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#csi 12x01
ilkkawhat · 1 year
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Nick + Kids for @medicbuddie​
bonus baby:
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sidlesbitch · 3 years
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CSI Characters | first and last episodes
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thecartoongirl · 2 years
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CSI ficlet: Five crushes and a date
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I really wanted to post something for Valentine’s Day and ended up writing one of those 5+1 Things where Greg has an unrequited crush on... pretty much everyone, poor thing. But fear not, the happy ending is just around the corner... Fluffy humour, I guess.
Title: Five crushes and a date
Fandom: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Pairing: Nick/Greg, plus mentions of unrequited Greg/Catherine, Greg/Sara, Greg/Warrick, Greg/Grissom, Greg/Morgan
Rating: G
Summary: Five times Greg had an unrequited crush at work, plus one time it wasn't unrequited at all.
A/N: References to episodes 1x06 "Who are you", 2x11 "Organ Grinder" and 12x01 "73 Seconds".
Read on AO3.
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nade2308 · 3 years
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I'm gonna rewatch csi (caused I'm basically in s15 now and I need more eads) Which episode should I start with?
Oh, thanks for the ask and happy watching.
I can't think of all the eps right now, but my favorites and those who are mostly Nick centered or have a lot of Nick in them or good Nick moments are: 1x06, 1x11, 1x13, 2x03, 2x19, 5x24 and 5x25 (aka Grave Danger, my most fav eps out of all), 6x05, 8x17, 9x01, 9x16, 10x03, 10x06, 10x15, 10x23, 11x01, 11x15, 11x19, 12x01, 12x14, 12x22, 13x01, 13x03, 13x05, 13x22, 14x01, 14x02, 14x14, 15x01, 15x02, 15x03, 15x17.
Originally I have watched up until s10 (back in the day). And I still have to watch s11-15 fully, so I'm probably missing some good eps).
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Hi! Do you think Morgan could have ended up with Greg or with Hodges? The whole “who will she be with” thing by the last few seasons felt... confusing and volatile. That being said, and since the show gave no concrete indication, I just want to hear your hc, if you have any! Thank you!!!
hi, anon!
personally, i don’t think that morgan is particularly well-matched with either greg or hodges, so i don’t really think she could/should have ended up with either one of them.
i won’t harp on my reasons.
however, as for the confusing nature of the greg, morgan, and hodges “love triangle” and why the question of whom morgan might end up with feels so unanswerable even after four years of ship teasing, i think it all comes down to the writers of the later seasons of csi making some pretty basic narrative mistakes.
and that issue i do have something to say about.
more discussion after the “keep reading,” if you’re interested.
warning: here be some harsh criticisms of (and pointed memes about) the writing and execution of the later seasons of csi. if you’re partial to that era of the show, you’ll probably want to skip this post.
_______
to my mind, the confusing, disjointed nature of both the love triangle and subsequent later-seasons morganders ship-teasing stems from two main factors: 
first, the production team chasing but failing to capture real chemistry,
and, second, the later seasons of csi not telling serialized stories.
let’s start by reviewing the chronology here:
the character of morgan brody makes her first debut on the show in a guest capacity in episode 11x21 “cello and goodbye” before becoming part of the regular cast in episode 12x01 “73 seconds.”
almost immediately upon starting at the lvpd crime lab, she becomes a potential love interest for two other main characters, greg sanders and david hodges.
for the duration of s12, the show treats both men as likely “contenders” for morgan’s affections, with no clear favorite between them; they are given fairly equal opportunity to flirt and interact with morgan one-on-one, and she gives them both the time of day. romcommy tropes abound on all sides.
only at the beginning of s13 does greg pull away in the race, with hodges moving into “platonic best friend” territory and the possibility for romantic modges essentially evanescing. 
hodges eventually starts dating and quickly becomes engaged to a woman named elisabetta, pivoting his romantic attentions off of morgan, and, even after his relationship with elisabetta fails, he and morgan never really get back to having any kind of romantic basis to their dynamic. 
however, while one might think that having one of the two vying suitors in a “love triangle” cede his interest would clear the way for the remaining suitor to stake his claim, that’s not what ends up happening in csi canon.
while greg maintains his attraction to morgan and the show continues to tease the possibility of the morganders ship long after hodges drops out of the game, nothing romantic ever transpires between greg and morgan.
rather, they continue to have the same kinds of interactions that they have been having since morgan joined the show, and those interactions never actually build into anything; the nature of the relationship never evolves or transforms over time.
by the events of s15 and the series finale, morganders is no closer to being an official, committed romantic relationship than it was starting back in s12. greg and morgan end the series pretty much exactly where they were when they first met—as coworkers with mutual crushes on each other—and that’s the long and short of the matter.
now let’s talk “where things went wrong”:
considering that during her four seasons on the show, morgan has two viable potential love interests, both of whom are part of the main cast, one has to wonder how she ends out the show paired with neither one of them—and in fact never actually having dated either one of them (in earnest) at any point at all.
why would the writers go through the trouble to set up a love triangle and resolve it only to then never make the “winner” of said love triangle morgan’s partner? why would they tease a particular ship for four years without ever making it happen in the end?
the first place where the production team misstepped was in misgauging chemistry on all sides—and specifically in dickering around, trying to discover chemistry in two different places, not really finding any to speak of, and then squandering the moment anyway.
i know a lot of people disagree, but, honestly, i don’t think elisabeth harnois has real romantic chemistry with either eric szmanda or wally langham. in the four years that morgan is on the show, never once do i believe that she actually has any sexual/romantic interest in either greg or hodges. they might have some interest in her, but on her end of things, those two men may as well be her brothers; there is no sense that she spends any time pining after or longing for or fantasizing about either one of them whatsoever.
of course, chemistry between actors/characters is a fickle thing, and there’s really no accounting for it. a particular pairing either has chemistry or they don’t, and there’s not much that can be done to fake it in the case of the latter option.
early on, the csi production team largely “lucked into” billy and jorja’s romantic chemistry with gsr and in fact somewhat surprised themselves with that ship’s long-term staying power. in the meanwhile, they either remained oblivious to most other potential romantic chemistry on the show or else thoughtlessly wasted it (such as, for example, with catherine and warrick).
that so, it’s not as if they had a great track record when it came to identifying and creating potential ships based on chemistry to begin with.
their focus had always—by active decision—been more on the professional side of their characters’ lives than on the personal side anyway. having had just one major romantic ship on the show over twelve years and just a few minor romantic ships besides (i.e., wedges, catherine + vartann), they hadn’t really gotten in a lot of practice in developing romantic relationships organically.
—and that lack of practice is what i think bit them in the ass come the transition between s11 and s12.    
by that point, gsr was basically an off-screen nonfactor, wendy was gone and so wedges was donezo, and catherine + vartann had bitten the dust.
while romance had never been the highest priority on the show, i think the writing team did have some sense that they wanted at least one romantic ship in play, even if it were a “lighter” one (as compared to the heavy-hitting gsr).
they therefore cast about, looking to create that ship.
given the cast turnover between the end of s11 and the middle of s12 (with the departures of laurence fishburne/ray langston and liz vassey/wendy simms early on and marg helgenberger/catherine willows later), they knew they were going to bring in a couple of new main characters.
they’d already tapped ted danson to fill the hole left by fishburne/langston and also in a different sense helgenberger/willows, but they also needed a female character to keep the gender ratio on the show at least somewhat even and also replace vassey/simms.
at the end of s11, for episode 11x21 “cello and goodbye,” they had created the character of morgan brody and cast elisabeth harnois to play her. while the role was initially a one-off, carol mendelsohn had let harnois know at the time that she was hired that there was a possibility (and even a good one) that eventually she would be asked to join the main cast of the show full-time.  
harnois/brody was therefore the natural choice to bring in for the new female character on the show come s12—and she also quickly became the natural choice for the “de facto female romantic lead.”
considering that catherine had essentially sworn off serious relationships as of episode 11x09 “wild life” and also had one foot out the door to the show already and that sara was married to a long-distance, off-screen husband, the csi writers knew that harnois/brody was their best bet for creating a new mainline csi ship.
the question was with whom they should pair her.
they had, in the past, sometimes tried to give nick romantic partners, but somehow they had never been able to make those partners stick around for long. why they decided not to give one more good ol’ college try with him, i don’t know, but my suspicion is that in the case of morgan in particular, it ultimately came down to “the eye test”* as well as perhaps harnois’s age (32 during s11) in comparison to eads’s (44 in s11)**.
* more on that point in a minute.
** morgan’s age in canon is unclear. her portrayer, elisabeth harnois, was born in 1979; however, since csi often makes its characters either older or younger than the actors who play them, we can’t assume that she shares the same age. in episode 13x17 “dead of the class,” morgan states that her ten-year class reunion was in 2012, which means her birth year should be 1985. however, later on in episode 15x14 “merchants of menace,” she claims to have been twelve years old in 1995, which means that her birth year should be 1983. i’ve also seen some bios of unclear canonicity which list her as having been born in 1984. given all of this ambiguity and narrative inconsistency, morgan may have been born at any point between 1979 at the earliest and 1985 at the latest. in any case, regardless of when she was born between that 1979 to 1985 window, she is certainly significantly younger than nick and would have been somewhere between thirteen and nineteen years old when he first started working at the lab circa 1998 (when he himself was about twenty-seven). morgan’s parents divorced when she was fourteen, and she moved to california at that point, so without knowing exactly how old she was in 1998, it’s hard to say whether or not nick ever encountered a young morgan while she was still in middle or high school—catherine remembers her as a “little girl,” presumably from when catherine first started working at the lab in the late 80s, but there’s no indication one way or another as to whether nick has memories of her from her teenage years, even as just a passing thing—but even if he never met her at that age, i think that just the fact that she is the adult daughter of his boss and is anywhere from eight to fourteen years younger than he is (if his canonical birth year is 1971) would be enough to prevent him from having any sexual/romantic interest in her. she will always be not just a kid to him but ecklie’s kid specifically. that so, while csi as a show definitely isn’t afraid of may-december romances in principle, i think that in this case, the writers probably had no inclination to ever try making romantic “stody” a thing, as doing so wouldn’t have been the right characterization move for nick.
meanwhile, out of the other two male main characters, they already had plans for russell to come onto the show married to an off-screen wife.
that left greg as the de facto “lover boy.”
—not that i think they were at all disappointed in having greg be the go-to guy.
honestly, plugging greg into a relationship or at least setting him on the path to one would give them the chance to wield his character in a way that they never had before.
despite having been on the show since s1, aside from his long-standing unrequited crush on sara, greg had only had one brief on-screen romance up to the point of s12, and that had been with a serial killer AND had only lasted for the duration of one episode (see episode 11x12 “a kiss before frying”).
accordingly, the writers were probably at least somewhat excited to see what they could do with him as part of a romantic pairing.
add in the matter of the “eye test”—i.e., that eric szmanda and elisabeth harnois looked good together, as two relatively young, attractive blondes—and i think the writers were probably pretty pleased with their choice.
that's not to say that eads and harnois would have looked bad together by comparison; just that szmanda and harnois naturally “matched.”
they likely thought that what they were doing had potential.
whether or not they screen-tested eric and elisabeth together in order to get a feel for their chemistry before deciding on the morganders pairing, i don’t know for sure, but my suspicion is that they didn’t, as harnois a) was originally hired in the guest-spot role for s11 before she became a regular cast member in s12 (meaning that at the time when they first signed her, there was no real indication that she would ever become a long-term love interest for anyone, let alone for greg in particular), b) morgan had no interaction with greg in her initial episode (which suggests that the plan to pair them together was not in place from the beginning), and, c) she was probably hired more for her passing resemblance to marc vann rather than for any “chemistry purposes.”
from the point of her original creation, morgan was a character the csi writers had some idea that they might end up using again in the future, but nothing was a done deal yet; her original utility was to serve the story in episode 11x21 “cello and goodbye,” and that story didn’t involve her interacting with greg (or, for that matter, with hodges) directly at all.
whatever romance the writers later planned for her was therefore likely an afterthought.
the writers believed going into s12 that she could work well with greg in theory; accordingly, they started teasing the morganders romantic ship.
unfortunately, the pairing was less compelling on screen than it was on paper.
while eric and elisabeth by no means pair horribly together and, indeed, can play off of each other passingly well, they also lack that certain je ne sais quoi that might make morganders truly compelling.
however, the real mark against them isn’t so much the lack of spark—as, honestly, there have been many serviceable pairings in tv history whose chemistry was, frankly, less than combustible—but rather the way morganders is written.
and that brings us to the issue of modges.
while i believe that morganders was to some degree planned prior to the start of s12 (not in the sense that there was any kind of concrete “first we’ll do a, then we’ll do b, then c” strategy for how to get them together but rather just in terms of “we probably want these two characters to pair up eventually”), i think modges was something more improvised—as in the production team saw a couple of scenes between wally langham and elisabeth harnois, thought there might be some chemistry there*, said to themselves, “hey, that’s something potentially worth exploring,” and so decided to try out some romantic tropes.
* wally langham is a charismatic actor who could have chemistry with a rock, so they weren’t exactly wrong, per se. it’s just that whatever connection they were seeing wasn’t romantic in nature.
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while i don’t think they necessarily considered hodges a potential morgan suitor prior to the start of s12, it's worth noting that shortly before morgan made her series debut in episode 11x21 “cello and goodbye,” liz vassey said farewell as wendy simms in episode 11x02 “pool sharks,” meaning that hodges had become “romantically available” again shortly before morgan joined the team.
since morgan, like wendy, was more conventionally attractive than hodges but also was a geek (just by virtue of being a csi), the writers seemingly thought that they could replicate some of the success they had seen with the wedges ship with modges*; this line of thinking was likely another impetus for them to tease modges as a ship, even if the vibes were honestly never quite right from the get-go.
* while nowadays, particularly on tumblr, slash ships such as hedges and stodges are the most popular kinds of ships where hodges is concerned, back when csi was still originally airing, wedges had actually been well-liked by the fandom and perhaps even more so by casual viewers.
this decision to explore the potential for romantic morganders and romantic modges simultaneously ultimately created a muddling effect—and particularly as the writers didn’t treat this “love triangle” in the usual way, where the two suitors are aware of each other’s intentions and in active competition for their beloved’s affection.
while greg does make an offhanded comment once about morgan potentially having dinner with hodges and hodges’s mother (see episode 12x21 “dune & gloom”), there’s actually surprisingly little in the way of true romantic rivalry between the two men during the time when they’re both potentially interested in morgan.
it’s not as if they’re “trying to outbid each other” (or undermine or embarrass or sabotage or anything else). indeed, their respective connections with morgan remain largely separate, so that it’s less of an actual love triangle between them and more just two parallel lines that at no points come into contact or intersect.
while this partitioning between the morganders and modges storylines was agreeable in the sense that the audience was spared the petty soap opera melodrama that is typical of a love triangle storyline and also never had to sit through watching two beloved characters trying to tear each other down, the unusual presentation of this scenario contributed to the confusion surrounding it, as it was at times unclear what the writers were angling for.
it’s understandable that as the production team was still getting a feel for harnois as an actress and morgan as a character within the ensemble, they would want to try to keep their options open with her and try out various setups that might potentially work; however, i think that in the long run, they did themselves a disservice by being unwilling to fully commit to anything with her.
love triangles are common enough and can be resolved in such a way that it is clear that character a belongs with character b and that character c is no longer an option, but the csi writers didn’t use the right maneuvers to make such an outcome possible with morgan.
one mistake they made was in drawing the love triangle out: for the duration of s12, both greg and hodges are in the running with morgan, and there is no clear indicator that one or the other of them is the favorite, either for her or for the writers.
ambiguity of this sort is not necessarily unheard of in your average love triangle storyline.
after all, both suitors must seem like “contenders” if the audience is to have any sense that the love triangle is actually a love triangle at all.
however, what is somewhat unheard of is that not only are neither one of the two suitors obviously favored, but they are literally dead even, in that morgan has known them both for the exact same amount of time, her bonds with both of them are roughly on the same level in terms of social intimacy and connection, neither one of them would seem to be “more into her” than the other (i.e., it’s not as if greg is deeply in love with morgan while hodges only has a crush on her; they’re both really still at the crush stage), their one-on-one interactions with morgan receive roughly equal screen time and narrative treatment, each of their relationships with her has about the same amount of development throughout the course of the season, etc.
moreover, morgan herself is about equally (un)involved with and (un)invested in both ships from start to finish. she is equally ambivalent on both ends, willing to entertain flirting from both suitors but having no real sense of want/need with regards to either one of them over the other. again, while it wouldn’t be unusual for her to be so “even-keeled” at the beginning of the love triangle storyline, the fact that her attitude never really changes all the way through is a departure from the expected tropes, and particularly in the sense that the situation never gets any more emotionally difficult for her—i.e., there’s never any sense that she is torn between her two options or feels bad for being unable to choose one guy over another to pursue.   
it's not actually until the very last second (when the writers introduce the character of elisabetta right on the tail end of s12 and beginning of s13) that greg really gets any kind of leg up, and even then it’s only really because hodges exits the arena of his own volition; morgan herself isn’t actively involved in that decision.
though she does tell hodges that she doesn’t want to talk about the spur-of-the-moment kiss she gives him in episode 13x01 “karma to burn” after said kiss happens, she doesn’t then summarily dismiss him—and, in fact, the way the exchange is played could suggest that her refusal to discuss what happened is actually a sign that there’s potential there (as opposed to the kiss being a dud or something that scared her off of hodges entirely). ultimately, it really is him who closes the door on whatever potential romantic relationship he and morgan may have otherwise had.
while a long-lasting love triangle isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker in and of itself when it comes to having one suitor eventually emerge as a clear victor, when a long-lasting love triangle has an unclear resolution, then you’ve got a problem on your hands—and that’s exactly the case with morganders/modges.
honestly, here, the thing that is unclear is not necessarily the ship that the writers were interested in pursuing in the long run.
while early on, hodges and morgan stage a “fake dating” relationship straight out of the ao3 tag (see episode 12x18 “malice in wonderland”), and later in a moment of duress while she is worried about her father morgan even kisses hodges out of the blue (see episode 13x01 “karma to burn”), in truth, the writers only ever dabbled with modges and never actually committed to anything.
never at any time are there declarations of feelings between them. never is there any sense that they are truly hung up on each other.
moreover, even while they’re still in the dabbling phase—before hodges’s relationship with elisabetta is introduced in earnest in s13—the writers complicate the dynamic between hodges and morgan in certain ways that make modges largely unviable as a romance, such as by having hodges’s mom date morgan’s dad.
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pretty quickly, it became clear that for all of the “experimentation” the writers had done with the idea of romantic modges, they ultimately came to consider the experiment an unsuccessful one and had no intention to actually pursue the ship for realsies.
now, why the writers eventually decided to walk away from the prospect of romantic modges, i'm not exactly sure. maybe they eventually realized that the “chemistry” there was more friendly or familial than legitimately romantic or perhaps they got the sense that the audience would rather see romantic morganders than romantic modges. possibly they simply decided to go with their original game plan and/or to arbitrarily stick morgan with the guy who was closer to her in age.
in any case, come the beginning of s13, they were done entertaining the notion of a prospective modges romance.
morgan kissing hodges in episode 13x01 “karma to burn” and then them mutually agreeing to forget that said kiss ever happened in episode 13x02 “code blue plate special” serves as the first nail in the coffin, while them referring to each other very deliberately (and with no hint of irony) as “best friends” in episode 13x03 “wild flowers” is nail #2, and nothing more ever really being said about the issue drives in the third and final nail.
from then on, modges is situated firmly in “brotp” territory.
—which, one would think, should make greg the “winner” of the love triangle by default.
but that’s really where the writers fell on their faces, because the thing is that even after removing hodges from the equation, they never made romantic morganders happen thereafter.
greg and morgan’s relationship remains fundamentally unchanged from their first meeting in s12 to their final scene together in the series finale.
for all of their flirtation and supposed interest, they never make the transition from friends to lovers.
you know that phrase “either drive or get out of the car”? well, they neither drive nor ever get out of the car; they just sit there awkwardly, slinging glances at each other in the rearview mirror, while the car sticks in park for four full seasons, even after hodges has vacated the backseat.
and do you know what’s (frankly) worse than this lack of development in itself?
not only did the writers fail to advance—let alone consummate—the relationship between greg and morgan beyond s12, but they actually made it unclear what the nature of said relationship was, to the point where viewers became unsure whether they were meant to ship the pairing romantically or not.
here's the thing:
writing a slow-burn romance is an art, and that art is all about pacing—knowing when to turn up the heat versus when to let things simmer for a while.
apply too much heat too quickly, and the pot will boil over before the food is ready.
if you have some big event which seemingly should result in the characters coming together in its aftermath but doesn’t, you risk annoying your audience by continuing to withhold the moment of consummation thereafter. fans will be left saying, “it’s unrealistic that after [insert said plot event here], they wouldn’t confess their feelings/kiss/have sex/start dating! the fact that they don’t get together right then calls the whole relationship into question.”
if this kind of sequence of events takes place more than once over the course of the storyline, so much the more will be the fans’ displeasure.
you can only have the characters who have been shown on multiple occasions to be attracted to and have feelings for each other fall into each other’s arms sobbing with relief over the other person’s improbable survival after a near-death experience so many times without them then kissing before viewers start to doubt that they are ever going to get together or that it will even be a good thing if they eventually do.
the same is also true with the converse.
if the relationship only ever simmers with occasional flirtations and instances of mutual attraction shown but with no kind of “rising action” or crescendo of events happening over time, your audience is also going to become annoyed. they'll start saying, “wait a minute. is this pairing ever going to be a thing or are the writers just stringing us along here?”
ultimately, if the simmer goes on long enough, they’ll start to doubt the magnetism of the relationship and/or the strength of the feelings underlying it, because, after all, if these two people truly did care about each other and truly did want to be together, they would have found some way to do so by now.
you can only have two characters stare longingly at each other while wistful pop music plays at the end of the episode so many times without them ever even holding hands or coming close to kissing before viewers lose their patience with the tepidness of the whole thing, after all.
somehow, morganders manages to blend the worst aspects of these two different kinds of flawed construction for a slow-burn tv romance.
on the one hand, greg and morgan have more than a handful of potential “boiling points” which nevertheless never result in any kind of consummation. take, for example, the events of episode 12x05 “csi down,” which see greg practically going out of his mind after morgan is taken hostage in the helicopter, only for nothing to happen between them thereafter. ditto for episode 14x01 “the devil and db russell" after morgan is kidnapped. same goes for the events of the series finale when morgan and greg are nearly blown up in the parking garage.
greg and morgan have all sorts of possible “if anything were to have happened to you, i never could have forgiven myself” moments over the course of their four+ years together on the show, and yet the most that ever comes of these moments are platonic hugs. there's never any kind of ante upped or games changed thereafter.
of course, when they’re not dodging death and failing to seize the day with each other in the aftermath, most of the time, they’re stagnating.
or, scratch that—not just stagnating but starting and stalling.
in point of fact, there are multiple occasions throughout the last four seasons of the show where the writers walk right up to the line of getting greg and morgan together and don’t actually fail to cross it but rather pretend to cross it only to then walk the crossing back afterward.
for example, look at episode 12x21 “dune & gloom,” in which finn and morgan explicitly discuss the possibility of greg and morgan dating, and morgan flusters in such a way so as to make it clear that she not only has considered the possibility but she also isn’t opposed to it. though she attempts to downplay the notion in the moment with finn, later on in the episode, greg actually asks her out for a beer with him, and she accepts his offer.
ngl, watching that episode for the first time, i thought, “well, there it is. greg and morgan are dating now. this is where it starts.”
i was then very surprised when in subsequent episodes it was shown that they were not actually dating.
something very similar happens in episode 13x04 “it was a very good year,” when after greg suffers the heartache of the death of an old flame, morgan holds his hand and promises him that “the best is yet to come.” the episode then ends.
the way the whole interaction is staged and its chronological placement within the episode leads one to believe that it holds significance to morganders—i.e., that morgan is essentially talking about them as a prospective couple and that even if she doesn’t necessarily intend for them to start dating right that very moment (as greg is still nursing his hurt over alison bailey’s death), she does see them dating eventually, and probably sooner rather than later.
however, this notion is disproven in subsequent episodes, as she and greg do not in fact commence dating either sooner OR later, and eventually whatever momentum they had built up with this interaction is essentially wasted with the passage of too much time.
while some may argue that scenes like the ones mentioned above (and other similar morganders fake-outs, like the ones in episodes 13x21 “ghosts of the past,” 14x11 “lost reindeer,” 15x08 “rubbery homicide,” etc.) are all just the teasing part of a ship tease and aren’t necessarily misused/misplaced, i don’t think that scenes like these ones actually qualify as a “ship tease,” as they go past the point of teasing the audience and into the realm of mocking them.
it's one thing to raise the question of “will they or won’t they?”
it’s another thing altogether to affirm “they will!” only to then turn around and yell, “psych! actually they won’t! i can’t believe you guys fell for that one” and start laughing like a sixth-grade bully on the back of the school bus.
i mean, just compare what happens in the botched morganders’s slow burn to what happens in the gsr slow burn, which is actually executed well:
grissom and sara do have their share of “boiling point” moments before they fully get together circa mid- to late s5, and while these early boiling points don’t necessarily result in immediate consummation for gsr, they do nevertheless facilitate changes to grissom and sara’s dynamics and contribute to the continuing evolution of their relationship.
grissom and sara always end up treating each other differently in the aftermath of these events than how they did before. there is a kind of progress with them—a steady transformation which, while not always directly linear, is nevertheless noticeable.
there is a clear “before and after” effect with each passing trauma.
for example, with episode 03x22 “play with fire,” there is a clear chain of events leading from sara’s life being in danger to grissom slipping up and revealing his true feelings for sara by calling her “honey” to sara taking his slip up as a cue and asking him out to grissom panicking and turning her down.
these events then catalyze the major gsr story arc between s4 and s5, which sees grissom attempt to emotionally retreat from sara in the wake of this declined dinner invitation only to later realize that his doing so is causing sara pain and eventually come to the conclusion that he needs to act on his feelings for her for both of their sakes. 
in this and other “boiling point” instances with gsr throughout the show’s early seasons, not only are there clear sequences of events which proceed internally from the instance in question, but these sequences of events also then feed into one another, as well, creating larger story arcs.
that's how serialization works.
that's how a narrative is built up, brick by brick.
but that’s not what happens with greg and morgan.
their “boiling point” events all seem to happen in a vacuum, where one or the other of them experiences some kind of danger and/or trauma, and, within the course of the episode, the other person reacts to it, but then that reaction doesn’t carry over into any subsequent episodes and their relationship dynamic remains at what its baseline has always been.
there is no significant difference in how greg and morgan interact with or relate to each other before and after morgan’s abduction in the medevac or her being taken captive by a serial killer or with greg being exposed to a potentially deadly pathogen (see episode 15x03 “bad blood”). 
even if they momentarily show heightened emotions toward each other, they always end up right back at where they started. there is never anything transformative between them.
and it’s the same sort of problem with the “simmer” stuff, as well.
again, to use gsr as a comparison point, certainly they have some ship-teasey moments prior to when they actually get together in s5—for example, grissom’s infamous “since i met you” line in episode 02x16 “primum non nocere” and the even more infamous “pin me down” scene from episode 04x07 “invisible evidence.”
those moments are meant to get the audience’s hopes up and made them think “is this it? is this going to be where grissom and sara finally get together?”
however, the difference between these moments and the ones between greg and morgan is in the handling.
with gsr, the hope that is raised is only momentary. 
whatever expectations are set up are usually set down again within the course of that same scene or at least within the course of that same episode. no one is left hanging or given the false impression that grissom and sara are finally together only to then have that false impression shot down in subsequent episodes.
for example, in episode 02x16 “primum non nocere,” when grissom says he’s only begun to care about beauty since meeting sara, both her heart rate and those of the viewers momentarily speed up and there’s this wonderful moment of anticipation. however, grissom never stops talking after bestowing his artless compliment and instead immediately launches into a discussion of more case details. his lack of pause or reaction to sara’s reaction indicates clearly to both her and the audience that this moment will not (therefore) be the one where everything changes for them.
no one goes away from this scene thinking that sara is grissom’s girlfriend now.
even though the true depth of his feelings for her have been illuminated as never before.   
not so with similar scenes featuring morganders.
for them, there are multiple moments throughout the later seasons of the show where it’s unclear exactly what their relationship status is—to the point where even other characters on the show (such as russell in episodes 12x08 “crime after crime” and 12x15 “stealing home,” finn in episode 12x21 “dune & gloom,” and the genealogist donna hoppe in episode 13x10 “risky business class”) legitimately make the mistake of thinking that they are already dating when in fact they are not.
and characters within the universe of the show aren’t the only ones who have reason to be confused on the matter, as the audience is presented with ambiguous evidence in that regard, as well.
ending an episode with two characters who are mutually attracted to each other agreeing to go out together (with no other friends or coworkers accompanying them) for a beer* or breakfast after work or with them holding hands and saying “the best is yet to come” implies that their relationship is progressing and that the ante between them has been upped. 
while it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are automatically in a long-term serious romantic relationship and/or deeply in love with each other right away, it does suggest that they are taking the next step from “coworkers with crushes on each other” to “potential couple.”
* the beer thing actually happens twice, by the way, once in episode 13x21 “dune & gloom” and once in episode 15x08 “rubbery homicide.”
to then walk back on that very strong suggestion or at least fail to capitalize on it in a timely manner is just bad writing.
it builds up an expectation only to quickly disappoint.
and it does so multiple times between s12 and the series finale.
it’s the narrative equivalent of “the boy who cried wolf”—and the outcome is much the same as in the fable, where eventually people stop believing what’s being told to them.
all of the above said, even if one likes the idea of romantic morganders on paper, it becomes very difficult to actually emotionally invest in the ship or maintain hope for it becoming canon, because doing so is basically an exercise in setting oneself up for a letdown.
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conclusion
all of these issues come back to the aversion that the later seasons writers had to serialization.
because they didn’t plan story arcs out in advance or have any kind of continuity from one episode to the next, they tended to play things by ear and treat each 50-minute story as its own microcosm. 
with very little continuous development between the season premiere to the season finale (much less spanning multiple seasons), it became almost impossible for them to manage/resolve a love triangle and develop a slow-burn romance over an extended period of time.
in the first case, they allowed themselves to get caught up in hunting down dead ends for romantic chemistry where there really wasn’t any to be found and, consequently, drew out a love triangle for far too long and with far too much ambiguity, only to then fail to complete the arc and pair the “victor” of the triangle and its object in a timely manner within the narrative even after having eliminated the competition.
in the second case, they then teased the remaining ship indefinitely, without having any kind of terminus in mind or any sense of pacing or escalation. while they had multiple episodes per season that touched on the potential romance between the two characters in question and raised the possibility of them someday being together, none of these episodes really tied together, and there was no actual progression of their narrative. 
for all of their near-misses and run-ins and “will they or won’t they?” moments, they never truly drew any closer to becoming a romantic couple. 
the writers got too hung up on the teasing without having any notion of pleasing.
eventually, this one-note song lacking any kind of crescendo or conclusion became predictable, boring, or even maddening, even to many of the same people who had favored the idea of the pairing to begin with.
ultimately, it was never clear enough what the writers intended (if anything), and the constant equivocating and walk-backs ended up making this whole part of the show feel, to use the anon’s words, confusing and volatile.
like i said, i don’t personally favor either morganders or modges as an endgame romantic pairing, just on a character level, but even i find the way that the writers handled the whole situation (or failed to handle it) obnoxious.
the manner in which they danced around the issue, refusing to settle on anything or to try to string together any kind of continuous development, really highlights the major problems with the way the later seasons of csi are written just in general.
anyway.
/rant over.
thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.  
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waseschaposts · 4 years
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CSI: Crime Scene Investigation 12x01 "73 Seconds" ★★★★★★★☆☆☆
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ilkkawhat · 3 years
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12.01 73 Seconds
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ilkkawhat · 3 years
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12.01 73 Seconds
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ilkkawhat · 3 years
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12.01 73 Seconds
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ilkkawhat · 3 years
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he’s just too precious
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ilkkawhat · 3 years
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12.01 73 Seconds
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ilkkawhat · 3 years
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12.01 73 Seconds
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ilkkawhat · 3 years
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12.01 73 Seconds
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ilkkawhat · 3 years
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12.01 73 Seconds
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ilkkawhat · 3 years
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12.01 73 Seconds
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