Main Character: Las Vegas
Name	David Hodges
Gender	Male
Family	Unnamed father Olivia Hodges (mother) Elisabetta (fiancée)
City	Las Vegas
Job	Trace Technician
Status	Alive
Portrayed By	Wallace Langham
First Appearance	Recipe for Murder

David Hodges is a lab technician working out of the Las Vegas Crime Lab. He specializes in Trace Evidence.

He transferred over from the Los Angeles Crime Lab as revealed in Recipe for Murder.

Personality

Hodges is extremely intelligent, but also arrogant. Much of the team finds him obnoxious and irritating. He has a sarcastic and slightly morbid sense of humor during investigations, which he in Wild Flowers says is a defense mechanism. In later seasons, he becomes more appreciated; in Play Dead, Julie describes him as "an awkward Jon Stewart".

He often tries to ingratiate himself to Grissom, who occasionally does acknowledge Hodges' expertise. He was devastated when Grissom left the lab, and only begrudgingly accepted Raymond Langston as a member of the CSI team.

Hodges is extremely dedicated to the lab, believing that he can't be in a relationship because it would undermine his commitment to the lab.

Abilities

Hodges has an uncanny sense of smell. He was once able to detect a "woodsy" scent in a bleach; later it emerged that the bleach was mixed with cedar chips. (Compulsion) Grissom told Hodges that smelling the bleach was the first thing Hodges had ever done that impressed him.

Hodges's sense of smell sometimes worked against him; he had to put a clothespin on his nose when he analyzed trace from a competitive eater who had died after eating hot dogs. (Dog Eat Dog)

He also assisted Dr. Al Robbins in a case by identifying the presence of cyanide using his sense of smell, proving that he has the necessary genetic makeup to detect cyanide (Iced). It also allows him to point the team in the right direction in The Theory of Everything, detecting that a squirrel has been killed with cyanide.

Hodges and the other junior Lab Techs provide insight in the Miniature Killer case. (Lab Rats) Hodges deduced that all of the crime scenes have a common factor: bleach. This leads Grissom to the realization that the killer is triggered by the substance and "forgives" Hodges for invading his office.

Early Life

Hodges grew up with hamsters, and used to love watching them spin on their little wheels. His mom hated them though, and one day he came home and the hamsters had "run away". (Dog Eat Dog)

Season Eight

Being an avid gamer, Hodges created a board game of his own based, somewhat, on Clue. The object of the game is to solve a murder mystery involving members of the Crime Lab itself. Wendy Simms is not overjoyed at the caption on the bottom of the "Mindy Bimms" game piece, which reads "Mindy Bimms: Clumsy yet Buxom Lab Tech", and throws the game board on the floor in mock clumsiness.

Grissom is apparently interested in the game and he and Hodges go through a few scenarios involving David's own murder (which turns out to be a suicide/frame job).

Appearances

Appearance Notes

• Hodges became a main cast member at the beginning of the eigth season.
• Although credited in the opening titles, he doesn't appear in episodes The Panty Sniffer, World's End and Lost & Found from season ten, House of Hoarders and Father of the Bride from season eleven, Trends with Benefits and Split Decisions from season twelve.

Trivia

• David is a huge fan of the 1970s sitcom Three's Company. He is seen dancing around the lab after winning an online auction for a board game based on the show. (Lab Rats)
• Hodges also prefers "Lucky" brand potato chips. (Lab Rats)
• Hodges has a cat named Kobayashi Maru, in reference to a fictional test in the Star Trek universe. (Monster in the Box). The name of his first cat was Cinder. Ironically, it died in a fire.
• Hodges is a fan of the science fiction shows Star Trek and Astro Quest and apparently speaks fluent Vellikon, an Astro Quest language apparently based on the Star Trek language Klingon. (The Theory of Everything, A Space Oddity)
• Hodges's appearances provide some comic relief, though most of the team finds him obnoxious and irritating. He always tries to ingratiate himself to Grissom, who occasionally does acknowledge Hodges's expertise.
• Hodges's first appearance was in the third season episode "Recipe for Murder", and he became billed as a regular cast member starting with the season 8 episode "Dead Doll".
• He has had a crush on fellow lab technicians Mia Dickerson and Wendy Simms, and once got all the other lab workers to collaborate (behind Grissom's back) and try to solve The Miniature Killer case, discovering a key clue.
• Cannot stand the smell of hot dogs. (Dog Eat Dog)
• He has the "cyanide gene" meaning he can smell cyanide. (The Theory of Everything)
• Failed his driver's license qualification twice and still has nightmares about circling the cones. (Maid Man)
• He is the only lab tech that has his own stab vest with his surname on it and as such, regularly goes out into the field to help the other CSIs, though he prefers working in the lab.

Relationships

• Grissom and Hodges
• Hodges and Wendy