Petersen begins passing torch to Fishburne on ‘CSI’

We're on the verge of witnessing history.

In just a little over a month, the world will see a leader step down, surrender the office he's held for the past eight years and make way for a trailblazing black man in a monumental transfer of power.

TV's top drama will never be the same again.

Unlike January's other big torch-passing -- honestly, at this point I think even the Bushes are ready to see themselves leave the White House -- the only person who seems terribly eager to say goodbye to Gil Grissom is William Petersen, who begins his two-part swan song on this week's "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" (9 p.m. Thursday, KLAS-TV, Channel 8).

The episode also marks the first appearance by Petersen's replacement, Laurence Fishburne, who, barring a complete ratings collapse, will become the first African-American actor to topline a season's most-watched drama.

Petersen's departure shouldn't have come as a surprise when it was announced in July. He never really seemed comfortable in the spotlight and had been dropping hints all along. "I'll do 'CSI' until I legally don't have to do it anymore, which I think is at the end of next year," Petersen told Playboy for the magazine's March 2004 issue. And the actor missed four episodes during the 2006-07 season to be in a play in Rhode Island.

Still, that doesn't mean his absence won't be a blow to the series that has done more to boost the city's profile than the 99-cent shrimp cocktail and the whole "What happens in Vegas" thing combined. (So what if it often gets Las Vegas dead wrong, a la that recent episode set in Koreatown?)

Not only did "CSI" create the boom in Vegas TV -- a phenomenon that also, unfortunately, led to "Dr. Vegas," the animated "Father of the Pride" and every other episode of E!'s reality shows coming here -- the series almost single-handedly moved CBS out of the Angela Lansbury-Dick Van Dyke era and into first place while laying the foundation for the network's all-crime, all-the-time lineup.

And now the drama is at a crossroads. Petersen's departure will be the third in a little over a year, following the exits of Jorja Fox and Gary Dourdan, and there are signs that fans may be looking for a way out, too. In a recent AOL poll, 37 percent of viewers said they'll stop watching once Petersen leaves. (Although that seems a bit drastic, considering the radical cast changes "ER" and "Law & Order" weathered for years without losing steam.)

So what will those fair-weather fans, those Grissom Groupies, miss in Fishburne? It's still too early to tell.

Days after Petersen's departure was announced, CBS entertainment president Nina Tassler told critics that the new character would have the same genetic profile that's often found in serial killers. But last week, a spokesperson for the series said that story line has been dropped for now and that the character still is evolving.

And, as is the case with the show's crimes, clues are hard to come by in Thursday's episode. Fishburne doesn't appear until the halfway point when, as Dr. Raymond Langston, he leads a criminology seminar that Grissom crashes at WLVU -- which in another example of the drama's alternate Vegas, sounds more like the name of a CBS affiliate back east than a place of higher learning.

During the episode, Langston conducts a series of satellite interviews with the notorious "Dick and Jane Killer" (Bill Irwin), whose brain Grissom goes undercover to pick for information about related killings.

The only real insight viewers get into Langston, though, comes from Grissom, who reports that the good doctor once worked as a research pathologist at a hospital where a colleague killed 27 patients, angel-of-death style. All the evidence landed on Langston's desk, but he couldn't connect the dots until it was too late.

Let's hope his detective skills have improved considerably since then. Once he makes the inevitable move onto Grissom's old team -- which should happen either in Petersen's final episode, scheduled for Jan. 15, or soon after -- he may need them to solve the case of the disappearing viewers.

Christopher Lawrence's Life on the Couch column appears on Sundays. E-mail him at clawrence@reviewjournal.com.