Sara Sidle - Character Development

Character Development

Perhaps because of her traumatic childhood, Sidle has demonstrated compassion and empathy for victims of domestic violence, and fury against their abusers. She also has a soft spot for animals, and became a vegetarian after she saw Grissom conduct an experiment on a dead pig. She has also shown a tendency to become very aggressive when under pressure or annoyed, especially in cases involving abused women - such as her arguments with Catherine and Ecklie, and engaging in a heated argument with a man suspected of murdering his wife.

In the early years of the show, Sidle is depicted as a loner. Her hobbies are all work-related (listening to her police scanner and reading forensic journals); and she claims to prefer working with corpses over live people. In a mid-second season episode, she realizes how much she is missing out on and decides to "get a life" outside of work. During season three she dates a paramedic named Hank Pettigrew, but this relationship ends later in the season when she discovered that he had a longtime girlfriend. Later in the third season, she is injured in an explosion in the lab and, realizing she could have been killed, she decides to ask Grissom out, though he turns her down.

During the fourth and fifth seasons, Sidle seems to be on a downward spiral as her memories of childhood resurface, with cases becoming more difficult for her emotionally. Also, the fact that Grissom decided to promote Nick Stokes instead of Sidle, did not help. Season Four concludes with Sidle being stopped by a traffic cop. Although she is driving under the influence, she is not charged, but Grissom, as her supervisor, is informed of her arrest. He arrives at the station to bring her home, and finally seems to notice her emotional state. Later, in season five, she loses her temper with a domestic abuse suspect and then argues with supervisors Catherine Willows and Conrad Ecklie, which results in her suspension. Following this incident, she admits to Grissom that she has a problem with authority, has chosen emotionally unavailable men (like Grissom), and has a self-destructive streak. Sidle then opens up to him and reveals her family story; it is during this season that she apparently starts bonding with Grissom. During the subsequent seasons (sixth and seventh), after it is revealed that they are in a relationship, she appears to be happier and on a more even keel.

In CSI's eighth season, when Fox decided to leave the show, both she and the writers decided not to kill the character, so as to leave the door open for a possible comeback. Consequently, Sara Sidle is submerged into depression after she is abducted in the season seven finale (she is rescued in the first episode of the new season), and, even though she accepts Grissom's marriage proposal on the season's fourth episode, she shows signs of burnout during the subsequent episodes, breaking down on the season's seventh episode, leaving Las Vegas with only a goodbye letter for Grissom in which she tells him she loves him - also kissing him out of the blue in front of another colleague - and a good luck note for Ronnie Lake (played by Jessica Lucas) . In the letter she states that ever since her father's death she has been living with "ghosts" and that she now needs to go away and deal with them before self-destructing.

In the season eight episode "You Kill Me", Grissom indicates he has talked with Sidle and that she is in San Francisco visiting her mother.

Promos for the season nine premiere announced that actress Jorja Fox would return as Sara, and showed her in three clips. However, Sidle left again after the second episode. She appeared again in the final scene of the tenth episode of season nine when she appears to be working on a research team in Costa Rica, where Grissom joins her after leaving CSI. Then they are married

During the tenth season, Sara is brought back by Under-Sheriff Ecklie to aid the lab, which has undergone staffing cuts as a result of Warrick's death and the resignation of his replacement, Riley Adams. Adams was revealed to have resigned as a result of Catherine's poor management and lack of teamwork; when Catherine reveals this to Sara, Sara reminds Catherine that Grissom had her (Catherine) as a number two, prompting the promotion of Nick Stokes to Assistant Supervisor.