Well, that's 'cause you're the first one to mention someone else.
I think it's certainly possible to speculate about more than one character at a time. The discussion about Flack has been intense, but I think it's calming down a bit now and the thread shouldn't get too confusing with multiple discussions.
Re: Lindsay's 'dark secret':
I think it's worth posting the exact wording from the cbs.com character bio to start things off: "Excited and always willing to learn, Lindsay offers a fresh perspective in the lab, rarely hinting at the dark and devastating secret that originally motivated her to dedicate her life to being a CSI." (underlined by myself
)Part of me is loathe to delve too deeply into it because it might, like Danny's connections to Tanglewood, turn out to be a disappointment. After "Tanglewood" the discussion was so intense that, when they finally revealed that Louie was a Tanglewood Boy and that Danny had just tagged along one night and then gone home seemed like a definite letdown to some people. When you really hype something up for yourself, thinking that it's going to be awesome, sometimes you're just building yourself up for disappointment. Lindsay's 'dark secret' could be very intriguing, and maybe totally unexpected, but I worry that intense discussion could deaden the impact when the truth finally comes out. That's not to say it's not worth talking about, because it certainly is, I just hope that the writers don't disappoint when the time comes.
Since the 'dark secret' is what led Lindsay to become a CSI, I'm inclined to think that it relates in some way to the forensics field itself--perhaps someone she cared about was murdered, which is a popular theory. However, I wonder if it could be something else. A tragic past is 'dark' but why keep it secret when you're surrounded by people with their own tragic pasts? You might not want to discuss it, and that's totally acceptable, but I just don't see the need to be secretive. It's a fair bet that everyone knows that Mac's wife died (even if her manner of death had been different), but they don't regularly discuss it. It's dark, and definitely devastating, but it's not a secret.
Something that I find much more intriguing is the idea of someone she knew being the cause of pain and bloodshed rather than being a victim of it. Whether it's someone who abused another person over and over until it killed them, or perhaps it's just a cold-blooded killer that was too close to her for comfort. The fact that she seemed to relate to Sara Butler and even supplied the "tell Daddy I love him" makes me think it's probably not her parents. I get the feeling that perhaps her family didn't want her to leave where she's from, but leaving on bad terms is enough to make that a touchy subject without being 'dark and devastating.' If we're considering the theory that someone Lindsay knew did something horrible, then I'm inclined to doubt her parents because, to me, her attitude toward Sara and her family seemed like one of 'I can relate to parents not wanting their daughter to leave home.' I don't think she would have said the "Daddy" line the way she did if he'd been a killer or something, and although the mother wasn't present, she was mentioned and Lindsay didn't seem to react to that in a way that would stick out to me. (But this thread is all about speculating, so throw in whatever you think on that.
) Maybe she was in a relationship with someone who turned violent (although not necessarily against herself)--it would explain her restlessness in "All Access" because she could understand Stella having someone that she trusted do something so horrible. This sort of thing is pretty cliche, of course, but it's realistic because it does happen. If Lindsay was with someone (dating, married, whatever) and they turned out to be a serial killer or something, then it would certainly be something she'd want to keep secret. Maybe she'd want to dedicate her life to stopping criminals because she feels, on some level, that she failed to stop the person she cared about from murdering/etc. another person. Maybe she'd had a gut instinct that there was something wrong, but no concrete evidence that anything was going on--that could certainly make her want to find a career where she was trained to be able to discover even the most miniscule evidence that could tell the truth. This could also explain why she was so determined to follow her gut instinct in "Cool Hunter"--she knew that her instinct had been right in the past, and she couldn't risk dismissing that same instinct now when it might guide her to the truth (which she's better able to prove now that she's been trained to find the evidence she needs to prove her instinct correct). She did a lot of work to research the 'haunted' building, and she's too dedicated of a CSI to waste time if she didn't think it was absolutely necessary to consider the possibility. Her gut instinct may have been telling her that the 'haunted' building was no coincidence, and if she also had a gut feeling about the Doctor, she might not have been willing to dismiss the possible connection until she'd exhausted the evidence to prove or disprove her theory. Now, this is not to say that I think she's superstitious or anything, just that the gut-instinct portion of that case could have been relevant to her 'secret.'
Now, it's well-known that many people feel that Lindsay's character is horribly developed, and I'm sure that, to some, it might feel impossible for the writers to have given so much thought to her past. But for the sake of speculation, I choose to believe that they at least know the character's background and what lead her to NY in the first place. They chose for Lindsay to be from a specific place, and I'm curious about why they picked Bozeman, Montana. Is there something specific to that town or that state that caused them to choose it over the countless other possibilities?
Well, what does everyone else think? (And I'm still watching for Flack discussion as well.
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