I read last week that Laurence Fishburne has officially signed on for Season 9 of CSI as a replacement for the departing William Petersen. Yes, after years of speculation, sabbaticals, and waffling, it appears that Petersen is finally leaving for good.
According to a few different websites, Fishburne’s character will be a “college professor/criminologist” who first works with the CSI team as a consultant, and then joins the squad full-time. Apparently, he’ll focus more on the psychological motivations of criminals, making him something like a profiler, I guess. This should be a nice change from Petersen’s Grissom character, whose specialty was entomology!
Speaking of Grissom, I’ll be happy to see him packing the contents of his office into moving boxes and getting out of the way. The character used to be a good one in the earlier seasons, but has gone downhill considerably in the last few years. It’s definitely time for a change.
I wasn’t planning on watching CSI this season, but the addition of Fishburne might make me tune in every once in a while to see what’s going on. Unfortunately, I fear that the show has run its course and, like ER, is just hanging around far too long for its own good. I can’t believe it still draws 18 million viewers per week!