#Season nine | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gaycrouton · 9 months

Text

I love the dynamic between Scully and Doggett, and I think the parallel between his son’s death and his desire to protect Scully from what he experienced is so powerful.

We know his son tragically died, but it isn’t until Empedocles that we know just how much his experience of finding him mirrored Scully’s (i.e, stumbling across the dead body discarded carelessly in a field).

From approaching a group of people huddled around the body to your partner looking at you with despair, he’s been in her shoes

He knows what it’s like to see the body of someone you love more than anything lying lifelessly in a field.

I know him pulling Scully back is frustrating to us as viewers. We’ve watched Mulder and Scully for seven years, we know the depth of their love for one another, and it can be aggravating seeing someone coming in between them in such a devastating moment.

But thinking of it from his perspective is so heartbreaking.

He is haunted by the memory of seeing his son like that. That is how he remembers his little boy. It was cruel, senseless, and (until Release) a mystery.

He wanted to spare Scully from having that with Mulder.

If I’m remembering correctly, Reyes even said seeing him unmoving next to his son in that field was haunting, he was paralyzed with grief and shock.

Doggett was trying to do Scully a kindness because he’s still haunted from when he experienced something hauntingly similar.

Again, we don’t get to know that was his motivation until a few episodes later. But with how similar the framing was, we know that it was a purposeful parallel.

It’s heartbreaking to think Reyes recognized the similarities at the time they found Mulder, and she knew how re-traumatizing that would be for Doggett.

She watched him relive the worst moment of his life and try to intervene to prevent someone from experiencing what he did.

It reminds me of how Skinner knew how awful it was to deliver heart-shattering news and chose to intervene and save Scully from having to do it.

In both cases, it may feel like it wasn’t their place, but it came from a place of empathetic kindness.

#x files #this is not happening #Empedocles #release #season eight #season nine #John Doggett #Doggett #Scully #Mulder #Dana Scully #Fox Mulder #msr #Reyes #Monica Reyes #the x files

152 notes · View notes

addictedtostorytelling · 7 days

Note

hi aj! still on my rewatch (slowly but surely) and i reached 9.01. i noticed that when grissom hears on the police radio that warrick was shot he was actually buying a traveller magazine and wonder if he had been thinking of joining sara then. do you think that he would have reached that point even if they hadn’t lost warrick? i feel like his death is the first trigger to grissom deciding to retire. thanks so much for all your patience in answering these! have a great week 🤍

hi, rewatch anon!

good to hear from you again!

so i have a much longer, more detailed post outlining what i think grissom's state of mind re: following sara is between s8 and s9 which you can read here, if you're interested.

but the tl; dr version is that i think while the grissom of episode 09x01 "for warrick" may well have sara on the brain when he picks up the traveller magazine—he may be thinking of her travels and/or be considering going to visit her wherever she is and/or be mulling going on a vacation with her—for my money, he is not yet consciously considering leaving vegas to be with her (or at least not on a permanent basis) for two main reasons.

the first reason why he isn't ready to follow sara during s8 is because he feels that maybe her having some time away from him is "for the best."

as i talk about in this post,

remember: [in s8,] sara has just walked out on him, and for as much as her reasons for doing so have everything to do with her mental health and nothing to do with a lack of love for or desire to hurt him, the bottom line is that her decision isn’t one made in a vacuum; regardless of her intentions, her leaving (and especially so abruptly) does cause him pain and stoke his fears that he doesn’t fulfill her needs. he is left wondering if she could have stayed were he a better partner to her—more attentive, more experienced in love, less “in his own head.” those emotional wounds and self-doubts carry with him the whole time she’s gone, and they definitely figure in to why he doesn’t immediately go chasing after her.

his (flawed) inference is that if he had been providing sara with everything she needed from him emotionally, she wouldn't ever have left las vegas to begin with, so maybe it's best if he—and all of his emotional obtuseness—steer clear of her for the time being while she figures things out and seeks the support she needs elsewhere.

the last thing he wants in the world is to get in the way of her recovery, you know?

his second reason also ties in with the first:

he isn't prepared to follow sara yet because he is somewhat hopeful there ultimately is no need for him to do so.

because he and sara are still in regular phone contact at that time (see episodes 08x08 "you kill me" and 08x12 "grissom's divine comedy"), he has some sense that sara is not completely cut off from him and their life together in vegas; he feels as if that door is still open, at least a crack, and he is as optimistic as a realist/pessimist like him can be that she will eventually walk through it and return to him, once she has sufficiently recovered her mental health.

his plan is to honor her wishes by staying in vegas himself, giving her the time and space she needs to pursue healing, patiently waiting until she is ready to finally return home to him.

though of course he does have fears that maybe she might decide to stay away permanently—after all, it wouldn't be grissom if he didn't struggle to believe in his own lovability—between his own fears regarding his "unworthiness" and his cautious hopes that sara just needs to recalibrate before she is ready to come back to him, he remains firmly planted in vegas for the six months she is away (between november '07 and may '08).

the way i see things, it isn't until after sara's second departure from vegas in s9 that he really starts to consider following her into "the great unknown," not only because he has a sense that, at that point, her absence from sin city is more permanent but also because, as you mention, by then he is himself becoming burnt out on his job and bears some deep wounds from warrick's death which also contribute to his readiness to leave.

as i talk about here,

[by s9,] grissom is a man on the brink. ever since sara left vegas in s8, grissom has missed her terribly and been struggling with depression. the lab, which was once his safe place, his “well-ordered kingdom” in an otherwise chaotic world, has become increasingly strange and unwelcoming to him, and particularly as the team has changed, with sara’s departure (which sparked the beginning of the end), warrick’s death (which has been, in itself, another huge and devastating blow), and riley’s addition (which has proven to grissom that things will never be the same again as they were before). add in the extra heartbreak of sara returning briefly to vegas for warrick’s funeral, spending four months in town, and then suddenly leaving again without even saying goodbye—plus the fact that grissom feels as if he may have truly lost her this time around, given his unwillingness to follow her into the unknown—and you’ve got a grissom who is one step away from completely falling apart. whereas he once took satisfaction and even comfort in his job, nowadays the cases he investigates horrify and disturb him. he’s lost his appetite. he’s having nightmares. he can barely sleep. barely think. one of the worst parts to all of this is that he is without his usual support system: normally, when he needs comfort, encouragement, and understanding, he turns to sara, but he can’t do that now, not with her gone. what’s more: he is almost haunted by sara’s absence. she was at the heart of both his work and his home life. she was his partner, his right hand, his roommate, his confidante, his support system,his best friend, his lover, his spouse, and his whole world. every place he goes reminds him of her in some way, from their condo (which now feels impossibly empty in her absence), to the lab, to different places around the city where they’ve investigated crimes. hell, he can’t even sleep without dreaming about her—about how he’s lost her. she’s everywhere to him and yet nowhere, and he can’t seem to focus on anything aside from the terrible ache in his chest from missing her so much. that’s the mental space that grissom is in going into episode 09x05 “leave out all the rest”—and then the episode starts with sara finally contacting him, after so many months of radio silence, only to break up with him via video email, telling him not to worry about her anymore and acting like what they’ve had is ~over, even though, for him, it very much isn’t. that is the final blow—the thing that pushes him to the absolute brink of his ability to cope.

so, ultimately, it isn't just one factor that brings grissom to the point where he is ready to leave town but rather a concatenation of them.

outside of missing sara, he is also becoming increasingly horrified by the human depravity he witnesses night in and night out on his job (see, for example, his reaction to the case in episode 09x06 "say uncle") and increasingly unsatisfied with the changes to his work life and team (including the losses of both sara and warrick and the addition of riley adams to the graveyard shift).

warrick's death likewise weighs on him.

heavily.

as i talk about here,

obviously, when warrick dies, it’s devastating for grissom, not only because he holds warrick in his arms as it happens but because he loved warrick so deeply. for as much as grissom’s s9 depression is a product of him missing and being heartbroken over sara, it also is a product of his grief over warrick—and i honestly think that had warrick not died at that time, grissom probably would have taken longer to decide to leave the lab than he does in canon; warrick’s death just shuts the door on that chapter of his life in a very final kind of way. he never truly gets over it.

between all of the above stressors, grissom eventually finds that not only is he willing to leave las vegas but he's ready to.

in the past, clinging to his job had always been "enough" for him, but now he finds he does not take the same pleasure in his work as he formerly did and he needs more—a change of scene and venue, new endeavors in which to invest himself, and, most importantly, human connection; specifically, with the love of his life, sara.

as stated above, i do think that had warrick not died at the start of s9, grissom may have taken longer to eventually reach that breaking point, not only because then sara would not have returned to vegas at the start of s9 only to leave again, shattering grissom's illusions that she might eventually come home for good in the process, but also because he wouldn't have been half as miserable at the lab in that case as he ultimately became in canon.

had warrick still been around, he could have probably mollified himself for somewhat longer; kept convincing himself, "i don't need to come to her. she'll eventually come back to me. everything'll be fine. i just need to keep my head down and do my work in the meanwhile—"

that said, i do believe that grissom still would have ultimately arrived at a point where the center could not hold—where it became apparent to him that he just couldn't be satisfied living his life without sara (even for the sake of his work).

even before grissom was ready to follow her in s8, he was still uncomfortable in her absence and longed to be near her again, and that discomfort and longing only would have grown the longer that she stayed away.

though i can't say exactly when, i am sure there would have someday (probably sooner rather than later) come a time when grissom couldn't stand to live apart from his one true love anymore, even if warrick hadn't died.

so if she hadn't been willing to come home to him*, then he would have eventually gone out to her.

* and who knows? maybe if warrick hadn't died, sara might have eventually come back to vegas of her own volition (to stay) once she was ready. after all, she does eventually move back there and even resume working at the lab come s10, so obviously that development isn't outside of the realm of possibility for her.

anyway.

those are my takes.

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

#answered #anon #asks: csi #**#my meta #meta: csi #meta: grissom #season eight #season nine #hypothetical scenario #csiverse #let's talk shop

13 notes · View notes