I found myself wondering which scenes were originally Nick's lol. It was a good episode though. I do wish they'd mentioned where Nick was. I mean, we have a written in reason for Sara's absence (she's obviously off visiting Grissom somewhere lol), but we really needed a reason for Nick's absence. It's weird for him to not be there and us not being given a reason. I mean, yeah we know why George wasn't there, but I think the writers should have wrote some reason for Nick not being there... even if its something simple like he's off testifying in a case or something.
According to Elisabeth Devine:
CSI Files: How many drafts did your script go through due to the cast changes in this episode?
Devine: That was, I guess, the hardest part. I was told initially that Jorja [Fox, Sara Sidle] would not be in the episode, that Ted [Danson, DB Russell] and Marg [Helgenberger, Catherine Willows] would be light; so I thought ‘well, okay, that’s fine.’ We have such a great cast we can always focus on someone else. But at the very last minute George Eads [Nick Stokes] had a family emergency, so the night before we started shooting we did have to rewrite the whole show. That was kind of stressful. [Laughs.] And because there was personal geneology information from a character’s standpoint, I had to do a lot of research at the last minute to get the Norwegian backstory as opposed to what I had for Nick. There wasn’t just dialogue changes for the characters, it was some major geneology stuff that I had to find at the very last minute, but that’s kind of the fun part. I was sad to not have George, but things happens and we’re a family here and supported whatever had to be done on his end. We knew Eric Szmanda [Greg Sanders] would step up to the plate, which he did fabulously.
CSI Files: So your first draft had Nick working with all of the geneology information?
Devine: Yes.
I remember them explaining Nick's absense in Butterflied and Grissom's in Gumdrops but other than that I don't think they've ever told us where someone was when they've not been in the episode.
Susan