No Borders Allowed

September 2004 the CSI fandom was hit by a massive shock wave when George Eads and Jorja Fox where fired for a brief period of time over supposedly a money dispute. Fans crossed their fingers while they signed petitions and wrote letters and emails to the shows executives. I for instance received an email with all the addresses, email addresses, telephone and fax numbers of the show and the networks executives. I never asked for something like that, but that was how the fans reached the attention of the powers that be. Back then it helped, or at least we, the fans like to think so. Because just a couple of days later both where rehired. Of course we only hear parts of the story, we will never receive the full details on a situation like this, but fans translate what they hear in the media into their own ‘truth’.

Note: I wrote this from my own point of view, the information that I received from the media and the things that I have seen in the episodes. Now I am well aware that not everyone might be as up to date on tv shows as I am, so if you don’t want to be spoiled please don’t read any further.

This time things where more serious, or so they seemed. I am a huge CSI fan, have been for a while since the beginning to be precise. And Sara Sidle is my favorite character, also has been since she first appeared in that second episode. And I hate to see her leave and because things where not looking good at the end of Season 7 I decided to stay completely spoiler free. And even though it wasn’t easy I made it, at the Season 8 premiere I truly had no idea what was going to happen. When I finally watched the episode I was so relieved to see her survive that ordeal. But then the next day the news hit that she was still not out of the woods even though she survived the ‘miniature killer’ and the desert.

The fans immediately started campaigning for Sara Sidle to keep her on the show. Rumors went on about Jorja having another dispute about money with ‘the powers that be’ ( better known as the shows executives ). In some places she was portrayed as a drama queen, bitching about wanting more money. Other sources blamed the executives for not wanting her on the show anymore. So many stories but nothing was confirmed by any of the parties, but somehow no one seemed to think that it might have been Jorja Fox’s decision. No one considered it, until last week when she confirmed that it had been her own choice to leave the show after seven years.

In my opinion you watch a tv show not because of one person, even though that one person might have been the initial reason to start watching it, but because of the show. And loosing Jorja Fox on CSI will be difficult because she is after all my favorite character but at the same time I love the show and I will be watching it none the less. And probably love it just as much. I have heard of campaigns from fans named ‘No Jorja Fox = One less viewer’, I don’t want to be putting anyone down but does that mean that you only watched because of those couple of minutes that Jorja is on the screen each episode? And if so what where you doing those other 40 minutes of the show? You don’t watch twenty something episodes, 7 seasons long for one person, do you?

Besides that CSI is not the first show that looses a loved main character and it won’t be the last. And I have seen a lot of shows survive after a characters departure. And it doesn’t matter if they left because they wanted to, thrown out by ‘the powers that be’ because of problems or if they where asked to leave because their role had reached its final stage.

One example for me at least of someone leaving who wanted to leave was Lisa Chappel on ‘McLeods Daughters’ who portrayed Claire McLeod in the first three seasons. She wanted to leave because she wanted to pursue her dream of being a singer, which she did. The writers of the show decided to let her character die in a horrible car crash, a very dramatic scene which was filmed in a very realistic way. But it’s an Australian tv show and things are so different from American tv shows. I thought that the show could never be good without Claire but Simmone Jade MacKinnon as ‘Stevie Hall’ filled the void that was left by Claire perfectly.

Another departure of an actress which was devastating on my part and a lot of fans thought the same way was Erin Daniels leaving ‘The L Word’. This was even more devastating because neither the fans nor the actress wanted this. It had never been her choice to give up the role of ‘Dana Fairbanks’, the writers of the show decided that her role had ended and did that with breast cancer, it was a long winding story line. Ending in a truly horrible lonely death of a beloved character. And how could you not love Dana the funny ‘in-the-closet-but-yet-so-gay’ tennis player.

A main character leaving a tv show is never a good thing, there will always be a lot of fans that are devastated by the news. But I think that this time CSI fans handled it really well. They set up multiple actions through the internet to gain attention. And that is one thing they sure did, and I am sure that the show executives could appreciate the actions that the fans set up, as you can read in this comment given by Carol Mendelsohn.

Quote from TvGuide
It has been astounding. It’s incredible how creative our fans are. We got two cases of chocolate covered insects with the message “CSI without Sara bugs us.” We got a bouquet of red, pink and white balloons with Hershey kisses and the message was, “Don’t break our hearts, keep Jorja Fox on CSI.” We got two large cases of Lifesavers with the message, “You were Sara’s lifesaver, now be ours, keep Jorja Fox on CSI.” They’ve been sending money in from all over the world [as part of the] Dollars for Sense campaign. One woman named Kim West from Northern Ireland, she and her friends sent in 60 pound notes, and she wrote a four page letter. It’s just been overwhelming how many people love Jorja.

I think that we should honor the years we had with Sara Sidle on CSI and as we now know her character won’t be killed off and maybe we, the fans, can let her live on in our fanart and fanfics just like we did with Alex Cabot from Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.

One thing is certain a celebrity like Jorja Fox couldn’t ask for a more devoted fan base then the one she has. Fans from all over the world have been fighting to keep Sara Sidle on CSI, while Jorja was ready to say goodbye…

Sources:
Dollars for Sense Campaign
Save Sara/Jorja @ Livejournal.com
Save Sara Sidle
Your Tax Dollars at Work - Tv Show forum ( amongst others CSI )