[…]

Still, it was hard to complain about that, when the show not only brought back Catherine Willows (Marg Helgenberger) and Jim Brass (Paul Guilfoyle), but the long-since-gone Grissom (William Peterson) and- be still my heart- even Lady Heather, aka Dr. Kessler (Melinda Clarke). I certainly wasn’t. Grissom was as wonderfully grizzled and nerdy as ever, (Sara) sidling back into the role as if no time whatsoever had passed. As such, it was probably inevitable that he would get the most screen time, but I suppose that’s as it should be.

Besides, if they hadn’t taken that approach, we wouldn’t have gotten what were, by far, the tenderest moments in the entire series between Grissom and Sara (Jorja Fox), culminating in an implied boat ride off into the sunset together, with Sara seemingly forgoing her new job as director to be with him and Catherine stepping up to the plate in her stead, which was a nice touch.

While part of me- the more feminist part- was a bit miffed that Sara would give up her plum gig for a guy that was clearly married to his own work, I get it. The show, and perhaps more than a few viewers, wanted these two to ride off- or sail off, as the case was- into the sunset together, and that’s what we got. Hey, at least they gave the job to another woman, so there’s that.

[…]

I think my favorite moments of the episode were the quieter ones: Sara and Grissom speaking volumes in the silence as they waited for color-coded bees to return; the look on Grissom’s face when the ‘Syndaver’ opened its eyes in that open-aired warehouse, itself a quintessential ‘CSI’-type location; the last sighting of those hyper-bright flashlights in the darkness; the other oddball clues, like the thumbprint ‘face’ D.B. (Ted Danson) discovered or the ‘X-Marks the Spot’ one Willows’ daughter found; and the requisite so-bad-it’s-good one-liner, fittingly given to Grissom at the beginning: ‘Looks like somebody jumped the shark.’

[…]

I did like that there were nods to the show’s illustrious past in the commercial breaks, i.e. the ‘furries,’ for instance; and the show could have done worse in terms of the overall plot- I liked that they not only brought back Lady Heather, but answered a few burning questions a lot of us had about her- that she and Grissom were never intimate and she never was truly in love with him, he just helped her come to terms with certain facets of herself. Good to know, and even better for Sara to know. Definitely a nice touch.

[…]