The Nick Stokes Timeline: Part 2

^^^ That's how I saw it, ariela. I think Nick has a nice new dark-side wired into his brain now whether he wanted it or not.

 

Wow, the "assuming the worst" theory makes perfect sense. How did I never think of it that way before? That explains so much. Thanks, guys!

 

So, does anybody else have any Pirates comments, or can we cruise on into "Up In Smoke"?

 

I am up for some "Up in Smoke" talk because it is still fresh in my mind. WOW, we are all caught up for next week. I think what stuck in my mind from this ep is that Nick was so short and irritated with everyone(or is it just me?). He was the only one that worked alone, yet again,and just seemed off in a way. The only one that seemed not to grate his nerves is David the coroner, because he is naturally so sweet and gentle.I loved the bit with Greg and the gym card too,Greg also seems to be good for Nick and I think I might have even detected a smile on Nick's face during Greg's kick-boxing story.I also noticed that Nick is starting to not hold his own professionally. He had to be told by Greg how to use the machine to enhance the photo, and he just seemed distracted and unable to focus on what he was doing. Again, this could just be my silly interpretation. I would have loved to see how Nick would have reacted to seeing Caroline buried inside that wall,but continuity? from TPTB? We can't have any of that! Nick and Grissom, well a nice arctic front is passing between those too, isn't it? Nick didn't even look up when he came into the room and he seemed to be physically cringing when Griss was around him. Those two are beyond oil and water these days. All I have to say is that if--and when--Nick finally loses it, I hope Grissom isn't within 100 miles of the lab...... :lol: I guess that's it folks. It seems like GE is brewing something nice for us Nicky wise, and I hope the writers just let him fly with this character and really give us some true Nicky angst and real GD closure before the season is up.

 

There was a great deal of Nick in Up in Smoke - at least for the first half...

I know that some people had problems with how Nick was protrayed, but I didn't. The whole thing with SuperDave being able to tell the body was a man, I saw it more as Nick not realizing that SuperDave had messured the pelvis or maybe that he was even able to do so. I got the feeling there that Nick didn't look to closely at the body... other then a glance to confirm that it was human. I think the case was a bit to close to home for him, so he wasn't looking to close at the body.

As for the scene later with Greg, I saw more as Greg knowing about the gym...not that Greg knew more about the machine. How is Nick to know that gym uses black ink for it's signature. Greg, who belongs to the gym would know.

However, all that said, even if Nick's problems are starting to effect his work...this could be a good thing in terms of the story. As I have said, Grissom is not going to deal with Nick until his job performance suffers...just as he did with Sara last season.


There were other good scenes with Nick in this episode. I particularly liked his encounter with Grissom and "Larry from the Gas and Go." The way Nick dealt with Grissom there was telling of a growing problem. Again, he wasn't rude, but he was to blunt and to the point. It is very different then his encounter with Grissom pre DLG. And Grissom almost seems resigned to it.

As for Nick not being there when Catherine and Sara uncovered Caroline... I wonder what the outcry would have been againist Catherine (and TPTB) if they did have Nick there. The crys of "How dare they? What is wrong with them sending Nick in there?" One of the reasons Nick wasn't there was because of what happened to him. I can't see Catherine or Grissom subjecting him to it. They have been protecting him form those sorts of memories for the entire season.

 

Just curious, ab, what makes you say that exactly?

 

Baba, the scene from "Still Life" comes to mind, when Sara, Greg and Warrick are undigging the backyard looking for a little boys body beyond a suspect's house. After the episode aired, someone pointed out that Nick wasn't there because it might've been painful for him to search for a buried body..

 

Oh, it's not that he's been in any compromising positions, but I've never seen or heard anyone saying or acting like Nick needed protection, other than Grissom with the tape. In fact, I don't think Catherine would really have any ruling over where Nick works one way or another.

 

I haven't seen any obvious mention that Nick shouldn't be on the team when they're recovering a buried/entombed body. It's just seemed more like coincidence that aside from Gum Drops (which he led on) he hasn't been on a body retrieval. In this case it seemed logical that since Sara was with Catherine when they determined the chimney measurement didn't match up, then it was Sara who took Catherine back to the house to check it out.

I am intrigued because maybe Nick going to retrieve the burnt body in this episode unnerved him to the point he wasn't working at the top of his game like in the last few episodes.

Wasn't it interesting that it was Nick who basically slipped up with identifying the burned corpse as the owner of the gym card? Nick said it BELONGED to the body it was on. Nick has been uber professional of late but in Up in Smoke he was sloppy and assumed the one card found on the burnt corpse identified the body.

And just like in early seasons, Grissom caught the mistake when the Sibley son was on the gas station tape. Grissom immediately questioned if Nick was sure he got the right tape and Nick went on the defensive.

In the end, the mistake didn't hurt the case. In fact, it helped them snare Sibley who believed that his son was dead.
But Nick's screw up did give Grissom the upper hand for the first time since DLG.

 

I agree. There's actually been quite a few instances like this, where the circumstances are somewhat similar to "GD" and Nick's no where to be seen. For example I seem to remember there's one scene with Warrick and Doc opening a coffin early on in the season; Nick's not there even though he was working with them. But I can't for the life of me remember the episode. Maybe I made that up..?

The "Still Life" scene is a perfect example though. Whether or not Grissom and Catherine are meant to be the masterminds behind the decision, it just seems like tptb have been avoiding to put Nick in those kinds of situations all season, so it wouldn't really make sense to suddenly have him digging out people from inside walls.

Although I do wonder about the scene in "Werewolves", where Nick and Catherine dug up a red ant hill and there was no reaction from either one whatsoever.

And, if we're supposed to infer that Grissom intentionally kept Nick away from those scenes, I wonder how Nick would've reacted to that. I don't think he'd take it too well. His ability to work has been the one rock in his life since the kidnapping, and to have someone - particularly Grissom - question it...that's just an angst-fest waiting to happen. I wonder if this is where tptb are going.

 

Ah... right. I forgot we've been forced to dwell in a little land called "Assumption" thanks to the lack of follow-through by the writers. If they don't write it, we WILL by god!

I can live with that.

 

That was what I was thinking of when I said that Grissom and Catherine were "protecting" Nick. I could be wrong - or projecting onto to the show, but I like to think that there is some planning going into this. That Grissom and Catherine have an unspoken agreement about not letting Nick work crime scenes that could effect Nick's job preformance. And right now, Nick does not seem to fighting it to much - something that may alarm Grissom and Catherine more then anything else.

You see, I don't see it as Nick screwing up. They pretty much all made the same assupmtion - that the card belonged to the person that was in the chimney. Nick was the one who porcessed the card and enhanced the image in hopes they could discover the identity of the body. Because they didn't really have anything else.

That said, I knew something was up - mearly because they never said the body had been confirmed through other means (DNA testing or comparing dental records) but there was no reason for the CSIs to know that. (they don't watch enough of those TVs shows to pick up on a story point like that)
:devil:

But you are

 

OK, I'm going to wander back to "Up in Smoke" since I just re-watched it.

Besides the corny line "Call homicide and CSI" at the start, it was nice to see an episode start with Sara and Nick for a change. Seems like it's usually Grissom and Catherine who are first to the scene. I also liked that Sara was doing all the "manly" stuff, like entering the scene first and breaking open the fireplace with that drill. Very cool. Throughout this intro scene, even if Nick was feeling uncomfortable around the fireplace "tomb", he wasn't showing it.

Next up, I liked his eye for detail- he caught when David called the corpse "he" and gave him the "how do you know that for sure?" look. Next though, did anybody else wonder about the look on his face near the end of his dealings with David outside the chimney? After David said the body was lighter and therefore easier to carry up on the roof and then stuff down the chimney, Nick had an odd expression on his face. I was going to chalk it up to a look meaning, "Yeah, I hadn't considered that" until he had an even odder expression when he said "Get 'im to the morgue". It totally looked like something strange was going on behind those lovely brown eyes for a minute...?
What was he thinking about? Being carried somewhere himself, maybe?

Like the centre of a tootsie pop, the world may never know.

Then, back in the morgue, we see the old Nick again: "Crispy on the outside, tender on the inside?" He's distancing himself from the atrocities of his job with dark humour, and that's something they all do. And it's completely understandable. In some ways, I think that may be his saving grace if he ever does lose it a little... I think he'll be able to find his way back to somewhat normal as long as he can hold onto that humour, and all the other compensatory mechanisms they all have.
Anyway, basically during the morgue scene, it's business as usual for Nick.

We see a little more of this when he's examining the gym pass and Greg makes an appearance. I was cracking up after Greg's little fitness diatribe and Nick gives him the funny look and says, "Yeah, OK thanks... anyway..." Too Funny! :lol: I didn't realize how much I missed the big brother/little brother relationship between these two until then. It seems like we don't get to see too much of that these days, since Greg became a CSI. Anyway, I don't think that, outside of from a professional standpoint, Nick will ever be able to take Greg seriously. I think their lives outside the lab couldn't be more different. And that always makes for some classic banter. :lol:

OK, I don't really get why people say Nick was the one at fault for assuming the gym pass belonged to the crispy corpse. They were all aware of his findings, and they all jumped to the wrong conclusion. And I noted that when Grissom was letting Catherine know about the error, he said: "We were wrong... We assumed..." Anyway, whatever. They all screwed the pooch on that one in my opinion.

More humour in the next morgue scene, this time with Doc Robbins: "Let me guess... He burned to death." I also like how the Doc played his little quiz game with Nick, saving the "ah, but then there's this" type comment for the end. You can see the amused "he got me again" look on Nick's face when the doc shows him the blood in the skull. Nice continuity on the characters there.

That gas station attendant twitching his arm beside Nick was hilarious too. The look on Nick's face was pretty funny. :lol:

I thought it was interesting that Nick wasn't the one to go back with Sara to find the second body, especially since they quickly realized she'd been buried alive. I don't feel this was due to any sort of protectiveness on Catherine or Sara's part however, particularly since they didn't find that out until they found her.

And in the end, the error with the ID served it's purpose- Catherine got to use it to her advantage when she basically got the guilty father to implicate his son because he still thought he was dead, and then she got the satisfaction of seeing him squirm when he found out he was still alive. A small measure of justice for the victim and her poor father. Now, was there any significance to them using Nick as their fall guy to work that whole ID thing into the plot? It's hard to say. I'd say that other than that brief weird moment near the chimney with David and the burnt body, Nick was pretty much on his game this episode. And again, Grissom didn't seem to be placing blame, since clearly they all made the same wrong assumption... I don't know. I'd like to say there was something more going on there- maybe even that Grissom is less likely to be harder on Nick these days, but somehow I doubt that was the case. I think they just needed someone to handle that particular plot device and Nick ended up being "it".

Anyway, it was a pretty good Nick episode. I really think we're getting some quality Nick time (and good George Eads acting work. ) this season. On the whole, I've been pleased with the season for Nick, even with the missed opportunities we Nick fans have clearly noted. However, we're a selfish lot! This is not CSI:Nick Stokes after all!

 

It's not? Well, darn it, it should be!

Nice commentary, Baba. Good job!

Being caught up on the Nick Time Line is kind of a bummer during these periods with no new episodes. There's no new stuff to discuss or analyze.

 

I don't get why people think Nick was the one who made the error with the ID. Nick was assigned the task of PROCESSING the card. It was at the time, the only thing they had to use to to give them any hope of IDing the victim. He brought out the picture on the ID. In that, he did his job. Everyone made the same assumption that it ID belonged to the body.