon all over her lab, getting their hands on multiple high-profile investigations while that case is still being decided.

it's one of those deals where while they aren't actually implicated in the hodges case as of yet, at any minute they could be.

while they're free to do what they will this week, next week, they might be facing some indictments.

not only is max taking a big risk by bending (and breaking) the rules around them working on the hodges case, but she's also taking a big risk just by keeping them around and letting them consult at the lab in general. while right now, they are perfectly acceptable consultants, they're a hairsbreadth away from being charged with accessory.

if the iab investigation goes south, they're gonna be on the chopping block, and any cases they've touched from 2000 to present are going to be right there with them, open for contest.

max is taking a gamble on them, to be sure.

the only way to really account for it is to say that she's going with her heart here, and her heart is telling her that she can (for whatever reason) trust these two people, or at least trust that they are committed to finding the truth, whatever it may be.

what she's doing is all just south of legal, but she's hoping that in the end, once the truth is found, all of her choices will be vindicated and everything will shake out as it ought to.

as for the matter of how the grissoms would testify on the video game case in the future, they'd probably have to fly in to take the stand as "expert witnesses" (which is ironic, considering how much they've both always disdained "hired gun" criminalists).

anyway, outside of the universe of the show, i don't know that logic is the prevailing force when it comes to the decision to have the grissoms working on non-hodges cases around the lab. the writers just kind of seem to be making somewhat clumsy attempts to have them interact with the new cast however they can, and having them occasionally pitch in on "case of the week" stuff is one way to achieve that end (even if it doesn't ultimately make a lot of internal narrative sense for them to do so).

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

[alicepao13]

@vmreborn replied to your chat:                    Mom: I got pizza on Holy Thursday. Me: Here it...                

   Lol why can’t you have pizza on Holy Thursday?!    

Because we should be fasting, at least in my mom’s opinion. She still doesn’t want to understand that I don’t believe anymore. However, she’s still a Christian and she was the one who bought the pizza so none of that was my fault. I mean, if I was still a Christian, I would be fasting, I don’t know why it’s so difficult to avoid products that come from animals for one week. The only problem I’d have would be when it comes to my coffee. I prefer lattes and I’d have to give up milk.

[ssaalexblake]

vmreborn replied to your post:full offence but when u can accept the m/f pairing...

Oh viola Davis’ character and her husband Sam, another interracial couple (before he was killed on the show…)

Oh, I meant ships where neither of the people were white, i can think of a handful of interracial ships where one half is white, but i’m seriously drawing blanks on entirely poc interracial couples that aren’t from agents of shield? 

ah, ok Continuum, Travis x Sonya. 

But i genuinely can’t think of anything else, at least not from anything i watch? 

[rippedlikeruah]

Music Shuffle

Tagged by @vmreborn on my other blog, @ncisabbylover but thought, since I don’t have one centralised playlist, I’d use my work out playlist on spotify, also named rippedlikeruah

Shuffle your music and then list the 10 songs that appear.

1) You can’t Stop the Beat - Hairspray

2) Sports Go Sports - Garfunkel and Oates

3) We Are Young - fun feat. Janelle Monáe

4) You Need Me, I Don’t Need You - Ed Sheeran

5) Glad You Came - The Wanted

6) The Nights - Avicii

7) Here We Go Again - Paramore

8) Mr. Brightsie - The Killers

9) Wild WildLove - Pitbull

10) Take A Break - Hamilton the Musical

I feel like this is an inadequate representation of the amount of songs from musicals on my playlist. But there you go. 

Not tagging anyone but if you want to share 10 songs from your workout playlist (or any playlist really) tag me! I always need to add more songs to my own playlist!

[alicepao13]

vmreborn replied to your post: Mountza is the most popular Greek gesture of...

This is your FU gesture (similar to when we give someone the middle finger here) in Greece?

It’s kinda milder, as offensive gestures go. Someone would do this to you if you do something stupid, but we still have the finger when we’re too pissed. I always found the mountza to be more satisfying :P