The ‘New York’ Premiere Will Answer Burning Questions

The season seven premiere of CSI: New York won’t waste any time getting down to business. (Spoilers after the jump!)

In last season’s finale, “Vacation Getaway”, New York ended with a cliffhanger that involved Danny Messer (Carmine Giovinazzo) walking into his daughter Lucy’s room to find serial killer Shane Casey (Edward Furlong) holding the little girl hostage. The sound of a gunshot could be heard as the credits prepared to roll. Giovinazzo promised that New York would reveal what happened “swiftly” when the show returns on Friday, September 24 in its new 9:00pm ET/PT timeslot.

The premiere will then skip ahead five months, giving the series a chance to answer several other major questions. As CSI Files previously reported, Melina Kanakaredes (Stella Bonasera) is leaving New York, and Sela Ward will be taking her place. Kanakaredes won’t be returning for the premiere, so the series will have to make a quick transition. It will be revealed that Stella left to run her own crime lab in New Orleans, and Sela’s character Jo Danville will be shown on her first day with the team.

Danville is a former FBI agent, and she has relocated to the Big Apple from Washington, DC. Hill Harper (Dr Sheldon Hawkes) said there won’t be any fanfare surrounding Danville’s arrival. “Just as she shows up, instantaneously there’s a crime,” Harper told Fancast. “There’s no opportunity for a real ‘How do you do?'” Harper added that the very first crime scene during the show’s seventh season is “a genius choice.”

The CSI: NY cast is still dealing with the loss of Kanakaredes, but they’re glad to have Ward on the team. “Clearly, we’ve been used to one kind of thing for six years, so it will take more than a couple of days to get used to a new character and … have the character find her way,” explained leading man Gary Sinise (Mac Taylor). “We’ll all miss Melina, but Melina made a choice to move on, and we were lucky enough to have Sela come in.” He added that Ward is “a wonderful actress with a great personality”.

Harper feels the addition of a new team member will give New York “a jolt of energy.” He continued, “Seven years in, it gets comfortable, easy to write scenes because you know the characters so well. So this will challenge the writers a bit. I’m excited about it.”

Source: Fancast. Thanks to perlnoir from TalkCSI for the link.