TVSquad

As Jane wrote a couple of weeks ago, CBS was hot on the heels of landing a big name star to fill the void when William Petersen leaves CSI later this year. The names bandied about included Kurt Russell and John Malkovich, and one other major motion picture star, Laurence Fishburne. Today, the network announced Laurence Fishburne will indeed be the new addition to CSI.

His character is a forensic scientist, like Grissom, but don't expect him to have Gil's fascination with insects. No, Fishburne's man has other bugs: he's a former pathologist and college lecturer who's focused on why people commit acts of violence. It should be interesting to see how his preoccupation with the why integrates with the other CSI gang who are all Grissom-trained and generally obsessed with how a crime is done and who done it.

Fishburne will be introduced in the ninth episode when his character meets members of the CSI team during a murder investigation and ends up joining them.

Every time he thinks he's out, they pull him back in again! No, just kidding. It's not like that. This isn't Michael in Godfather 3. Nobody's forcing anyone.

However, it is true that William Petersen is returning to CBS's CSI for the ninth season. This is great news for fans of the show -- and the star -- because for years now he's been yelping about leaving the hit series to do other things. Last year, for example, he was written off the show for a brief hiatus in which Liev Schreiber was cast as a temporary replacement for Gil Grissom in the Las Vegas crime lab.

A lot can said about the addition of Liev Schreiber to the cast of CSI. A lot of good things if you ask me. For a while now, I've been very anti CSI. It's just been so ho-hum and to be frank, boring. Michael Keppler's four week stint in the Vegas crime lab has reignited my interest in the show though.

It's funny how it took the addition and subsequent homicide of a brand new character for me to realize that but I'm being completely honest when I say that the past few weeks were some of the best stuff CSI has had in a while. Now here's what I mean when I refer to Keppler's impact because there was one other obvious thing missing from those four episodes and it didn't bother me all that much.

Save for maybe around fifteen minutes total, there was no Grissom.

CBS finally got around to doing something about that lingering question, "who is Keppler?" Up until a few days ago, the promotional website meant to inform viewers about the CSI cast change has been pretty bare, save for a cool picture.

The site is now fully running and even has some video clips giving viewers clues about what to expect. There are three clips posted right now and I would expect a couple more before Liev Schreiber makes his entrance in next week's first sans Grissom CSI, "Sweet Jane."

For those looking to be spoiled, read on and I'll tell you what I gathered from the three clips. Looks like Keppler might actually be worth looking forward to.

(S07E11) This was an incredibly frustrating episode. As much as I love this show, episodes like this are why I don't review it weekly like I do CSI: Miami. At least with Caruso and the Miami crew, I know what I'm getting week in and week out: a cheesy, campy, and thoroughly enjoyable over the top soap opera. With CSI, it's far too often a crap shoot. And that's lousy because I expect this show to be good. Where did CBS get off telling viewers that this would be "an hour of television we'd never forget?"

For the past week, CBS has been running a sad preview for tonight's episode of CSI, the last one for star William Petersen (for a while anwyay). Liev Schreiber joins the cast soon.

Hey, I'll admit I don't watch this show (even though it's the MOST IMPORTANT SHOW IN THE UNIVERSE). So I ask fans: is this departure as big as they're making it out to be. Yes, yes, I know he's the star of the show and he's the leader of the team and all that. But the commercials make it sound, with the "you never thought he'd leave" voiceover and the tinkling piano and the emotion, you'd think that Lucy Ricardo was just hit by a bus or maybe Petersen had died in real life and this was his last show.

Why is Petersen leaving temporarily anyway? To star in a play? Burnt out? Contract negotiations? The episode preview should get into that: "People come and go...but you never thought he'd leave...but due to other commitments and just a feeling that he had to get away for a while, our star has to leave and will be replaced by another actor...tonight, on a very special CSI."

To drum up some buzz for William Petersen's temporary departure from CSI, CBS now has a website up and running. You can check it out at that link but it's essentially just that picture that I've posted above. The only difference is that the site has some eerie music playing along. For those that haven't heard, Petersen's character Gil Grissom is taking a four week sabbatical on the show and to fill the hole, Liev Schreiber is joining the CSI team as new investigator Michael Keppler. He'd be the white silhouette up there. Very cool nod to Abbey Road with the group shot too. Take a look at their feet. Notice who's playing Paul and crossing barefoot? Wasn't Paul "supposed" to be dead though? Perhaps some foreshadowing of Grissom's future by season's end?