Sara Sidle

Template:CSI character Sara Sidle is a fictional character featured in the television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. She is portrayed by actress Jorja Fox. Sidle is a forensic scientist and one of the core characters of the show, which revolves around a crime scene investigation team from Clark County, Nevada that investigates cases in and around the city of Las Vegas. In the first seven years of the show, Sidle appears in every episode except in the pilot, "Random Acts of Violence" from season three, "Jackpot" from season four, "Formalities" and "Hollywood Brass" from season five, "Spellbound" from season six, "Sqweegel" from season eleven.

Sara Sidle has gained an extensive fan base throughout the years. A romantic relationship between Sidle and her supervisor, Gil Grissom, was hinted at during the first years of the show, but it was only in CSI's season six that the relationship was confirmed and then made definitive with Grissom's marriage proposal in season eight.

In September 2007, there were rumors of Fox leaving the show. Fans from all over the world sent money and gifts to CSI's writers and producers to "Keep Jorja Fox in CSI". Although the campaign received some minor publicity and comments to the media from Fox and Carol Mendelsohn, it proved fruitless when, in October 2007, Fox confirmed her departure from the show.

The character returned in the season nine premiere when she hears the news concerning the shooting of Warrick Brown. She leaves at the conclusion of the second episode of the season, after having a thinly veiled argument with Grissom while dealing with the distraught husband of a victim whose case she had worked eight years prior. Grissom joins her in Costa Rica in the tenth episode of season nine. The final scene shows the couple kissing.

Jorja Fox returned to CSI for season 10 as Sara Sidle on a part-time basis; although she is not part of the main cast, she has appeared on various episodes throughout the season. Despite being re-inserted into the opening credits for the eleventh season, Jorja Fox is still considered recurring cast.

Fictional character biography

Sidle was born in Tamales Bay, an hour and a half outside San Francisco. Her father was abusive, battering both his wife and children, until Sidle's mother, Laura, killed him in 1984. Afterward, she spent time in the foster care system, which didn't keep her from graduating high school as valedictorian at age 16. She attained a scholarship and attended Harvard, moving on to graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. While at Berkeley, she started a work-study position at the San Francisco Coroner’s office, where she would also audit lectures to keep up with new developments; it was at one of these that she met Gil Grissom. Some time later, while she was working in San Francisco, Grissom called her because he was in need of someone outside the Las Vegas team. Sidle then went to Las Vegas and helped resolve some internal affairs problems within the CSIs. Some episodes later she became a permanent member of the Las Vegas crime scene investigators night shift as a CSI Level III at the LVPD Criminalistics Bureau, specialising in materials and element analysis. In season eight, Sidle changed from the night shift to the swing shift.

Character development

Perhaps because of her traumatic childhood, Sidle has demonstrated compassion and empathy for victims of domestic violence, and fury against their abusers. She also has a soft spot for animals, and became a vegetarian after she saw Grissom conduct an experiment on a dead pig. She has also shown a tendency to become very aggressive when under pressure or annoyed, especially in cases involving abused women - such as her arguments with Catherine and Ecklie, and engaging in a heated argument with a man suspected of murdering his wife.

In the early years of the show, Sidle is depicted as a loner. Her hobbies are all work-related (listening to her police scanner and reading forensic journals); and she claims to prefer working with corpses over live people. In a mid-second season episode, she realizes how much she is missing out on and decides to "get a life" outside of work. During season three she dates a paramedic named Hank Pettigrew, but this relationship ends later in the season when she discovered that he had a long-term girlfriend. Later in the third season, she is injured in an explosion in the lab and, realizing she could have been killed, she decides to ask Grissom out, though he turns her down.

Sara Sidle breaks down on the fifth season episode "Nesting Dolls".

During the fourth and fifth seasons, Sidle seems to be on a downward spiral as her memories of childhood resurface, with cases becoming more difficult for her emotionally. Also, the fact that Grissom decided to promote Nick Stokes instead of Sidle, did not help. Season Four concludes with Sidle being stopped by a traffic cop. Although she is driving under the influence, she is not charged, but Grissom, as her supervisor, is informed of her arrest. He arrives at the station to bring her home, and finally seems to notice her emotional state. Later, in season five, she loses her temper with a domestic abuse suspect and then argues with supervisors Catherine Willows and Conrad Ecklie, which results in her suspension. Following this incident, she admits to Grissom that she has a problem with authority, has chosen emotionally unavailable men (like Grissom), and has a self destructive streak. Sidle then opens up to him and reveals her family story; it is during this season that she apparently starts bonding with Grissom. During the subsequent seasons (sixth and seventh), after it is revealed that they are in a relationship, she appears to be happier and on a more even keel.

In CSI's eighth season, when Fox decided to leave the show, both she and the writers decided not to kill the character, so as to leave the door open for a possible comeback. Consequently, Sara Sidle is submerged into depression after she is abducted in the season seven finale (she is rescued in the first episode of the new season), and, even though she accepts Grissom's marriage proposal on the season's fourth episode, she shows signs of burnout during the subsequent episodes, breaking down on the season's seventh episode, leaving Las Vegas with only a goodbye letter for Grissom and a good luck note for Ronnie Lake (played by Jessica Lucas), who it appeared at the time would serve as Sidle's replacement on the team. In the letter she states that ever since her father's death she has been living with "ghosts" and that she now needs to go away and deal with them before self-destructing.

In the season eight episode "You Kill Me", Grissom indicates he has talked with Sidle and that she is in San Francisco visiting her mother.

Promos for the season nine premiere announced that actress Jorja Fox would return as Sara, and showed her in three clips. However, Sidle left again after the second episode. She appeared again in the final scene of the tenth episode of season nine when she appears to be working on a research team in Costa Rica, where Grissom joins her after leaving CSI.

During the tenth season, Sara is temporarily brought back by Under-Sheriff Ecklie to aid the lab, which has undergone staffing cuts as a result of Warrick's death and the resignation of his replacement, Riley Adams. Adams was revealed to have resigned as a result of Catherine's poor management and lack of teamwork; when Catherine reveals this to Sara, Sara reminds Catherine that Grissom had her (Catherine) as a number two, prompting the promotion of Nick Stokes to Assistant Supervisor.

Relationships

Sara Sidle's romantic relationships have been largely unsuccessful. In the first season she named a college boyfriend, Ken Fuller, with whom she had an unsatisfactory relationship, also saying that they had joined the Mile high club (Unfriendly Skies). In season seven she mentioned a college boyfriend who cheated on her. It is unclear whether Fuller was also the boyfriend who cheated on her. In the third season she had a casual relationship with Hank Pettigrew, who was an emergency medical technician. He was involved in several of her cases, but they later broke up after she found out Hank had a longtime girlfriend.

During the first seasons, coroner David Phillips, laboratory technician Greg Sanders, and fellow CSI Nick Stokes occasionally flirted with her, but nothing more than friendship resulted from those flirtations.

Gil Grissom

Since CSI's first season there were hints that both Sara Sidle and Gil Grissom were interested in each other romantically; in fact, the show's producers initially introduced Sara Sidle as a future love interest for Grissom. However, during the show's first three seasons Grissom flirted with other female characters, and when she asked him out to dinner he rejected her, saying that he didn't know what to do about what was going on between them.

In season four, Grissom's true feelings were revealed in Butterflied, an episode that centers entirely around Grissom exploring his attraction to Sidle when confronted with a dead woman who bore a striking resemblance to her. In this episode, Grissom admitted that he was unable to risk his career to be with her. In this season Sara Sidle apparently developed a drinking problem, which Grissom acknowledged in the season finale. In the next season, Sidle was suspended for insubordination and told Grissom about her tormented childhood. He refused to fire her and has her working with him in almost every episode from season six and season seven.

Gil Grissom and Sara Sidle on the fourth season episode "Invisible Evidence"

It was not until the sixth season finale that it is revealed that Grissom and Sidle have worked through whatever issues they had and are, in fact, a couple. In season eight it was revealed they have been intimately involved for two years. This revelation caused mixed emotions from fans, some of whom see this relationship as CSI "jumping the shark," an attempt to include more drama and romance to the show to compete with the medical drama Grey's Anatomy, which airs in the U.S. at the same time. By resolving the sexual tension between the two characters, critics posited that the show might appeal to some of Grey's younger audience. This has been denied by the writers. In one interview, producer Carol Mendelsohn said that she has never been able to see Grissom with any other character other than Sidle and that this episode was seen by the writers as the right time to reveal the relationship. Jorja Fox and William Petersen have also said that the relationship between their characters is not new.

Throughout season seven the audience saw Grissom and Sidle as a couple, but the relationship was kept secret from the others in the lab until Sidle's abduction by The Miniature Killer in the season finale, during which Grissom reveals to the team that Sara is the only person he's ever loved. In season eight, they become engaged to be married, but this storyline is left inconclusive when Sara leaves Grissom with a note three episodes later.

A season eight scene showed Catherine Willows visiting Grissom's apartment, updating him on a case. While he is in his bedroom, she snoops around and finds a woman's dressing robe in his closet. She then notices the photograph of Gil and Sara together on the fridge. When Grissom emerges from his room, she asks him "How long have you and Sara been together?" He tries to make a quick exit. When she tells him she's always thought he was a lonely bachelor, he just laughs and leaves. This scene was cut from the episode for time constraints.

In the tenth episode of season nine, "One to Go", Grissom is seen walking through a rain forest, holding a GPS System that places him in Costa Rica. He spots a bug on a leaf, but continues on. He comes across a camp, where Sidle is seen taking a picture of a monkey in a tree. Sidle then sees Grissom, who then removes his backpack and walks into Sidle's arms and greets her with a kiss.

In "Family Affair," the first episode of Season 10, Sidle returns to work in the laboratory on a temporary basis, revealing that she and Grissom are now married and have been living in Paris while Grissom conducts a seminar at the Sorbonne.

William Petersen has said that what Grissom loves about Sidle is her tenacity. "She's a bulldog. And he always saw that in her. And he always knew that subconsciously the only person who'd be able to give him a second look is someone who's not willing to take the first look for granted." On her side, Jorja Fox has said that "The story of Sara and Grissom is a little like a fable. And most great fables don't really have 100 percent resolution."

Public reaction

Grissom and Sidle's relationship has been the subject of intense debate in the press and on-line forums, between fans of the romantic relationship and those who believe the romance detracts from what was once a show devoted mainly to mysteries and a forensics laboratory.

In early August 2007, upon rumors of Jorja Fox leaving the show, a grassroots campaign started. Thousands of fans donated to the cause, and they had a plane flying over the Universal Studios of Los Angeles weekly on Tuesdays and Thursdays with a "Keep Jorja Fox on CBS" banner for a month. The online forum Your Tax Dollars At Work, which has about 15,000 members and has organized the campaign, created another campaign that includes mailing the show's producers a dollar, so as to keep Fox on the show. By October 5, 2007, more than $3,500 had reportedly been mailed to the Universal Studios from forty-nine countries. The campaign had started less than a week before, on September 29, 2007.

Though the effort garnered media coverage, it was announced in late October, 2007 that Jorja Fox's final appearance as a full cast member would be in the episode Goodbye and Good Luck, which aired on November 15, 2007. Both writers and Fox have said that they believe that Sara Sidle "will be back" sometime in the future. Fox and CSI writer Carol Mendelsohn chose to donate the money sent to the studios to CASA, a national association that supports and promotes court-appointed advocates for abused or neglected children.

CBS initially confirmed that Jorja Fox would be returning to CSI in the tenth season for the season premiere and four subsequent episodes. Recently, however, executive producer Carol Mendelsohn has amended that Fox's tenure on the show has, at the moment, been extended indefinitely. CBS states that the season premiere will deal with where life has taken Sara and what brings her back to Las Vegas.

Video games

Jorja Fox voiced Sara Sidle in the first two CSI video games, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and CSI: Dark Motives. The other two video games, CSI: Hard Evidence and CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder, are dubbed by Kate Savage.

Episodic appearances

These are the episodes Jorja Fox appeared in as her character Sara Sidle during her role as a recuring cast member:

• Season 9: For Warrick, The Happy Place, Leave out All the Rest, and One to Go
• Season 10: Family Affair, Ghost Town, Coup de Grace, Bloodsport, Lover's Lanes, Better Off Dead, Long Ball, Internal Combustion, Unshockable, Neverland, Irradiator, World's End, Take My Life, Please!, Doctor Who, and Meat Jekyll.
• Season 11: Shock Waves, Pool Shark, Blood Moon, Bump and Grind

Further reading

• Marrinan, Corinne and Parker, Steve, Ultimate CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2006), DK Publishing, Inc.