For my birthday last year, Z got me a Zune.  I have to say it's one of the best gifts I've ever gotten (of the non-child variety).  I'm a very eclectic music lover, my interests range from classical to punk to indian ragas... Zune manages to keep up with me.  It doesn't have everything, but it has about 3/4 of what I look for, even if it is an early 90s East Indian inspired new age musician LOL.  Whenever I open the program, (as he also got us a subscription to the Zune marketplace) I end up downloading at least 10 albums... then I sync them up to my 16 gig Zune and off I go. 

For a long time now, I've felt like the writers really don't know "who" they're writing.  So much of the last 2 seasons has been so "out of character" for whom the previous 6 seasons had established them to be in respect to each other.  Some of this can be attributed to old writers moving on and new writers not being familiar with established canon and some can be attributed to a seeming lack of a story continuity editor... but a lot of it comes down to the fact that Hollywood Writers frequently rehash the same crap over and over, from one series to the next, from one movie to the next.  They will import and use the same plot devices rather than think of new ones. A lot of these guys and gals are so far away from what real people do that they just emulate what the writers on other shows do... I know of what I speak... I've worked with writers in Hollywood for 13 of the last 14 years.  People that spend much of their time writing alone or schmoozing for new jobs at lunch and Hollywood functions dont' have the most knowledgable perspective on people that work in law enforcement.  That's not to say that all in law enforcement are honorable... but even with a 65-70% divorce rate... some of them do make it... and some of those make it happily.

At some point instead of Sara Sidle, she became "typical law enforcement woman in a relationship Model A" and Grissom became "typical law enforcement guy in a relationship model B". The writers just wrote responses typical to any dramatic series having "romantic issues" that really didn't jive with the psychology of the characters. 

Sara Sidle is the child of abuse; hard working, driven, tenacious, loyal, vulnerable  and tenderhearted.  She was in love with Gil Grissom for 7 years, sometimes silently, sometimes heartbrokenly, but always wanting to be near him. She loved him and loves him; but,  beginning at the  responses they had coming out of her mouth in "Burn Out", I've been uneasy.  She had withstood rudness, insensitivity, rejection and those little rays of hope...  by this point she knew this man and knew what his moods were like.  She knew when to give him a wide berth and knew when to let her guard down and let him off the hook.    To have her losing patience, when he wasn't even doing anything he hadn't done before, was odd.  To have her LEAVE this man, just because she wanted to quit her job... was an abomination to everything they'd established her to be.

Gil Grissom was the product of a happy home, a loving set of parents that were only separated by death.  He's meticulous, considerate, kind, chivalrous, loving, slow to anger,  and at times, a bit clueless.  He's not the type of man that would not have his life partner fully apprised of his plans, he's also not the type of man to stay the night at a female friends place without letting his partner know, and he's not the type of man who'd just "give up" on a relationship with "the only woman I've ever loved" after "9 years".  People who's parents demonstrated a loving, close relationship tend to emulate those relationships in their own lives.

The most annoying part to me is they didnt' have to make this mess.  This show ISN'T A SOAP OPERA... we're not watching "Guiding Light" here, we're watching "Crime Scene Investigation".  We've got characters on this show that have disappeared into the woodwork for YEARS only to reappear suddenly with the implication they were always there (Vartan, Sophia, half the lab rats, Catherine's Mother Lily, Lindsey, Tina)... there was NO REASON to go down this path with Grissom and Sara.  They could have just as easily have her give him a big kiss and tell him "I'll be at home, honey".   We'd never have to see her again and occasionally we could hear him whine about the low cholesterol lunch she'd packed him.  The argument that "it adds to the drama or makes his leaving more plausable" doesn't wash, because 1) This isn't a Soap Opera or a Drama, it's a CRIME SHOW and we're not watching it overall to see their relationship  2) You can burn out on the job whether or not your partner has left you. 
This was just... what they always do... Doug and Carol from ER... a few other folks from ER from after I stopped watching it.  An assortment of characters from CSI Miami, CSI New York, NCIS, Greys Anatomy, Without A Trace, Ugly Betty and countless other shows currently running or on in the past... it's unimaginative, and it painted us into this stupid corner, that of course, they couldn't get out of without drinking all the Koolaid.

How original would it have been that from Burn Out, when he was snappy, she was understanding and a shoulder for him to lean on.  If he was open, caring and supportive when she was troubled.  If she was thankful, vulnerable and loving when she was needing to lean on him... If they apologized sincerely when they were mistaken...in short, if they were in a healthy relationship.  We don't get that on TV, and the argument is that people don't want to watch that... but that's exactly my point... this is a Crime show, we're not tuning in to watch the relationship, we're tuning in to watch them solve a crime and maybe get a glimpse of their lives once in a while... why couldn't it have been a glimpse of something that was working. 

To go off on a tangent for a second, we've got an almost 50% divorce rate in this country... some of that exists because people have never seen what a healthy relationship looks like.  They know the fantasy and they know the disaster, but they dont' know the day to day of "hey, we're in this together".

All that said, I remain distantly hopeful that they will have him ride off into the sunset with Sara... but I would have liked to be spared all the crap in the middle.