I have suspected for some time now that the writers know that Lindsay’s character has not meshed with the team and has not won over the show’s fans and they have desperately tried to resolve these problems throughout the season with little or no success.
We began the season with the overbearing, over eager, hyper-competitive, sycophantic, snatching, can’t take a joke, whining Lindsay. This Lindsay didn’t work, I know I know hold back your looks of shock and dismay, apparently, this sent the writers scrambling to right the wrongs they committed on a weekly basis with this character. They scoured the boards wondering where they had gone wrong. Was it when she whined about processing evidence back at the lab while the blood of dead teenagers coated every surface in sight? Was it when she snatched from Hammerback and cut off his explanation without apology or concern? Was it when she raced an unaware Danny in completing tests that could nail a criminal? An act that I’m sure the grieving family would be delighted to know occurred. I would certainly be fine with criminalists racing through tests that might give me the answers that I need for closure. I mean who cares about accuracy when there is speed to consider, not to mention, it apparently makes a great backwoods mating ritual the goal of which is to discover just what the office hottie is packing in his just for the ladies jeans. Maybe, it was when she took great liberties with her boss by smearing some rank goop under his nose in a moment reminiscent of a child balancing on one foot on a rusted balance beam with nails sticking through the surface going look at me ma look at me I’m an attention starved freak who will do anything to get people to love me. Just like the mother that continues to stare off in the distance waiting for some romance novel brooding man to take her away from it all so too does the audience await Danny’s resurfacing from his catatonia to say what we can’t – go the hell away Lindsay and please stop talking.
Alas, that did not happen, what happened was the writers ushered in the age of the kinder, quirkier, cuter, softer, teasing, smitten, schoolgirl Lindsay, with a little stalker on the side, kudos for the writers foreshadowing the full blown obsessive and unstable Lindsay. Sadly, this era brought with it the beginning of the ill fated and hopefully Titanic like ship known as obsessed Lindsay and bored Danny as portrayed by a miscast Anna and uninterested Carmine. Pimping Carmine for the sake of female viewers is one thing, hell pimp all the men you have my full support and cooperation, but doing it to manipulate your audience into liking another character is tacky, cheap, and if not beneath you, which it obviously is not, is certainly beneath me. I don’t buy the chemistry and I don’t believe TPTB buy it either if they did it would be as classy and subtle as, debatably, Warrick and Catherine or even Grissom and Sara, you don’t have to sell what pops off the screen, you don’t have to include obviously manufactured conversation to prove that there is a connection if it is genuine. Because, if it were genuine their every exchange would hold something just beneath the surface, it would have an undeniable edge, their very attraction would attract the viewer. Danny and Lindsay repel. The audience is smart enough to read subtext, but with Danny and Lindsay it can’t because the actors have zero chemistry and without the overt signs added by the writers everyone would miss it, it’s not cute it is vile.
However, we had the momentary cuteness known as the bow and arrow scene that Lindsay lovers, likers, and detractors can all agree was adorable in it’s innocence until the snatchy Lindsay reared her ugly head and stuck her hand out to demanded more arrows from the boss. The boss that she knows better than Danny because she spent her lonely NY nights shopping for green maternity prom dress circa Molly Ringwald and following Mac to prove a point to Danny in another obscure mating ritual. If only we’d been privy to Lindsay’s tactics and techniques on dating and flirting sooner, the number of times we could have scored would have been unfathomable, luckily even without her helpful guidance some of us no doubt managed to date and dare I say get laid over the years. However, I digress, let us return to the era I’ve personally dubbed heinous yet harmless Lindsay because I have few recollections of her being on the show during these episodes. Frankly, that’s the way I like it if I can’t have back in Montana Lindsay, but the memories I do have are like a sinus headache on crack, save the 10 seconds of childlike adorableness and isn’t that all can ask from the over 60,000 seconds of NY this season. Anthony, Tim, and other writers that bit about isn’t that all we can ask was sarcasm, I thought I would point it out because lately the art of writing has escaped you all as a collective.
Surprisingly that era didn’t last, you can only pretend like someone isn’t on a show for so long and that holds true for me as well as the writers who took the opportunity to kick Lindsay into high gear thinking they were safe since few were calling for her deportation or imprisonment, maybe to kick her a few times but that is basically harmless. Theoretically speaking I think we could have collected the accumulated spent carbon dioxide laden air that nationwide was expelled in sighs of grief, pain, frustration and exhaustion during the shrill (Super Men), shrieking(pick one), emotionally unstable (All Access), insensitive (Heroes), obsessive (Cool Hunter, Heroes and Stealing Home), stalkerish (Live or Let Die, RSRD and Heroes), humourless (Necrophilia Americana), necrophiliac (Stealing Home) Lindsay era, that concluded the season, and used it as an agent of biological warfare.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that Lindsay lost any hope of me liking her by the fifth or sixth episode of the season, but if she hadn’t the last eight episodes of the season would have been a death march. I mean my death march not hers because I found her so intolerable that I just wanted someone to hit me really hard in the side of the head to end it all because if this isn’t DefCon 1 and a sign of the apocalypse I don’t know what is. I almost suffocated during this era because I would hold my breath watching and waiting for the unfortunate and painful Danny/Lindsay moment that we all knew was coming because what is an episode without it. By the way, an episode without it is tolerable, watchable, I won’t get carried away and say enjoyable because we all know the writing and show’s direction was trash this season. Again, a big thank you to Les Moonves for the savvy changes he suggested no demanded for the good of the series, which experienced little overall growth from its season premiere. However, again I digress from my true purpose, which is why Lindsay must go.
I find comfort in the knowledge that the writers constant tinkering is a sign that they too realize what the problem is and have sought tirelessly to correct it all season now here comes the condemnation perhaps they were so focused on fixing this problem that the show became neglected an afterthought in the wake if the Lindsay issue. A problem that I believe is unfixable so long as Lindsay remains because no matter what the writers come up with we still have Anna Belknap in a role she cannot fill or sell, sometimes it is better to admit an error and correct it no matter how unpleasant the solution rather than letting it fester and stink. If this is the case then the writing problem is one that is easily corrected, if you don’t have to worry about constantly morphing Lindsay so the audience embraces her character, and let me just say that after an entire season minds are pretty much made up, then when can focus on the episodes at large, character development for the neglected, storylines that intrigue and engage, plots with small holes rather than gaping ones, true chemistry between the actors, and than and only then can you resuscitate what I fear is a dying show, possibly not commercially but critically and in some small way I would hope that in the end what Anthony Zuiker wants is respect over dollar bills.
Ali
I agree with what JDonne says about Lindsay not really being a light, sunny character, even though at the outset I think that was the intention. Part of that is the writing and part of that is Anna--some people are naturally lovable (think Calleigh on Miami, who is both lovable and tough) and others just aren't. It kind of baffles me when people find Lindsay cute, because aside from the lone bow shooting incident in "Stuck on You" I've not seen a single cute thing about her character. That's not an insult either--Aiden wasn't "cute" but for different reasons--she was tough and capable. Lindsay is like the teacher's pet, and those types are never "cute." :lol: