Fish is a pretty big name to join the case and I’m betting CBS is excited to see someone of his stature join the show… think of the ratings bump and ad revenue.

Fishburne will play a former pathologist who is now working as an itinerant college lecturer, teaching a course in criminalistics. His focus is on understanding criminal behavior, how and why people commit acts of violence – tendencies he disturbingly sees within himself. In the course of a murder investigation, he comes into contact with the CSI team and ultimately joins the Las Vegas Crime Lab as a Level-1 CSI.

Megalyn Echikunwoke

The new season of CSI Miami begins September 22nd on CBS.

Anytime an actor plays a single character for this long (eight seasons thus far), the odds of him/her wanting a change is only natural. Most shows don’t last this long, but we’ve seen a few walk away in the past — David Duchovny comes to mind, when he wanted out of Chris Carter’s The X-Files.

I’ve been a huge fan of the show from the very beginning. The pilot episode drew me right in and I’ve been hooked. It’s just too bad there are a hundred CSI knockoffs polluting the airwaves now.

Personally, I welcome the move. I think it’s about time that this be done and over with already. The whole question of “will he go” or “when will he go” has been a distraction for the last two years in my view.

William Peterson as Gil Grissom

I think the show could use some fresh blood. The series has gotten very stale as far as the characters go. Anything remotely interesting only happens at the end of the season when someone’s contract is about to expire and the writers aren’t sure what’s going to happen. The cases are still good — the miniature story arc was absolutely awesome, but the character development has become… boring to say the least.

Seeing Grissom go will hopefully be the catalyst for some big changes. We’ve already learned of some of what the next season has in store for us…

Gary Dourdan will be in the premiere of the ninth season, but the producers aren’t yet tipping their hand as to whether or not his character, Warrick Brown, will die or not. I think he probably will, but I really don’t like the idea of literally killing off characters, at least on a show like this. It may be more fitting on a show like Lost, where people are frankly expected to die.

Jorja Fox (Sara Sidle) will be back for a few episodes, but we don’t know exactly how many.

Previously-announced addition Lauren Lee Smith (The L Word) joins the cast in the third episode as new CSI Riley Adams. Not being mentored by Grissom should make her stand out from the rest. She’ll be more or less replacing the already-departed Jorja Fox.

Liz Vassey and David Berman’s characters (Wendy and David) will become full-fledged CSIs and Wallace Langham (Hodges) will also become more prominent. Frankly, I think Hodges is already a bigger part of the show than he needs to be sometimes.

And then there’s Grissom’s replacement. All we know for now is that a professor will come into play at some point in this season, during a two-episode case and he’ll be a consultant who helps the CSIs bring in the culprit. He’ll eventually become Grissom’s replacement. We don’t know who the actor will be, however. Kurt Russell, Laurence Fishburne and John Malkovich are said to be at the top of CBS’ wish list, but it looks like Malkovich won’t be able to do it due to scheduling conflicts. That’s quite a wish list if you ask me.

Season nine of CSI should be an interesting one.

L&O’s popularity has sunk like a stone over the past decade. Law & Order: Criminal Intent had to be moved to USA just to stay on the air. Law & Order: Trial by Jury only lasted one season before getting axed. Spin-offs make sense from a money standpoint, but just because the original was successful, it doesn’t mean off-shoots or spin-offs will be.

On another token, I’ve just about had it with police dramas. I swear the only network without one is Food Network, and it’s only a matter of time until they manage to get Alton Brown and Giada De Laurentiis involved in one…

Giada De Laurentiis

What I like about the summer is a break from all of the police/FBI/CIA procedurals. Yet, CBS has announced they are looking to do a spin-off of Criminal Minds, one of their FBI procedurals. Then there’s the SWAT drama, Flashpoint, which will be debuting very soon. I don’t know about everyone else, but I need a break from all of this. We can’t even escape news about spin-offs during the summer anymore.

What role she will have is still not known for sure, but it is widely speculated that Jorja Fox’s character Sara Sidle will come back to Las Vegas to mourn the shooting and possible death of colleague Warrick Brown (played by Gary Dourdan).

In a related story, Gary Dourdan, who plays Warrick Brown, may be back next year after all. He likely won’t be back in a full-role [every episode], but it’ll be good to see him still on the show. Dourdan was arrested recently for drug possession.

I don’t know if he has a big drug problem and is why he’s being let go from the show or what, but I’m a little worried for the guy. He’s got a very good career going thanks to his success on CSI; I’d hate to see him lose it [or his life] because of drugs.

The lack of character development on CSI is something that’s bugged me for years and I’m not surprised to see Gary Dourdan (Warrick Brown) walk away from the show. Though there wasn’t a reason given for the move, I assume the fact that nothing happens with his character is one of the reasons.

CSI has been on the air for eight seasons and has had very few changes to its star cast. I just hope they find the right person to fill Warrick’s shoes. Personally, I don’t think they need anybody else. Greg Sanders could step up. He’s got the brains and the show could benefit from a little more comedic relief. This is something I miss from when he was in the lab all the time.

The two cases which were investigated were completely different. Catherine and Warrick worked the murder of a man who was dining at a trendy new restaurant. The idea behind the joint is to have the patrons eat in total darkness. The lights are turned off and the shades are pulled closed. It’s pitch black. The owner’s concept for the restaurant came from when she was in love with a blind man, who would feed her in darkness. Unable to see, the body’s other senses were heightened, making eating quite pleasurable. I wasn’t at all surprised by who was responsible for the murder; the fact that the waiter had just washed his hands despite being told not to made it unbelievably obvious he had something to do with it.

Elsewhere, Grissom, Greg, and Nick investigated the unusual decapitation of a young man found dead along a highway. There wasn’t really anything unusual about the investigation. The kid wasn’t murdered, but rather killed while racing high-powered go-karts with a competitor on the highway. It seems the writers (Sarah Goldfinger and Richard Catalani) are fans of the Discovery Channel series, MythBusters, as this myth was tested on the show just recently. Because I am familiar with that show, I wasn’t at all puzzled by the investigation – I telegraphed every move.

Once the cases were solved, the team retired to the go-kart race track for a little fun. Sara was the only one who didn’t participate. Instead, she watched from the side, as the entire crew had a blast, even Doc. Robbins. With Sara moving to the swing shift, she will be able to have a relationship with Gil, but we’ll be seeing less of her. As Warrick’s marriage to Tina is officially over, it looks like Sara and Grissom’s is just coming into the open, but it’s unfortunate it took this long. Afterall, Jorja Fox (Sara Sidle) won’t be with the show for much longer.

CSI – A La Cart
Original Air Date: October 04, 2007

Rating: 7.1