See Also: 'Grave Danger' Episode Guide

When Quentin Tarantino joined the CSI writers to develop his idea for the season finale, they worked together so well the basic story was ready in less than an hour.

"[It] was so good, I thought, 'I have to direct this,'" Tarantino told Craig Tomashoff at TV Guide. As previously reported, the finale will feature Nick Stokes being kidnapped and buried alive. "What happens to this CSI team member is going to be horrific. Everyone will put themselves in that character's place and say, 'How would I handle this?' And most will say, 'I couldn't.' The bad guy even buries a gun with this character."

Tarantino said this bad guy was one of the elements of the finale he came up with. "His motivation is that his daughter was arrested and thrown into jail," he said. "It was evidence that CSI uncovered that made her an accessory to murder. She's a normal girl put in the criminal justice system for five years, and she's been raped and turned into a slave in prison. After what she's been forced to endure, her father is going to do the same to the CSIs. He'll be giving them clues, but they all lead to another dead end."

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Tarantino revealed that he wasn't primarily interested in CSI because of its trademark visual style, but rather because of the characters -- he called William Petersen's Gil Grissom "TV's best detective since Columbo." Almost all of Tarantino's ideas for the characters were accepted by CBS, with the exception of one joke he wanted to put in. "They got [the joke], and said at 10 o'clock, maybe I could do it. But not at 8 o'clock. It was this funny piece of dialogue between Greg and Hodges. The producers loved it but told me CBS didn't think bestiality is a fine topic for prime time."

Besides his love for CSI, Tarantino said he had one other reason for agreeing to helm "Grave Danger" -- to prepare himself for a full-scale move into television. "I'm interested in doing a show of my own," he said. "This was testing the water. There are some ideas that I've had for movies that are too long. Most people aren't down with four hour movies. But TV has caught up with my aspirations. You could truly do these stories as a TV show."

More thoughts from Tarantino, dealing with everything from why Conrad Ecklie has been getting an unfair bad rap to the first time he ever saw CSI, can be found in the May 15 - May 21 issue of TV Guide. This issue features the cast of Everybody Loves Raymond on the cover, and should be available in stores soon. Massive thanks go out to Al Forno for this!

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