All year long, the “CSI” criminologists get all the glory — not to mention best punchlines — but, once a year, the lab technicians are allowed out to come out and play. The writers devote an entire episode to their side of the forensics business.
The tradition started in 2007. Affectionately called the “lab rat” episodes, they focus on the folks normally analyzing evidence behind the scenes and make for the funniest, most off-the-wall hour of each season, so it’s no surprise that many fans regard them as a high point.
This Thursday, the lab rats are showcased in an episode titled “Field Mice,” in which two of the unsung technicians, brown-nosing trace evidence guy David Hodges (Wallace Langham) and DNA expert Wendy Simms (Liz Vassey), mentor a bunch of high school Crime Cadets because all the big shots are too busy.
Along the way, the techies and the kids manage to solve a crime that’s been eluding the regular CSIs.
When it came to writing the fourth lab rat episode, “CSI” executives knew that there was only one way to go: they asked Langham and Vassey to take a stab at writing the episode and the duo jumped at the opportunity.
Some of the ideas they came up with included a “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid”-like tale told in flashbacks, exploring the dumbest crimes committed in history, and putting Wendy and Hodges in a locked room while a crime is being committed in front of them.
“We even toyed with doing a musical number because Liz wants more than anything to sing on the show,” Langham says. “That might still be in the pipeline but not this year. It would only work if [‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ creator] Joss Whedon could direct it.”
In the end, Langham and Vassey moved the techies out of their comfy but sterile environment and sent them into the field. The idea was inspired by Vassey’s real-life experience while on a ride-along in Las Vegas with one of the series’ technical advisors.
“I had the fortune, or misfortune depending on how you look at it, of being part of a real-life crime,” Vassey says. “The fingerprint that I helped find — well, ‘Forrest Gump’-ed my way into because the guy was showing me how to collect a fingerprint and we found one — ended up helping to break a case about this whole big illegal [thing] happening in convenience stores.”
The normal “CSI” brain trust recreated Vassey’s experience in an episode that aired earlier this season, but she and Langham decided it was worth revisiting.
Told this time from the lab tech perspective, there’s more insight into the on-and-off relationship between Wendy and Hodges, practical jokes aplenty and alternate reality versions of Capt. Jim Brass (Paul Guilfoyle), as a lousy drunk, and Dr. Ray Langston (Laurence Fishburne) as an obsequious trace analyst.
“Lab rats episodes, for us, are a blast,” Langham says. “They become like an animated show where you can do anything you want to do. It’s a departure from what we do day-to-day.
“They’re definitely more fun because you’re not dealing with some tragic murder that you have to have a heavy emotional connection to,” says Langham.
Long-term “CSI” fans will chuckle at scenarios that echo memorable scenes that have appeared during the series’ 10-year run.
“Those little moments and the [Crime Cadet] characters are an homage to [co-stars] William Petersen, Marg Helgenberger and Gary Dourdan,” Langham says. “This episode was meant to be a love letter to the fans.”
* CSI
Thursday, 9 p.m., CBS