I'm still not enjoying Hodges being out of the lab; the whole calling in sick thing felt contrived to me, and I can't enjoy him working outside when he said he much preferred the lab.
In general, I agree with you - I like Hodges as the "nice clean lab" prefering guy. However, in this case, I think his fascination for the dinosaurs outweighed his dislike of field work (it wasn't particularly dirty anyway), so he "snuck out" to see the show.
I don't think he's particularly agoraphobic; he just doesn't like getting dirty. Scenes like the trash-diving in Bloodsport seem far more out of character to me than this episode did.
Seriously, what are the day shift doing? The CSI's seem to spend just as much, if not more, time working in the morning than they do night!
From what I understand (partly from comments in Early Rollout), the shift that's on when the case is called in works the whole case, even if it means working a double shift. So if the grave shift ends at say, 8am, and they get a call at 7am, they end up working through the whole day. Both deaths in this episode were at night, so it's likely the calls came in not long after dawn (same with the attack in Sqweegel; it happened at night).
For the most part I prefer a two case episode, with a duo working each case. I find it even more important now, since there are less lab techs for the CSIs to banter with about the details. Not only does it give the cast more equal screen time, but it allows opportunity for the give and take of information AND those memorable one-liners that we all talk about the next day. :lol:
Also, anything that gets my two favorite guys together for the majority of the episode is all good with me!
I agree! Four CSIs = 2 per case = perfect episode.
I like mixing up the pairings too, so everyone gets to work with everyone else (much as I love Nick and Greg together, I also love them both with others too).
Solo cases are okay, but I prefer having the conversations between the people working the case. Also, it's weird having Hodges acting almost like a CSI sometimes - this ep (somewhat justified, in that he's actually playing hooky), and Lover's Lanes last season. Too many CSIs on one case though, and someone always gets left in the background - there's usually only two at the initial callout, so the third just gets a couple of lab scenes or something. The occasional "big" case that everyone works is fine, but I prefer the variety of multiple cases. It also helps show just how busy the crime lab really is - they get more than one case per night/week (of course, that also ties into not every case being a murder).
