Danny's Recovery -- Too Soon??

[Top41]

So there's been lots of discussion about this over various episode threads, and I thought I would focus it here in a thread so we could really go in depth. Do you feel that Danny's recovery has been rushed? Was it too much of a rush to go from a 10% chance of walking to him walking with a cane in the space of four episodes? Or are you glad you were spared weeks upon weeks of Danny angst? What are your thoughts on Danny's recovery?

 

[Messers fan]

I think it's too soon but from what I saw of the first episode Carmine didn't really get a lot of screen time, HHarper is on the field and Danny stuck in the lab. they can't run all the season like this and I'm sure Carmine was not ready to spent a year in a wheelchairs searching for prints in the lab. They had the time jump but it should have been better done and maybe run this arc for at least half of the season.

 

[PerfectAnomaly]

It's way, way, way, effing WAY too soon for him to be up and around.

Really, the way I feel about this story line should make me grade every episode as an "F." There's absolutely no point to this story line as it is unless it was a way to make Lindsay and Anna Belknap more tolerable. But they could have done that in a less drastic way that didn't waste Carmine Giovinazzo's talent. Plus, "more tolerable" doesn't equal "good" or "I've changed my mind completely about the character after four episodes," so even if that was their intention for the story line they still failed.

To go from having a 10% chance of ever walking again to walking with a cane in the span of five episodes is ridiculous. It may not have been ridiculous if the story line was the main focus of the show so that we could really get a feel for Danny's struggles and victories; but with the too brief glimpses we got as a side story it just feels like it was a waste of screen time. It also didn't help anything that they completely effed up the timeline by making the Danny story line jump months ahead and Haylen's story line jump only a couple of weeks ahead in the same amount of episodes. There wasn't enough shown for me as a viewer to get invested and not enough to really make me believe Carmine's performances even though I thought he's knocked them all out of the park.

I just really don't know what TPTB was trying to achieve, but whatever it was they failed big time. I mean fail of epic perportions. I would expect much better from a franchise that has Doc Robbins and had Dr. Giles as characters.

 

[Faylinn]

I would have loved if Dr Giles hadn't fallen into the BHC early in season one so we could have seen him kick Danny's arse (figuratively speaking ) a bit during this storyline. Now that would have been character interaction I'd pay to see. (Messer Family Time, not so much - I'm sure plenty of people have loved that aspect of the storyline, but count me as part of the group that doesn't really care. I didn't start watching NY for family time, and it's not why I tune in now, ya know?)

Overall, I think the storyline was rushed way too much. I know they had to move things along more quickly and in a more superficial way because of the nature of personal storylines on a crime drama - but that doesn't mean it couldn't have been done better than it was. All of that major development condensed down to, what, less than a dozen scenes? It sucks. We're not even a quarter of the way into the season and he's gone from a 10% chance of walking to standing during interrogations. That's a biiiig jump, and I feel like I've been cheated out of what should have been a much more impressive storyline.

It's always possible that the storyline will continue, but the bulk of it seems to be over and done with. Even if we see him getting 'back to normal' for a while longer, what we've seen so far has definitely been rushed. *le sigh*

 

[Elsie]

Or are you glad you were spared weeks upon weeks of Danny angst? What are your thoughts on Danny's recovery?

I'm always glad to be spared weeks of Danny angst. But this is a little ridiculous. One minute he has a 10% chance of walking, and next thing he's being told he should be trying harder and then he walks! Yay for Super!Dan. I guess the alternative is Danny moping around the lab for half a season (not that it would bother me that much if that was all he did), which probably wouldn't be great for the show either.

Even if this quick recovery is disappointing, I'm not exactly surprised either.

 

[JellyBelly]

For me, it's less about his recovery being too soon and so much more about the storyline not making much sense. I shan't rehash the inconsistencies as they're already been pointed out, but the fact he was only given minimal chances of walking and he's managed to do it without much of a struggle is silly. This and timeline wonkiness aside, 10 months is a reasonable amount of time for someone to recover from an injury but yet again we've been told more than we've been shown.

Now if the timeline had made sense and if they'd stuck with Danny having been given a 60% chance of recovery then I'd be able to buy it and I wouldn't think it too soon (of course they'd had to convince me that months had passed during the course of a handful of episodes).

I also don't want to think of this storyline as being over. It doesn't surpirse me that they wanted him out of the chair asap because it's restrictive, not just for Danny but also for the writer's on this type of show. But, there's still plenty of opportunity to see him struggling to deal with his continued recovery. He'd adapted to the chair, now the cane and eventually to standing on his own two feet unaided and possibly to returning to the level of fitness and activity he once had. That still gives a fair amount of leverage in terms of Danny angst. I'll not hold my breath though.

 

[Flack-Angell]

A big waste, if you ask me. I loved the storyline at first, but then, when he ALL OF A SUDDEN COULD WALK?! That does sooo not work! It's unrealistic too...

 

[racefh853629]

Never let it be said that Dr. Sheldon Hawkes doesn't have magical healing powers.

I'm with the rest of you. It's way too soon for Danny to be up and around. We have his story line (which, we're supposed to believe was many months long), but not only is Haylen's story line a few weeks, but Flack's downward spiral has only seemed to be a few weeks. Especially when you take into account that it took until episode 3 for anyone to notice/say anything about it.

It'd definitely be more realistic if everyone else seemed to be with him. But it feels like there's Magical Messer Time (where months fly by), and Real People Time (where everyone else has only been doing things for a few weeks).

If he went from the chair to walking on his own and bouncing Lucy around in the span of one episode, I'm willing to bet that by the next new episode, he won't even have the cane anymore. And the episode after that, he'll be back to running after perps.

 

[CSI Cupcake]

I’m going to set aside the timeline issue because it makes my head hurt trying to figure out what they expect us to believe. If, and it’s a big if, what we have seen is all we are going to get then I would be happy if he had a miraculous recovery and the storyline wrapped up in the next episode.

I like Danny the married guy with a kid. I think his scenes with the family are sweet and give the show an added dimension it has not had. But I also like Danny the cop/CSI that has passion and fire and loves his job and can’t wait to hit the streets to go ask questions and run down bad guys and I miss that part of Danny. I would like to think that his passion for his job would motivate him to recover as much as his love for his family but they have not chosen to show that at all. I’m not disabled, never have been, and don’t know what it feels like to go through something like that. So I rely on what I see onscreen to tell me what it’s like to experience that trauma. It’s almost like they have it backwards…his family would accept him whether he walks or not but all his efforts are centered on walking for them, whereas his job requires him to be mobile and active and physically able yet he has seemed quite willing and comfortable wheeling around the lab.

I feel like they have rushed the story too much. Perhaps we will see more fallout as he gets out in the field again and has issues but I’m not holding my breath. So yeah, I’m sort of done with Danny in a wheelchair. Move on.

 

[Maya316]

Everything has already been said about this :lol: (timeline, no struggle, unrealistic with the 10%-chance-no-sorry-we-meant-four-episodes, etc.) And yeah, I know it probably was necessary to do it like this, because it's a procedural drama; we're only supposed to get quick glimpses of the main characters' personal lives. My biggest issue is that I think Danny is the character who would have struggled the most with being incapacitated -- on both ends of the spectrum, both with the giving up and being furious, and with the wanting to walk so badly he pushes himself till it hurts. And they haven't really shown us any of it, so it feels like a huge cheat. I feel like we've just been given snapshots of what Danny was like at 'x' stage of his incapacitation, put together on a scrapbook page under the heading "Sept.23, 2009 - Oct. 23, 3009"; like it's something that's already in the past that we should feel horribly about. The scenes were great when I watched them, but put together all at once (especially when in a single episode:scream, they're way too brief to make me honestly connect with his story as a genuine problem or struggle. And I don't think it would personally bother me if it were any other character in the wheelchair, but with Danny it really does because I think the new limitations he should have had would've been a big problem for him. And he's the one who would've needed support from everyone the most, another thing which irritates the hell out of me since we didn't get to see much of anyone else dealing with Danny.

 

[Robin]

Everything with the Danny-being-shot-and-put-in-a-wheelchair-and-is-able-to-walk-a-month-later has gone way too fast.

 

[Wolverine_Eagle]

i agree with everyone who says it has gone by too fast. it is very unrealistic for this to happen, unless there was a huge time jump... even then, who knows. i just wish they made it more believable... oh well.

 

[nattybatty55]

I think they should have spent more time on it. Its not even as if the cases that the team have been working on have been that 'amazing' they could have easily have been in the background; while one episode at least focused on Danny and how it was affecting him. Even how he acted around all the characters and not just lindsay.

However I do love the way that the first 'standing' scene was dealt with, even if anna had to cry..although i think shes been working on it! Because the main thing they tried to tell us is that his daughter should be his motivation, so that bit worked well.

I which they'd taken more time for it though ... Carmine would have been fantastic!

 

[MakeTracksCowboy]

when the season started hadn't been a few months after the shooting? so Danny would have already been recovery for a few months before the start of the season and say maybe like 2 months since the season started.

now i know maybe like 5-6 months isn't a real amount of time to fully recover but this is a tv show. the show needed some hurt character drama as well as a character dying to keep the non-religious watching veiwers coming back.

i don't really have an opinion on the whole thing b/c it's a tv show and real time doesn't exist and once the real drama of a serious sitiuation has worn off most viewers wanna see the main hurt character get better really fast. it's boring seeing Danny in a chair but at the same time i would have liked to see him recover a little more and not have someone up his ass about it.....

..... and we all know how HORRIBLE this show is with continuity and time.

Lindsay trying to push Danny was a little too much for me and annoying to an extent. Hawkes talking to him was better, i feel the whole team should have been talking to him (much like they should be trying to talk to Flack but that's a totally different subject). i was expecting Danny to still be in his chair after Hawkes's talk not walking around in with a cane.

you guys know what probably has Danny fully recovered already is the crossover with all the CSIs. i have a feeling if the crossover wasn't happening Danny would still be recovering and in his chair a bit more.

this to me was another way in which the writers dug themselves a hole and took a crappy, cheesy way out of it.

 

[Kreguba]

Danny being in a wheelchair feels like the Adam/Stella snippet we received in Epilogue. It's obvious that TPTB have given a lot of thought to Flack's 'downward spiral' and have so far done it rather well IMHO.

Danny's recovery however, almost seems like a marketing ploy. As if TPTB sat down and said "Okay, someone should be hurt in the shooting. Who and how?" and Danny was picked because he's one of the most popular characters and could be seen as the one with the most to lose (as he has a wife and kid). It was too rushed, not well done, and definitely not fully thought out.

CSI Cupcake made a good point that it was Lindsay who was pushing him to walk again, while he and the rest of the lab seemed to have no problem with him being in the chair (aside from the Magical Sheldon Hawkes and his wonderous words of healing :lol He didn't get better for himself, but for Lindsay and Lucy. Yes it shows his selflessness, but really if I was disabled as he was, I think ultimately I would be trying to walk for me.