Well IMO They might be preparing for any future events. Emily going on maternaty leave. BUT why yet another male? We debated previously that males are easylier introduced, but if new MD might go male too. Then we might short term loose a female but have male instead. If females are difficult to introduce they should test female labrats untill Emily maternaty leave. But there is an angle we have not debated. How big a cast set-up is realistic? And would an all male cast work? Let´s Eva and Em got great gigs elsewhere.
Well as far as I know Emily still has to become mother. Don't get me wrong, but officially she's not expecting any baby so far so I think it's too early to talk about maternity leave as she can alway leave the show for completely different reasons.
As far as I know her contract is up at the end of the year 2009 (no matter wheathe she get pregnant or not) so she should be negotiating about the contract as we're speaking. As we know TPTB are not that great in terms of negotiations (Adam's case is pretty explanatory), so it's entirely possible she's gonna leave the show b/c of the negotiations and not b/c of her "maternity leave".
I do have the feeling she's gonna leave b/c as you said there's no need to add new characters on the show right when they're not able to develop their own characters, even if I'm all for new characters right now :lol:.
As I said, I do feel she's gonna leave the show b/c of the last addition on the show (I don't remember the guy's name & I don't care at the moment LOL) which, to me, sounds more of a regular character rather than a recurrent one. Not to mention that I really don't see him as cop like Frank or how it used to be with Jake or Yelina. To me he is a CSI who's gonna eventually replace someone in the lab and I do fear that this someone is Calleigh/Emily.
I don't know what her reasons are and I don't know why they're gonna eventually replace her with another guy, all I know is that he's more of a replacement rather than anything else