McGill: George Is Such A Key Player

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation ended its finale with Nick Stokes questioning his future as a CSI at the same time three of his co-workers were left in serious states of physical peril. And while Nick’s future as a CSI was left hanging in the balance in the world of TV, his real life persona George Eads had recently signed a new one-year deal with CBS TV Studios, a deal that had made its way online prior to the airing of “Homecoming.” Shane Saunders caught up with executive producer and co-showrunner Don McGill to discuss whether the announcement made any impact on the storyline going into Season Thirteen. Check out his statement (containing minor spoilers) after the jump!

I didn’t feel it had any impact, only because George is such a key player and key family member in this that I don’t think any of us ever doubted he–and really the rest of the cast–would sign up for next year. It was really about the idea of a storyline, that was purely creative in its decision; it had nothing to do with any sort of teasing the idea that maybe George wasn’t coming back. When Chris [Barbour], Carol [Mendelsohn] and I were thinking about the finale, we were just trying to run with the most interesting places to leave all of the characters. First we thought the McKeen [Conor O’Farrell] storyline took us back into the whole Warrick [Gary Dourdan] legacy. In terms of the emotional impact on George’s character, we thought where we would leave him is in more existential jeopardy, where as our other characters are in physical jeopardy; we thought it would be really cool if we left Nick in a place where he has come into a crisis of confidence in the job and was contemplating quitting. We thought it would be an interesting stoyline to pick up in the premiere of this season because with Russell’s [Ted Danson] granddaughter in jeopardy, Finlay [Elisabeth Shue] in jeopardy, Ecklie [Marc Vann] shot and in true mortal jeopardy, and McKeen out there sort of as a boogeyman, we thought how cool would it be if Nick was out there somewhere having walked away not knowing all of this had gone down. It would be sort of intriguing to find him, reel him back, have him come into one last case, and there would be an exploration of how Nick felt as a CSI. Creatively, it felt like the right decision to make and we never really thought we were teasing the audience into thinking that George wasn’t coming back.

For more on McGill’s thoughts about the upcoming season of CSI, check back with CSI Files this August.

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Shane Saunders

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