City St. Louis
Las Vegas Seasons 9 First appearance "Art Imitates Life" | Duration 2008–09 Portrayed by Lauren Lee Smith Last appearance "All In" | |
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Occupation Crime Scene Investigator Rank CSI Level II
Ballistics Specialist Similar Wendy Simms, Raymond Langston, Sofia Curtis, David Phillips, David Hodges | ||
On cozy mystery with elizabeth spann craig riley adams
Riley Adams is a fictional character in the CBS crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, portrayed by Lauren Lee Smith. She appeared in 22 episodes during the ninth season, starting with "Art Imitates Life" and ending with "All In".
Contents
Background
Adams is described as a non-conformist who joined law enforcement to rebel against her parents, who are psychiatrists. Riley is a former St. Louis police officer who became a crime scene investigator. She comes in as a second-level CSI to the understaffed Las Vegas unit, which is still shaken by the shooting of one of its own.
Season 9
Riley Adams first came to the Las Vegas Police Department a few weeks after the death of Warrick Brown, a fellow crime scene investigator who had been killed in the line of duty. Her first episode is the third episode of the ninth season, "Art Imitates Life" in which she meets most of the team. She seems to share a friendly, flirting relationship with colleague Greg Sanders. She shares office space with him and Nick Stokes after Nick accepted an offer to have Gil Grissom's old office after his retirement.
Riley has shown a personal interest in a case in the episode "Miscarriage of Justice" when she was talking to a woman whose husband had killed himself. It was not clear what happened in Riley's past but she has a connection with the widow.
In the episode "No Way Out" Riley is taken hostage alongside Raymond Langston by a 14-year-old kid with a gun and a collegiate cousin, who has a glass shard embedded in his shoulder, in a PCP lab hidden in their basement. Riley alerts colleague Greg Sanders by trading names with him, indicating there was trouble. After gaining and losing the armed 14-year-old's trust multiple times, she and Langston finally convince the kid to let her get her first aid kit. She can not talk once she is outside, however, because he has a surveillance camera. Once outside, she uses subtle finger signals to communicate with Nick Stokes. Riley successfully disarms the suspect, which allows all of them to walk away unharmed.
In the ninth-season episode "If I Had a Hammer" Riley states that she burned her high school yearbooks, an action that she describes as "cathartic".
In her first episode, "Art Imitates Life", she is shown to have a strange, quirky sense of humor. For example, while at a victim's house, Riley comes across a bag of marijuana and sniffs it. Catherine Willows sees her and says, "You do know about the mandatory drug tests, right?" to which Riley replies, "Yeah. I keep some clean urine in my locker just in case."
Season 10
Season 10 opens with the news that Riley Adams has departed the Las Vegas crime lab. Executive producer Naren Shankar said the decision to let Smith and her character go was "an issue of how we were feeling the ensemble was working." Catherine finds a report from Riley Adams, written before her departure, criticizing Catherine's leadership skills while also stating that she felt that the team was not working well together. That same report states that Adams accepted "a law enforcement position in the Midwest that offered more opportunities for advancement". This report stirs a fight between Catherine and Ecklie. It also prompts Catherine to start questioning her own leadership abilities.