I don’t know why, but I’ve always had some sort of morbid curiosity in watching the megahit show CSI, which spawned my guilty pleasure, CSI: Miami (haha that Horatio). Yet after it was recently announced that the show’s main star, William Petersen (Grissom) will be leaving the series soon enough, I found myself wondering…what’s left? Seriously, this show hinges on the guy, who’s inquisitive and oddly charismatic nature really is the glue that holds each episode together.

This is akin to taking Horatio out of CSI: Miami. There’s just not much left there after you take out the hero of the series. Apparently many fans of the show agreed. In a recent AOL poll with about 600,00 respondents, 37 percent said they would hit the road as soon as Peterson was gone. 41 percent said they’d at least give his replacement, Lawrence Fishburne, a chance.

The real question here is whether fans will be able to put their money where their mouth is and really walk away from Fishburne and the rest of the cast? Perhaps. If history is any indication, then no, as plenty of shoes like Law and Order have gone through tons of serious cast changes and the show is, miraculously, still going strong. Of course as Film.com points out, the X-Files series never really recovered after David Duchovny’s Agent Mulder left…both are valid points. With that in mind, it would seem I’ll have to give CSI a 50/50 chance at survival or, at the very least, a shot at being anywhere close in popularity to where it is now.