Horatio and Stetler - past, present, future

Jag Lady said:

Which, like everything else in the last few seasons, was rushed and forced, all in the interest of E/C, but I digress. That should have been ongoing over several episodes. And then again, they're not really sure what Rick Stetler does anymore. :angryrazz: Incidentally, I've asked police officers exactly what SOC is, and not one of them was able to tell me. I'm guessing Rick headed up SWAT and Incident Response in Hostile Takeover, but then again it might be called different things in different cities.

Truth is, they're selling EVERYBODY short in the last few seasons. There was a little H/Stetler headbutting this time around, but nothing like the early days.

Oh well. He'll be on again tomorrow. :drool::adore:

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You know what? Considering what we've been told (and that we can't really talk about), Rick damn well deserves some SIGNIFICANT time! This is BS that on the very rare occasion we do get to see him if you blink you'll miss him. Show this character, and the actor who has portrayed him for 8 years, the proper respect! :scream:

E/C can spare one or two freaking scenes once in a while for other more important, and certainly more interesting, characters. :scream:

E/C can spare one or two freaking scenes once in a while for other more important, and certainly more interesting, characters. :scream:

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I'm with ya, DeLynn. I think he's the longest-running recurring character in the series now! I know about the rumors, and I'm so mad that they're gonna pull a Dan Cooper on him.

I just saw DLS in The Man From Earth, and even though I didn't agree with the theology or the politics, he did a FANTASTIC job! He can do so much better than this.

I am on pins and needles about tonight's episode. I adore David Lee Smith and always look forward to a little interaction between Stetler and Caine. Without that, MIAMI loses some of the friction which has been played so well by both actors. I just wish MIAMI had explored that relationship a little more -- especially if this happens to be the character's swan song.

DLS should be proud of the acting he did in the episode last night. What a shame that the very uncreative writers on the show couldn't come up with good storylines for him that would've kept him on the show and added tension. Why they never did that storyline where he would temporarily take over the lab, I'll never know. They just dropped the ball.

Delynn said:

[
you khow what? Considering what we've been told (and that we can't really talk about), Rick damn well deserves some SIGNIFICANT time! This is BS that on the very rare occasion we do get to see him if you blink you'll miss him. Show this character, and the actor who has portrayed him for 8 years, the proper respect! :scream:

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E/C can spare one or two freaking scenes once in a while for other more important, and certainly more interesting, characters. :scream:[/QUOTE]

Despite the last coment(which is not my cup of tea) I agree and have allready wented(?) my frustration in episode tread.
IMO the show needs it´s bad guys. Rick wasn´t even a bad guy as such. BUT in normal stoytelling you need the hero and you need some obsticales(?) how else would you recognise the hero and where would the drama be?? ´

And then the way they did it......

For whatever reason they(TPTB) decided to sacrifice this great character. The character ifself deserves better. AND the show deserves better. Dumping characters for 2 episode arc????

Ajbuckly said:

Despite the last coment(which is not my cup of tea) I agree and have allready wented(?) my frustration in episode tread.
IMO the show needs it´s bad guys. Rick wasn´t even a bad guy as such. BUT in normal stoytelling you need the hero and you need some obsticales(?) how else would you recognise the hero and where would the drama be?? ´

And then the way they did it......

For whatever reason they(TPTB) decided to sacrifice this great character. The character ifself deserves better. AND the show deserves better. Dumping characters for 2 episode arc????

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I'm sorry you found my comment regarding E/C hogging all the screen time offensive, AJ. Really, I am. You may not want to read further.

They don't need Rick anymore. He and his position are relative to a crime drama. CSI Miami is getting out of the crime drama business and into soap opera so they don't need him any longer.

I wouldn't be surprised to see other characters go as well. I would celebrate like I haven't in a very long time if David would walk - so I could walk as well.

That said, next season may simply be too much and even David may not be able to hold me. I don't do soap opera - especially bad soap opera with bad actors who have no chemistry.

HnStetlerfan said:

DLS should be proud of the acting he did in the episode last night. What a shame that the very uncreative writers on the show couldn't come up with good storylines for him that would've kept him on the show and added tension. Why they never did that storyline where he would temporarily take over the lab, I'll never know. They just dropped the ball.

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I always wanted to see a storyline where Horatio and Stetler were forced to work together due to circumstances - the whole episode, maybe a couple, focused on the relationship between those two. I saw so much potential in just that short scene in "Ambush." DLS REALLY was able to make me feel that Rick was concerned about Horatio and really wanted to help him.

I hated that they didn't allow Stetler to follow up on what he found out about Horatio's past in New York. I think that would have been an incredibly interesting story for both of them and tremendous cross-over potential when NY was born.

But no. They elected to go the soap opera route and throw good story telling, and use of the really good actors on the show, down the toilet.

I have to admit, Stetler's departure was a rather dramatic turnaround. But it seems like they have been setting up his sanctimonious posture for a long time. I really expected him to have a more grand exit, like reminding Eric and Horatio that they themselves were murderers (the whole Brazil BS), Ryan was/is a degenerate gambler (whatever happened to him having to answer for all those old cases that were being reopened?), etc. etc.. But he just petered out. They also left out any resolution about Det. Sullivan--the trailer said there was footage of him being led away in an ambulance, but I don't recall it in the final cut. Another dropped thread in the episode.

There was a similar overly mellow ending in Khandi Alexander's last episode, when the DEA agent was running his own drug/murder racket with his informants.

It reminds me of a lot of films from the early 1930s--they would spend an hour and a half building up the plot and the characters, then the studio told them they only had 1,000 feet of film left. So everything magically resolved itself in 5 minutes.

Maybe they could tie up a few loose ends next week by making Ron Saris being the serial killer.

Not a happy viewer today...though I knew what was coming...I'm going to miss my Rick...

bill_az said:

They also left out any resolution about Det. Sullivan--the trailer said there was footage of him being led away in an ambulance, but I don't recall it in the final cut. Another dropped thread in the episode.

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I saw the scene with them putting Sully in the ambulance, but he was behind Horatio and the focus was on Horatio at that point. As for Ryan's old cases, that was wrapped up as well. He had to go through all of them before he could be re-instated and Natalia sat down at the table and helped him go through them.

Maybe they could tie up a few loose ends next week by making Ron Saris being the serial killer.

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Saris should have been involved in this betrayal. He was working with Stetler as an informant after all. I think making it be Saris instead of Stetler who was the betrayer would have been a much better way to go. The Saris storyline just kind of faded away with no real resolution.

Delynn said:

HnStetlerfan said:

DLS should be proud of the acting he did in the episode last night. What a shame that the very uncreative writers on the show couldn't come up with good storylines for him that would've kept him on the show and added tension. Why they never did that storyline where he would temporarily take over the lab, I'll never know. They just dropped the ball.

Click to expand...

I always wanted to see a storyline where Horatio and Stetler were forced to work together due to circumstances - the whole episode, maybe a couple, focused on the relationship between those two. I saw so much potential in just that short scene in "Ambush." DLS REALLY was able to make me feel that Rick was concerned about Horatio and really wanted to help him.

I hated that they didn't allow Stetler to follow up on what he found out about Horatio's past in New York. I think that would have been an incredibly interesting story for both of them and tremendous cross-over potential when NY was born.

But no. They elected to go the soap opera route and throw good story telling, and use of the really good actors on the show, down the toilet.

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Hi Delynn

I know you and I will never agree on my favorite ship but as far as Rick Stetler and Horatio goes AND the above mentioned storyline I completly agree. Stelter character had so much potientale and could without notice have brought some beliveable drama into episodes.
And as a fan of Horatio I did (not just hope) but assumed/took for granted that Horatios NY past was a great storyline.
The whole Stetler/ Horatio dynamics was interesting and could be off and on as writers pleased. Now they have to come up with ??????
Someone said in episode tread that they "cut" him because they didn´t know what else to do with the character. If that was true writers should be back in writer- class one on one. The character was not needed in Bomb episode but could have been on leave on vaction on .....He was only brought in to create some minor drama and then cut for good.IMO - only IMO. Which is gonna backfire .....now wirters have to come up with a new Stetler who can "push" our Horatio a bit and they might like with Tara find that the new character doesn´t work or the actor cann´t bring the same feeling to the show as Stetler.
OH----I have an idea---but you are not going to like it ( and neither do I)---They cut Stetler to bring in female character ...whom will make us all think ...will she get together with Horatio or not :scream::scream::scream:.

So, I know I haven't seen enough episodes of CSI Miami to speak in-depth about Horatio and Stetler's relationship. Aside from a few Stetler appearances where he mostly clashed with Ryan (and don't think I wasn't replaying those Ryan/Stetler scenes from last night, they were intense :lol, the one episode I'm remembering is the one where Stetler was trying to pin something on Horatio, and Calleigh was trying to clear his name. But it's interesting how disappointed I was with the way last night's episode played out. Not with Stetler himself, who was great, even as a disillusioned cop, but with the resolution of it all. I guess they're going to go with the same non-follow-up formula they did with Dan Cooper (never fully explaining why, after wanting so badly to be a CSI he suddenly went bad) and Tara Price.

But reading through this thread, I think what bothers me is a) Stetler's been on the show a lot longer than those two, and b) like someone said earlier, it's kind of important for these characters to have an "archenemy", I guess, who isn't evil and fights on the same side they do. Every one of the CSI shows has/had those characters -- Gil Grissom had Ecklie, Mac Taylor had Inspector Gerrard and Chief Sinclair. Interestingly enough, those last two characters have also vanished from CSI:NY, but while I miss them, their departure didn't leave me with the same bad taste that Stetler's did. Maybe because they were portrayed in (fairly) sympathetic ways, and it really bothered me that Stetler was written off as an irredeemable "bad guy". None of the other arch-nemeses on the CSI shows have been handled that way, and it soured an otherwise-cool episode. Even Ecklie's had his redeeming moments where he goes to bat for the CSI team, and he's probably the most effective arch-nemesis of all three shows; the others (from what I've seen) try to discredit or punish team-characters, but Ecklie's the only one whose ever kind-of succeeded.

Miami has been getting better this year, imo, but they copped out with Stetler. Even if the actor asked to leave the show, I think they could've been a little more creative with his exit, like giving him a more solid motive. IIRC, they didn't even explain why he decided Nevins or Eric Delko had to die. Eric said that if it hadn't been him investigating the lab, it would've been someone else; being the Assistant State Attorney, can we assume the same could be said for Rebecca Nevins? Was he planning to kill off the entire State Attorney office? It was just really sloppily done.

I think he wanted Eric and Rebecca killed cause they were getting too close to the truth. But I still wish it had been Saris instead of Stetler.

I asked this on another thread but it probably applies here, too: now that Rick is in the slammer, what happens with Ron Saris? I'm now hoping against hope that when Horatio does get around to taking him out, he'll hafta go to Rick for info.

Although I loved DLS and am sorry to see him go out like this, I was kind of glad he told H to "can the self-righteous crap". Sometimes I wish they would show H really struggling with the demands of his job. He makes it look too easy sometimes.

I agree about Saris; I know he`s already one of the truly-"evil" baddies, so maybe it wouldn`t have been as much of a shock-factor. But I think this was definitely one instance where the more predictable route would`ve been the smarter one to go with, to tell a story that made sense as opposed to one that was there just for shock-value.

The Nevins thing still bothers me, though :lol: I totally believe that Stetler may have been scared about how close Nevins and Eric were, but her death pretty much put the investigation on warp-speed -- which usually happens, according to the CSI shows, when someone in such a high position gets killed. Being with the department for 20 years, I`d`ve thought Stetler would know that. If he only needed a week to get away with it, it doesn`t add up that he thought killing the ASA would buy him that extra week.

If they were going to stick with the story line that someone stole diamonds from the evidence locker (with the help of a Patrol Officer), I think it would have been difficult to imply that a known enemy of the team like Saris could orchestrate something like that. With all the preening he did around the lab all those years, he would have stood out like a sore thumb. Maybe a better hybrid would have been Saris holding something over Stetler, forcing him to do his bidding.

The line about "only needing a few more weeks" (IMO) runs into the science vs. story dilemma that the show routinely runs into. If a DNA, or virus-comparison test, or whatever, actually had been run in "real-time" as opposed to "Horatio-time," Stetler might have had a week to finish whatever shenanigans he needed to frame Ryan. But of course in "Horatio-time," a DNA test takes about the same time as brushing your teeth .