Marg Helgenberger and Gary Dourdan, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Last week, months of speculation came to an end with an eighth-season opener that kept us on the edge of our seats and finally revealed Sara Sidle's fate (she's alive, but how long will she stick around?). Tonight's CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (9 pm/ET, CBS), entitled "A la Cart" and written by Sarah Goldfinger and Richard Catalani, offers a breather, an episode that's "slightly more lighthearted and should be fun for the audience," says Catalani.
Our favorite clue-finders dive into two cases: The first is a death at a restaurant where patrons dine completely in the dark. "The dining-in-the-dark story Sarah Goldfinger experienced firsthand," explains Catalani. "She went to a trendy [Laughs] restaurant where you dine in the actual pitch-black darkness, and we thought that was interesting enough to formulat
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Sandra Oh in Grey's Anatomy by Bob D'Amico/ABC
Now that's what I like to see on TV's most overcrowded night: TV's top crime drama and TV's top medical soap back in fine form, the two most-awaited season premieres of the week delivering on the hype. And the icing on the cake? Another sensational episode of AMC's summer holdover Mad Men, the one show I never want to see end. I'm going to miss that one when it goes away in a few weeks. As much as I enjoy CSI and Grey's Anatomy, combatants of the highest and most satisfying order, they feel like old hat compared to this scrumptious, provocative period piece.First off: Big sigh of relief that Sara Sidle (Jorja Fox) lives on. As Michael Ausiello reports in his exhaustive interview with the star, her days on CSI may still be numbered, but for now, Grissom’s lady love is still kicking, no matter how bloodied, battered and sunburned. The teaser for next week’s episode reveals, no surprise, that the course of true love isn’t going to run smooth for these coworkers, but ther...
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William Petersen, CSI
Instead of using "Who Are You" as its theme song this season, CSI producers might want to consider the Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go."
In last spring's season finale, Sara Sidle (Jorja Fox) was left trapped under a car in the Nevada desert by a serial killer — with pouring rain threatening to drown her — while Gil Grissom (William Petersen), her boyfriend and boss, and the rest of the CSIs frantically tried to find her. Sara's life hung in the balance because of the car — and the fact that Fox's contract with the CBS hit was up for renewal. So will she be sticking around?
Executive producer Naren Shankar's not telling. "Let's just say fans will be very satisfied with how it turns out," he says. "No loose ends will be left dangling a
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Oprah Winfrey, Simon Cowell and William Petersen
You can make a nice living in TV. Just ask Simon Cowell, who pulls in $45 million per year (for American Idol and other TV projects). Even the folks who serve chow to the cast and crew can make $3,000 over the eight days it takes to shoot an hourlong drama.
Here's a sample of who makes what, from Oprah to a production assistant just breaking into the biz.
NETWORK PRIME TIME (salary per episode)William Petersen, CSI $500,000Zach Braff, Scrubs
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William Petersen by Robert Voets/CBS
Get this: Sources confirm that CSI has signed William Petersen's To Live and Die in L.A. director, William Friedkin, to helm the season's eighth episode (to air during November sweeps, natch). As such, I think it's safe to speculate that the hour, which delves into Vegas' seedy mob underworld, will include at least one killer car chase and more Wang Chung music than you ever thought you'd hear again. Kidding aside, if the Oscar winner had only made his deal a little sooner, he could have revisited his Exorcist heyday by calling the shots on Episode 6: That one revolves around a deadly, um, exorcise program.
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George Eads, Marg Helgenberger and Eric Szmanda at Chicago Musuem of Science and Industry by Sean Smith/jpistudios.com
You know your show is a pop-culture phenomenon when a museum exhibit opens in its honor. But that’s exactly what’s happened to CSI. All the cast members from the CBS megahit came out to Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry last night to celebrate CSI: The Experience, which opens to the public on Friday, May 25. “This exhibit feels like a pat on the back for a job well done,” says George Eads. After the ribbon cutting, William Petersen, Marg Helgenberger and the rest of the CSI-ers took a tour of the interactive exhibit, where visitors can gather evidence, run tests and crack the case just like the investigators do on the show.While the cast gushed about the exhibit, they remained tight-lipped about the fate of Sara (Jorja Fox), whose life hung in the balance at the end of the May 17 season finale. “We ended this season with Sara under a car and that’s how we’ll start Season 8,” says executive producer Carol Mendelsohn. One promising s...
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For the second year in a row, CBS' broadcast of the Tony Awards will be host-free, Playbill.com reports. Instead, a cavalcade of big-name actors will engage in awkward banter before bestowing the awards on June 10. Presenters include Liev Schreiber, David Hyde Pierce and Kevin Spacey, all of whom are currently gracing the Great White Way, as well as past Broadway babies like Vanessa Williams, Neil Patrick Harris, Rainn Wilson and William Petersen. Marg Helgenberger will be there, too. (We hear she attended a Broadway show once.) — Reporting by Raven Snook
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Now there’s an ending! Something happening to Sara certainly wasn’t a well kept secret at all. So, I kind of half expected to be bored by this episode, since I figured I already knew the big spoiler. I certainly wasn’t expecting the absolute psychotic nature of the miniature killer. I mean, you knew the killer wasn’t right in the head based on the crimes themselves, but, wow, this girl was truly nuts. Nothing boring about her. So Natalie Davis is the killer — a foster child of Ernie Dell, who (we learned) killed himself to protect her. As a kid, she pushed her sister off the treehouse and killed her, and tried the same thing with other girls in another foster home. As was suspected earlier in the season, bleach was a trigger that set her mind into a frenzy. Of course, it seemed a lot put her into a frenzy. As she’s running down Fremont Street, the lights overhead put her in a trance. At the end, she’s singing her dad’s ventriloquist song about...
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William Petersen, CSI
All season long on CBS' CSI (Thursdays at 9 pm/ET), it's been the little things that have given Gil Grissom (William Petersen) the biggest headaches. Literally. He's spent the year hunting down a killer who creates exact miniature replicas of crime scenes — and even took a sabbatical to escape the stress. But now it looks like his search for the psychopath will pay off. "The killer will definitely be revealed," says executive producer Naren Shankar. "This is going to be a disturbing and very, very creepy episode."
All of the CSI team will be involved in the hunt to find the killer and save the next victim, but it's going to be Grissom doing most of the work. In fact, he's become so obsessed with the case, he takes to building his own miniature that Shanka
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Jorja Fox and William Petersen by Ron P. Jaffe/CBS
Jorja has a raise on her mind. The star of CSI staged a one-day walkout from the set during the shoot of the CBS show's season finale, which airs May 17. The actress is in talks with producers about a new contract to keep her on the show, sources familiar with the discussions tell TV Guide. How those talks go may decide the result of the cliff-hanging finale in which Fox's character, Sara Sidle, is struck by an automobile. At one point the story had Sidle dying, but it was rewritten to be more ambiguous and Fox returned to work. Neither the network or a spokesperson for Fox would comment. Fox had a salary dispute with the show in 2004, when she and costar George Eads demanded raises before they would show up for the start of production. They were both promptly fired and then reached an agreement to return to work. But Fox's character has become more prominent in the series over the last year. Sidle's relationship with Gil Grissom (William Petersen) has given the series its first ser...
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