CSI Colleagues Aren’t Just Pals

For years, fans of “CSI” have been wondering: Is there more going on between Grissom and Sara than meets the eye?" In the May 17 episode, we found out that the answer is a resounding “yes.”

But now we have even more questions . and, as it turns out, so do the show’s stars. The Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen talked to the cast of the CBS primetime drama about their characters’ futures.

At the end of the episode, we heard Gil Grissom (actor William Petersen) ruminating about the end of his own life. “It would be nice to have a little time,” he says. “To see the Amazon rainforest. Read a few more books. Do another Sunday crossword. Time to say goodbye to the people I love.”

At that point, a figure crosses in front of Grissom, a hand touching his shoulder in passing. Grissom’s eyes follow Sara as she sits down on the bed across from him, wrapped in a bathrobe, her hair still wet from the shower. There’s no awkwardness between them. It’s comfortable. Intimate. “I’m not ready to say goodbye,” she tells her lover.

Jorja Fox, who plays Sara, is curious, too. “You know what? Honestly, Sara’s never given up on Grissom, to be perfectly honest with you,” she says. “And that is the big question . how long has this been going on? You know, Hall and Oates do a great version of that song, and I think we’re all wondering that same question.”

Fans of the show have watched the sexual tension simmering between Grissom and Sara for a long time now.

“We were doling it out in little tiny pieces, just between me and Jorja, so it’s a big deal for me and her, just in terms of where we’re at,” says Petersen. With this latest plot twist, he says, everything has changed and “it’s like a married couple in a bedroom at night talking to each other.”

The clear implication, the actor says, “is that we’ve had a relationship for many years that nobody knows about, that we, even in our behavior around here, nobody would know.”

Grissom might think so, but fellow super-sleuths Catherine (played by Marg Helgenberger) and Nick (George Eads) are far from clueless.

“I think that [Catherine] will be perfectly content just sort of watching it unfold and watching them trying to keep it a secret,” says Helgenberger.

Nick’s no fool either. “He sees the way they look at each other,” says Eads. “He, I think, understands Sara very well. And I almost don’t think he blames her. I mean, doesn’t everyone just love Grissom? There’s just something eccentric and weird and kooky and cool and awesome about Grissom, man!”