If great actors like Melina, Gary, Hill, Carmine, and Eddie can't bring the best out of Anna..there is no hope.
I think we've seen her best, hard as that notion is to take, and I don't think there's a better. She just don't fit, and no, no hope for her ever finding a way to make the character palatable or redeem her performances.
Well, they have yet to have interaction with each other this season, the first 4 episodes were shot before the break, which means = before they knew Anna was pregnant. It is a pretty solid evidence for why they should not have been together in this season, in the 1st place.
Yep, had noticed that there had been next to no DL interaction early on, which made me very happy and thought maybe a corner had been turned.
Also noticed that until Sex, Lies & Silicone we'd seen very little of Lindsay at all, and mostly in the labs. I had thought maybe that was a way for Anna to avoid shooting on location so much while pregnant, but if they were all done before that was a consideration, then maybe they were already pushing her even further to the background.
Yep, yep. If her scenes are already so short this early in the season, it's possible we'll be seeing even less of her later ...
Can only freakin hope so. No interest in seeing Lindsay as Babymomma.
You know, one thing that gets brought up all the time is that if Anna was so bad, why hasn't she been fired? That got me thinking...she was uneven in season two, but it wasn't until season three that her full sucktitude was totally felt. Season three...when she was pregnant. And no U.S. employer is going to fire a pregnant woman...they can't, legally. So then she comes back in season four...they're not going to fire her then--she just had the baby. Again, open to a lawsuit. Season five comes around...and she's pregnant again.
Not saying or even implying that they wanted to fire her. Just pointing out if they had, it would have been virtually impossible. So that's kind of interesting.
All they can likely do is let her contract ride out. A pregnancy does not mean she's unable to meet her obligations, and also means that any work deferred for Leave is just that and not necessarily deducted from the totality of work given within the contract. Meaning she'll be back. Aside from the qualifying issue of being pregnant, even if she weren't it would generally be messy with the collective bargaining agreement with SAG to do anything other. I'm assuming she's SAG/AFTRA/Equity, one or more. I'm assuming they'd have recourse thru grievances and all to make firing difficult, arbitration or a settlement expensive, and a the whole thing a nasty headache to contemplate, despite the less than favourable impact she's had on the show.
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A snippet from Variety in 2005 actually said:
"Anna Belknap ("Medical Investigation") will recur as investigator Lindsay Hamilton on "CSI: NY," with a deal to become a series regular. She joins Gary Sinise, Melina Kanakaredes and Eddie Cahill in the CBS crime drama, now in production on its second season." // Daily Variety, July 27, 2005, Justin Chang
From recurring to regular. Guess AJ Buckley and Robert Joy did similar. Have wondered about Hill Harper, seeing as he was the original ME, but bumped up, yet in the credits he's with Eddie at the end, apparently not starring but "With." Dunno really what that means. Both Hill and Cahill are behind Belknap in the credits. Talk about unjust. They renegotiated Sinise, but maybe none of the others have come up yet. His original contract was for six seasons I think. Makes sense they'd try to lock him down first, and let the others play out.
On the bright side, the fact that Anna's pregnant should mean a lot less Lindsay over most of the season. That's definitely a good thing. Her nonexistence in this episode pretty much underscores how nonessential she is to this show.
If they keep minimalizing Belknap's screen time I'll be happy. And if she's further reduced to only being present via being talked about by other characters with an accompanying flashback montage like in Cost of Living, I'm all for it.
She's definitely not needed on the show. That could have been any tech or team member who processed that stuff. Only says to me that they're abiding by a contract that mandates her inclusion in a specified number of episodes or studio week's worth of work. That they're managing to do so while minimalizing how they do it also speaks volumes to me about how the producers and TPTB really do feel about the whole situation, if her pregnancy isn't the sole consideration behind their actions.
The show didn't miss Lindsay at all for Anna's first maternity leave, certainly don't think she'll be missed this time around either. I can only guess the producers are counting the days. I am. Maybe a shooter-based weekly advent calendar would make things easier to take until she's done.
Exactly. The way things are going, the whole pregnancy storyline is going to smack viewers straight out of the blue. Imagine us, with spoilers months in advance, shocked at the news. Now imagine viewers who don't visit spoiler websites or online forums or read articles from TPTB trying to do damage control over this and only have what's shown on screen to follow the series. Can you guys imagine their shock?
Well, her performances certainly do smack viewers... It does make it look like a sudden resurging Lindsay presence and bombshell pregnancy could be all the worse for coming out of the blue, but at least I know when it's coming, and hopefully having it 'seen thru Danny's eyes' will mean she's not given much screen time to mangle.
