They may have orginially thought to introduce Sofia/Sophia slowly at first, Test the waters with the first ep for both the audience an the actress...
When she decided to return they decided to give her a new job on the show, which basically gives them a slightly clean slate in which to do what they need to do to get fans to know her. JMO.
Destiny, I agree with that. I suspect they had no idea just how quickly LL would be showing, as S5 moved on, and since they weren't sure if she would return, they didn't integrate her into any further storylines. Now that she's back, in a new role, they played her up in the 1st 2 eppys to "reintroduce" her to the audience, and to let folks get to know her all over again. I honestly don't think we'll see Sofia taking up too much screen time, as someone mentioned, I think she's more of a replacement for Det. Vega, and he appeared once every 3 shows or so, once he was fully established as a character. Even with her actions being the focal point for the upcoming 2-parter, I don't see her taking main stage. The CSIs will be doing that by investigating, she'll be more in the background. I have faith the writers will find a way to get everyone some good screen time and hopefully good storylines. George is spending time in France, so somewhere down the line we'll see less of him while he does other things in real life. Same with Gary, I read he has a secondary project coming up in Dec., so we'll see less of him, then. Greg is an extremely popular character with the audience, so I think they'll find some great stuff for him, especially when the new lab tech finally arrives, we should see some good interaction between them ongoing throughout the season. Sara, another popular character with some upcoming storylines as hinted at by Jorja in the vid on CBS, so I'm sure we'll see some great things from her, too. Cath always gets good storylines, no need to worry about her screentime, and Billy has proven time & time again that he is more than willing to give up some of his own screen time so his colleagues are allowed to shine a little more, bless him. The other secondary characters, Brass, Hodges, Doc, they pretty much have to appear in every eppy, at least a little bit. It's a long season, and right now they're utilizing characters as they're more available, or to foreshadow things to come down the line in future eppys. But I think we'll see them all, this season. Hopefully our cries last year about Nick/Warrick etc. getting shortchanged didn't fall on deaf ears, and the writers get the screen time thingy sorted out, this season. What can I say, sometimes I'm an optimist...
