You may have read that Gary Sinise got a healthy salary bump this week. He’ll now be pulling down $5 million a year for scowling on CSI: NY. No mention of any increase for his costar, Melina Kanakaredes. If this television season has taught us anything, it’s that women in prime time shouldn’t ask for raises - unless they are prepared to see their characters tortured or killed.

Take Jorja Fox, who has a history of playing contract hardball with the CSI mothership. The show just fed her Sara Sidle to the most diabolical serial murderer ever to hit Vegas, the Miniature Killer, who pinned Sara beneath a car and left her to wander around the desert with a shirt around her head that made her look like a deranged Rhoda Morgenstern.

After not coming to terms with the show, Fox will be written out in November, no doubt after Sara absorbs a good deal more suffering.

And how about Sarah Wayne Callies, who plays Michael’s love interest, Sara, on Prison Break? She wouldn’t sign a new contract, so this week Sara’s head was delivered in a box to Michael’s brother, Lincoln.

The networks are sending an emphatic message to actresses everywhere: More money? Over your dead body!

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