‘CSI: Vegas’: Scoop on Josh, Allie & Serena Love Triangle, Plus Huge Catherine Story

CSI: Vegas may have a big problem to solve when it returns for its third season with the matter of whether one of the Crime Lab’s own, Josh Folsom (Matt Lauria), killed the man who murdered his mother. But there are plenty of other stories to tell this season as well.

After all, there’s the love triangle he’s in with Allie (Mandeep Dhillon) and Serena (Ariana Guerra). There’s the question of any season-long arcs for the CSIs to tackle. There’s the possibility of anyone or anything from the franchise’s history popping back up. TV Insider got some answers from showrunner Jason Tracey, in addition to teases about how Josh and the team handle him being behind bars when the season begins.

Sure, Josh is in this complicated place at the beginning of the season, but there is the matter of that triangle with him, Allie and Serena. How are you handling those complicated feelings there, and what can you preview?

Jason Tracey: I hope everybody will enjoy seeing those relationships. All three of those relationships get touched on in our early episodes. There’s definitely an evolution coming in what that dynamic looks like. Sometimes crisis moments in your life reveal preferences, reveal character, reveal whether or not a relationship is going to work, and it will be a season of change.

Is Marg Helgenberger back full time?

She is. We love working with Marg. She’s phenomenal. She’s the soul of the show. She’s the Queen of CSI, going back to the original, and just an absolute delight to collaborate with. We’ve got some fun stories with Catherine, and we kick it off this year with her great white whale.

What are you looking at in terms of a season-long arc? 

We probably have a couple of serialized stories that we’re going to dive into this year. Certainly the fallout from Folsom’s actions in the finale and what that’ll do to our team, whether that’ll change the shape of his life and career, whether he can be essentially exonerated or what his culpability looks like and how that’s going to shape the season is something that we attend to early in the going. Then we find ourselves in kind of a techno noir space in the second half of the season with a story that I won’t say too much about just yet but will kind of be a nitrous boost to our season starting around Episode 5. That’s going to be fun.

Monty Brinton/CBS

Reggie Lee‘s new character is coming in, and I imagine having this new undersheriff is especially going to affect Max (Paula Newsome) and Serena?

Yeah, his presence is a reminder that the Las Vegas justice system is multifaceted, multilayered, and that there’s a lot of oversight that all of these folks in real life and our characters have to contend with. It’s not necessarily adversarial, but it’s also not a walk in the park to both be the boss and to be somebody who has to manage up. And I love what Paula plays as she navigates Folsom’s situation early in the going. We understand the pressure and intensity and focus on her as the head of the lab. She wears it so well. Paula handles that character drama just absolutely beautifully. It’s been fun to write and remind the audience that while Max is the undisputed leader of the lab, she has folks, top brass in the justice system in Las Vegas all around her that she has to contend with, and their motives don’t always align with her own.

Last season ended with this mystery of Penny’s engagement. Talk about dropping that surprise and what you get to play with as a result this season.

I love Sarah Gilman. She’s just the sweetest, and she sort of stepped into an almost Hangover 4 type plot. I think we reference it as she sort of wakes up engaged. I don’t want to give away spoilers about how that’ll all play out, but she’s got one of the most pure hearts of anybody on TV, and to watch her have to either walk her way back or continue to walk the plank on a wacky situation that she finds herself in has given her a ton to play, and I can’t wait for the audience to catch up to that story.

Will we see any other past CSI characters from any of the shows in the franchise this season?

This season… I will never say never. We haven’t finished writing, but it became a shorter road with the summer of strikes, and we’re so excited just as a cast and crew and the family of CSI to be back to work. But with 10 episodes, our runway is a little bit shorter and we’ve got two pretty tight serialized arcs that are kind of unfolding. As of right now, I can’t promise you any specific cameos from the universe.

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So because you have those two arcs, does that mean that storylines or arcs from past seasons of this show or another CSI won’t necessarily come up this season? Last season, you said Silver Ink was wrapped for now…

Correct. Look, I never say never because the sort of constellation of characters and the rich past story of the lab and of all the people that have worked there and also in the other iterations of the franchise are so exciting, and it’s such a privilege to be able to dip into that. So, from time to time we absolutely love to go there. I just don’t have anything in the earlier going of the season to tease in that area.

Will we meet any family members we have yet to see of any of the CSIs?

Yes, but I won’t say more.

What else can you preview about this season?

Obviously the franchise is all about cutting-edge science and how that goes crossways and lengthways with justice, with crime, with crime solving. And we live in an age of wonders. What we’re all watching unfold with robotics, with AI, are areas of the frontier of science that we’ve been eager to write to. And we’re going to take a swing this back half of this season with a story that touches on artificial intelligence in a really fresh way. It’s probably the thing I’m most excited about this season.

CSI: Vegas, Season 3 Premiere, Sunday, February 18, 10/9c, CBS