There has always been a great divide amongst the fans of CSI, between those who love Grissom and Sara together and those who, I don’t know, hate romance and kick puppies for fun. Up until last night, the fans of GSR had pretty much won most of the battles in this cold war, but with “Forget Me Not,” this week’s episode, the other side landed a major, heart-breaking victory when Sara revealed that she and Grissom have separated.

How did this happen? Well, in true* CSI *fashion, the writers didn’t seem at all interested in explaining their reasons for this twist. It’s apparently enough for them just to imply that it was Grissom’s choice and that he might have been doing it for what he considers to be Sara’s benefit. Anyone who knows the history between them, though, knows that Grissom has not always been the best judge of his own needs and wants, much less Sara’s. It’s going to be very easy for the anti-Sara crowd to point their fingers and blame her for the breakup, and the writers made it very easy for them by having her immediately fool around with another man, but the real question is why did this incredibly strong woman, who never gave up on her love for an impossible man, give up on her marriage?

I don’t believe she has. She’s still wearing her wedding ring, she is still calling him her husband, she hasn’t removed any of their photos from their ridiculously gorgeous house, and she couldn’t bring herself to tell anyone that it had actually happened until she absolutely couldn’t avoid it. If she’s still hopeful, I’m still hopeful, no matter what the writers might have been trying to tell half of their audience through the supposedly-wise wisdom of Nick in the final scene with him and Sara and Greg. (That is not a diss on Nick; I thought he was great in the rest of the episode, defending not only Sara’s life, but her privacy.) “If it’s over, it’s over”? The only “over” I will accept is if Grissom and Sara are still separated at the series finale. And even then there’s always fan fiction.

Moving on, the case itself was compelling by the very nature of what being framed for murder put Sara through. The humiliation of having her private life become hallway gossip, the mortification of being booked and processed…she bore all of it, confident that her teammates would prove her innocence. She even pinpointed the real murderer, the crazy stalker from a few months back who blamed Sara for the death of his stalkee, and wanted to make her pay for keeping them apart. It was an insanely emotional week for Sara.

So, what better time to introduce her mother? Um…how about in any other episode where there might have been a touch more time to actually utilize such a long-awaited, highly anticipated, much-speculated character? We’ve all been wondering about Laura Sidle since the day we saw Sara researching her court case back in season five. That was almost eight years ago. Why the sudden rush to cram her into this particular episode? Sara was already on to her stalker, so just knowing that he’d contacted her mother only gave her slightly more resolve to take him down. In other words, what did having Laura in this episode really do? Are we going to see her again soon? Are we going to see a woman who stabbed her husband seven times try to give her daughter advice about her own marriage? I kind of hope not. If anything, maybe she could just be a shoulder for Sara to lean on.

Truthfully, though, Sara already has two really good (and nicely muscled) pairs of shoulders in Nick and Greg, her long-time teammates and friends. I can’t say much for this episode, but I will say that in this particular area, they got it right. The three of them are the last of the original cast (since apparently Brass has vanished) and it was really great to see the boys have Sara’s back through thick and thin. That is why, even though the GSR community is devastated, we are not defeated. Some of us may jump ship, and we will mourn them, but the rest of us will strap ourselves to the mast and ride out the storm on the faith that there will be calmer waters ahead. And that’s as far as I can take the shipping metaphor.

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