Sara Sidle

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Sara Sidle
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation character
Image:94095d00215ba.jpg
Gender	Female <tr><th align="left">Hair color</th><td>Brown</td></tr><tr><th align="left">Birthdate</th><td>September 16, 1971</td></tr>
City	Las Vegas
Job	CSI <tr><th align="left">Rank</th><td>CSI Level 3</td></tr><tr><th align="left">Position</th><td>Nightshift CSI</td></tr>
Current status	Alive <tr><th align="left" valign="top">Known relatives</th><td>Mother, Father (deceased), Brother(?)</td></tr>
Portrayed by	Jorja Fox
First appearance	Cool Change

Sara Sidle (born September 16, 1971) is a fictional character featured in the television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. She is depicted by actress Jorja Fox.

1 Early life
2 Education
3 Professional
4 Personal Life and Personality
5 Miscellaneous

[edit] Early life

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Sara was born in Tamales Bay, an hour and a half outside of San Francisco. Her parents were ex-hippies who ran a bed and breakfast, where she preferred to associate with the adults over the children. Her intellect, energy and curiosity were much greater than that of a typical child. She was a perfectionist. It seemed that the roles of parent and child were reversed. They told her to relax and take it easy, and she in turn responded by creating business models for their bed and breakfast so they could take it public and franchise it.

In Season five it is revealed that Sara’s mother (Laura Sidle) murdered her father in 1984, and Sara was subsequently taken into foster care. In that same season, she told a young girl in a foster home that she was in the system "for a while" and is familiar with the feelings of helplessness foster children feel. She remembers being the child whose father was murdered. She cannot remember the name of the social worker who took her away from the murder scene, but remembers being unable to let go of her hand.

[edit] Education

In high school, Sara preferred to befriend teachers over students and she often ate alone in the library. Her physics teacher inspired her interest in science. She graduated as valedictorian at age sixteen, having aced her exams.

She was accepted among the early admissions of Harvard University with a large scholarship. She found it to be a freeing experience because she felt she was finally among her equals. She graduated at the top of her class with a Bachelor of Science in Theoretical Physics from Harvard.

Sara decided to pursue an advanced degree from University of California, Berkeley. She graduated with Master's degree. While in graduate school, she started a Work-study position at the San Francisco Coroner’s office. She chose to stay on and worked her way up to a CSI Level 2. In order to keep up with new developments, she audited lectures and seminars with local universities. This is what led her to meet Gil Grissom.

[edit] Professional

Gil Grissom met Sara at one of his entomology lectures, where she asked him for advice and he took interest in her curious nature. He suggested they keep in touch. He later called her in from San Francisco to help with the Holly Gribbs case—an on-duty homicide of a rookie CSI. After the case was solved, the newly appointed supervisor Grissom invited Sara to stay on as a permanent member of the Las Vegas, Nevada night shift. He trusted her, and because she was new to the team, he had her investigate allegations against Warrick Brown.

Sara is currently a CSI Level III at the LVPD Criminalistics Bureau. Her forensics specialty is materials and element analysis.

Sara loves her work, and is as obsessed if not more so than Grissom when it comes to the case. She is passionate about her cases and often lets her emotions get ahead of her, especially in cases that involve violence against women. This can be both a benefit and a difficulty when working a case. Her passion moves her to go beyond the call of duty (she spent hours searching through missing persons reports to identify a Jane Doe) but can also make her lose focus on what her job truly is. She has a problem with authority, and was almost fired in Season 5 when she argued with Catherine Willows and Conrad Ecklie.

In early seasons, her work appeared to be her life, and she had no outside interests or hobbies. On one performance evaluation, Grissom gave her an outstanding rating, but said she needed to improve her ability to prioritize.

[edit] Personal Life and Personality

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Sara is unmarried. In the third season she had a boyfriend, Hank Peddigrew, who was an emergency medical technician. He was involved in several of her cases. Later in the season, Sara broke up with Hank after finding out that he was dating someone else. Lab techs Dave Phillips and Greg Sanders had crushes on her, but she has viewed them as friends.

Throughout the series, she and Gil Grissom have appeared to be romantically attracted to one another. In the sixth season finale, it is revealed that they are in a relationship, which stirred up great debate among fans. The final scene of the episode showed Grissom reclining on a bed, talking about how he would prefer to die. He says he would rather die of cancer so he would have time to say goodbye to his loved ones. Sara comes out of the bathroom in a bathrobe, and says, "I'm not ready to say goodbye." In a May 25, 2006 interview with the Chicago Tribune, the show's executive producer Carol Mendelsohn indicated that the relationship between Grissom and Sara is "not so new" and they have been a couple for some time.

In seventh season episodes, it appears that Grissom and Sara continue to be involved, but have been trying to keep their relationship secret from their co-workers at the lab. However, in the seventh season premiere episode ("Built to Kill Part One") co-worker Warrick Brown paid some note when Grissom delivered a veggie burger to Sara, who was working late on a case, but neglected to bring him dinner as well. In the second episode of the seventh season ("Built to Kill Part Two"), Conrad Ecklie commented that "of course" Sara would agree with Grissom instead of him, which made Sara and Grissom worry for a moment that he might have caught on to the relationship. They are also still learning about one another. In "Double-Cross," a seventh season episode, Sara discusses religious beliefs with Grissom while they investigate a murder in a Roman Catholic church. She is agnostic, while Grissom is a lapsed Catholic who still believes in God. When she asks if she has offended him with her opinions, Grissom replies "No, dear."

In the early years of the show, Sara appeared to be a loner. Her hobbies were all work related (listening to her police scanner and reading forensic journals). She preferred to work with corpses over live people and was not sure what to do with children (as was evident in her interactions with Brenda Collins, a child who survived a family massacre).

Sara's forthright attitude often rubbed people the wrong way. She butted heads with Catherine Willows when they first met and they had to work together on the Holly Gribbs case. Their differences still cause occasional friction, but they've became good friends.

Perhaps because of her traumatic childhood, Sara has demonstrated compassion and empathy for victims of domestic violence and fury against their abusers. When a rapist was on the loose, selecting victims much like herself, she offered herself as bait. Her temper flared up when she felt justice was not being served to those women. She also has a soft spot for animals. After seeing Grissom conduct an experiment using a pig, she became vegetarian, and she put in additional time on a case involving a slaughtered Gorilla.

She has changed over time. She decides to pursue outside interests after identifying too closely with a victim who ordered from catalogues and ate take-out (“You've Got Male”) which resulted in her having a relationship with Hank. However, when Hank betrayed her (“Crash and Burn”) and she found out he had another girlfriend (who was injured in one of her cases) she refused to give him a second chance. A close call in a lab explosion motivated her to ask Grissom out when she realized that she could have been killed.

In more recent seasons, Sara seemed to be on a downward spiral as her memories of her childhood surfaced. Cases became more difficult for her emotionally and at the end of the fourth season she was caught driving under the influence of alcohol and Grissom was called in. While not charged, she was humiliated in front of her supervisor. In a fifth season episode she lost her temper with a suspect, and then with Catherine and Ecklie. When there was talk of her being dismissed, Grissom stepped in and went to Sara to find the real reasons for her behaviour. She admitted she had a problem with authority, chose men who are emotionally unavailable and had a self destructive streak. His further probing revealed her traumatic past.

More specifically, in the season 5 episode “Nesting Dolls” Sara revealed to Grissom that her mother killed her father. It seems that Sara's father was abusive and her mother finally snapped. Sara grew up believing that violent behavior and subsequent trips to the emergency room to have injuries treated was normal. She didn't find out otherwise until she was taken into foster care. She worried that she might have inherited a tendency to violent behavior and asked Grissom if he thinks there is a "murder gene." Grissom told her he doesn't think violent behavior is inherited. After her father's murder, Sara became 'the girl whose father was stabbed to death'

In a later fifth season episode, "Committed," Sara told Grissom that her mother was admitted to a mental hospital for evaluation after she killed Sara's father. Sara was taken to visit her there and is now disturbed by the atmosphere in the mental hospital. She told Grissom that "crazy people make me feel crazy."

She appeared to have resolved some of her difficulties in sixth and seventh season episodes and has resolved to move past them.

[edit] Miscellaneous

Has a small tattoo on the top of her foot (where the shin meets the foot).
She's trained in weaponless defense.
Was a former smoker but used Nicorette to quit ("Cool Change").
Although she quit smoking, she still carries a cigarette lighter. ("Face Lift")
Sara would rather be at work than just about anywhere else. In her free time she listens to the police scanner, reads forensic journals and orders out.
Has diastema.
She likes dead body cases, especially those with just bones ("what a rush"), and loves working with Grissom's Red Creeper fingerprint powder.
She wants to be cremated, not buried. ("Friends and Lovers")
Hates bees. ("Sex, Lies and Larvae")
She can deal with nearly everything involved with being a CSI without flinching, but spit makes her nauseous.
"In high school, I was a science nerd."
She liked beef jerky, but then after Grissom's post-mortem maggot experiment with a pig, became vegetarian. ("Face Lift")
She is open to theories such as Spontaneous Human Combustion. ("Face Lift")
Occasionally likes to sing while she works. ("Too Tough to Die")
She is a member of the Mile High Club, meaning she had sex in an airplane at an altitude of over one mile. It was on Delta flight #1109, Boston to Miami, in March of '93 with Ken Fuller (hazel eyes, organic chem lab major) and she told Grissom that the experience was overrated... in every aspect. "Unfriendly Skies"
Unlike the passenger of that Las Vegas Air flight, she could never take another life. ("Unfriendly Skies")
Drives a Toyota Prius
Sara once worked three weeks straight without a day off. ("Table Stakes")
Puts sugar in her coffee. ("Too Tough to Die")
Likes Chilean Sea Bass. ("Table Stakes")
Generally she wears slacks and tops, but is a little more casual than Catherine.
Vomited at first autopsy. ("Down the Drain"")
In the CBS character profiles, it is said that Sara is an only child yet in an episode of CSI Sara says to Gil Grissom that she once found a bag of weed under her "brother's" bed and ratted him out to their parents, even though CBS also state that her parents are "ex-hippies". This can be explained by her time in the foster care system.
Used to waitress at Chuck E. Cheese ("Kiss-Kiss, Bye-Bye")
Thinks "geeks should be revered." ("Compulsion")
Is an agnostic who has more faith in science than in a higher power. (Double-Cross)
Occasionally believes that God was invented so people would have someone to blame for their mistakes ("Double Cross")

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Episodes \| Characters \| Official website
Characters	Gil Grissom \| Catherine Willows \| Nick Stokes \| Warrick Brown Sara Sidle \| Jim Brass \| Greg Sanders \| Al Robbins Sofia Curtis \| Conrad Ecklie
Former Characters	Holly Gribbs \| Paul Millander \| Lady Heather
Creator(s)	Anthony E. Zuiker
Computer Games	CSI: Crime Scene Investigation \| CSI: Dark Motives CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder
Related Series	CSI: New York \| CSI: Miami