Although CBS has pulled out the all stops on this season’s explosive 2-hour finale of “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” entitled “Grave Danger”, hiring Quentin Tarantino (“Pulp Fiction,” “Kill Bill”) to direct, they’ve also pulled out all the stops to keep the actual plot secret. But fear not, since “Behind The Scenes Dish” has a few hints for you about this Quentin-sential ticking clock from some ofCSI’s main players!
The story begins when someone on the CSI team gets kidnapped, and is buried underground in a glass box. In the episode, a main character (no spoiler here) is kidnapped by someone with an apparent grudge against the CSI’s. By the time he/she wakes up, they’re trapped in a coffin, together with a loaded handgun and a tape recorder with a message telling them it’s probably best to kill themselves, as they’re going to die anyway.
There's also a webcam in the coffin, which transmits an image back to the CSI lab, allowing his/her colleagues to see them slowly suffocate - but not providing any clues as to their whereabouts. In a race against the clock, the CSI teams combine under the leadership of Gil Grissom to find the dying victim, but they soon realize the kidnapper has no intention of letting his victim go, and has instead hatched an explosive plan to kill both Grissom and himself. What happens next? The two CSI teams we know and love come together to begin a race against time to try to save one of their own.
Without revealing any more about the storyline or what happens next, in order to keep it a surprise for viewers, the series’ cast members and producers, as well as Quentin Tarantino, who directed and developed the story for the season finale, have this to share about this not-to-be-missed season finale:
"It's a thriller that involves us [the team] in the crime that's committed against one of our own, and we have to rally against the clock to save a life. There's just too much good stuff in there to try and slam it into 44 minutes with commercials. --William Petersen (Gil Grissom) on the season finale storyline
"I think his [Tarantino's] filmmaking style lends itself really well to CSI's in that, obviously, there's an enormous amount of close-ups, and it's a very visual show." -- Marg Helgenberger (Catherine Willows) on Tarantino directing the season finale
"I think that watching him work and seeing the shots that he's calling and the shots that he's choosing and what he's doing, I know that what we can expect is something very Tarantino-esque, in the way that he's really attentive to detail and he makes you sit there and stay glued to your seat during his films, and that's exactly what's going to happen in our show." -- Gary Dourdan (Warrick Brown) on what viewers can expect from the season finale
"I think that over the years, if any fan has felt like they've gotten to know the characters, now they're really gonna get to know them even better… We're gonna take the next step in our relationship with our audience." -- George Eads (Nick Stokes) on what fans can expect from the season finale
"...I was really surprised at how emotional it was. I mean, you read it, and it's intense, and it's action oriented and it's exciting… There were a couple of times I just had to sort of like not cry, and I didn't ever imagine that I would get like that…" -- Jorja Fox (Sara Sidle) on the season finale script
"Quentin's put his kind of musical stamp on the episode by picking a really good, kind of poppy, old classic hit by “The Turtles”… That's the kind of thing you'd expect from him, a really good soundtrack, and something really catchy and that'll kind of haunt you, and this is definitely one of those songs." -- Eric Szmanda (Greg Sanders) on the season finale music
“Quentin has used his filmic vocabulary to authenticate the Vegas environment and keeps the show provocative with characters that are iconoclastic Vegas personas… grungy couriers, old west lawyers, showbiz legends… His deft balancing of tangential reality with the gravity of the main story, in real time, is the essence of his style. -- Paul Guilfoyle (Captain Jim Brass) on Tarantino’s style in the season finale
--"There's a time element to this episode, and if you watch the first 10 seconds, you're going to be with us 'til the end of it, because someone that you care about is in grave danger." -- Robert David Hall (Dr. Robbins) on the season finale suspense
--"They can expect the unexpected, they can expect great visuals. It's a thriller. Your heart will stop… Every time you think you're zigging, you're zagging in a Quentin Tarantino finale." -- Carol Mendelsohn (Executive Producer, Writer) on what viewers can expect from the season finale
--"One of our own is in trouble… I think the most important thing is you really get a chance to learn a little bit about all of our characters… It's the "Quentin-sential" ticking clock, if you will, and it really shows the family of our CSI team get together for one common cause." -- Anthony Zuiker (Creator, Executive Producer, Writer) on the CSI team coming together in the season finale
"This is a thriller, it's a flat out thriller. A CSI is grabbed up from a crime scene and our people have to pull him out, and it's tense, and it's taut and it really is a CSI action movie." -- Naren Shankar (Executive Producer, Writer) on how the season finale is like a movie.
Stay tuned after the May 12 episode of CSI -- “Iced” ---since additional information about “Grave Danger” will be revealed immediately during the preview for the following week.
This episode was written by Executive Producers Anthony E. Zuiker, Carol Mendelsohn and Naren Shankar, from a story by Tarantino. Legendary actors and Las Vegas staples Tony Curtis (“Some Like It Hot”) and Frank Gorshin (“Batman”) make cameo appearances.
