Al Robbins

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation character
Robert David Hall as Dr. Albert Robbins
Albert "Al" Robbins
City	Las Vegas, Nevada
Job	Coroner
Rank	Chief Medical Examiner
Position	Nightshift Coroner
Seasons	1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
Portrayed by	Robert David Hall
First appearance	Who Are You?

Dr. Albert "Al" Robbins M.D. is a fictional medical doctor in the CBS crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, portrayed by actor Robert David Hall. Al has appeared in every episode since "Who Are You?", with the exception of "Still Life" from season six.

Early life and Background

Albert "Al" Robbins was raised single handedly by his mother, who was also a registered nurse. Consequently, Al spent most of his childhood growing up in hospital environments. From a very early age, he was able to understand the cycle of life (healing, birth and death) and it came as no surprise when he graduated with a Masters Degree in Physiology from Johns Hopkins University.

At a young age, Al was involved in an accident, where he was hit head-on by a drunk driver. He lost both of his legs in the accident, but walks with the use of prosthetic limbs and a crutch. Al's accident runs parallel to a similar accident that his actor had at aged 18.

Al took his first job as a coroner in Arlington, Virginia, where he remained for several years before moving to Las Vegas, Nevada, with his wife and three children; he has since remained there as the Chief Medical Examiner of the graveyard shift at LVPD CSI.

Robbins' first appearance was in the Season One episode "Who Are You?" He became a series regular from Season Three onwards.

Career with LVPD

Dr. Albert Robbins (known around the lab as "Doc") is the Chief Medical Examiner (coroner) of the Las Vegas Police Department, working in close conjunction with Dr. Gil Grissom and his nightshift team of CSIs. He is Grissom's intellectual equal – the two often carry out academically acquired banter – and, like Grissom, Dr. Robbins seems neither nonplussed nor disturbed by the actions and habits in the various subcultures and miscarriages of humanity.

Since Grissom's departure, Robbins has been shown to be developing a similar sort of friendship with new CSI Raymond Langston. He offers his "fellow sawbones" (both men are surgeons) office space in the morgue when he arrives at the lab, and the twosome are occasionally seen singing blues or exchanging "medical banter" about their hospital experiences while examining bodies and conducting investigations.

Due to his age, he usually sends his assistant David Phillips to examine the body on site though he occasionally goes himself.

Relationship With Colleagues

Robbins has a good working relationship with his colleagues. He acted as a mentor to Phillips, especially in Season 3 when the Phillips did his first exhumation. In the season nine premiere, "For Warrick", an obviously distraught Robbins tells the team that he is going to have the day shift coroner do the postmortem on Warrick.

Personal Life

Little is known of Robbins's personal life. He was one of a pair of twins, though the other was stillborn. His mother attributed his career choice to "spending so many days next to a dead body." He is married with at least three children; according to the episode "Overload", the youngest child was born in 1987. He has a Siamese cat which had kittens in season 5; in "Cats in the Cradle" he stated he is more of a dog person, but he contradicted this in the season six episode "Dog Eat Dog", stating he preferred cats while doing an autopsy on a woman who had her throat ripped out by a pet dog. He is also terrified of rats, and suits up in a hazmat suit before hunting for an escaped rat in the mortuary in the season seven episode "Lab Rats".

Robbins has a fondness for coffee, specifically macchiatos ("Table Stakes") and plays guitar in a band he has formed with the day shift coroner. He also keeps an album of autopsy photos of celebrities who have died in Las Vegas and wound up on his table, including Tupac Shakur and The Who bassist John Entwistle. He walks with a limp and uses crutches because of his prosthetic legs. It is not clear what happened to him, although it is probably due to the accident with a drunk driver which resulted in the amputation of both his legs.^[1]

In the Season 6 episode "Dog Eat Dog", Robbins brought in a vegan pie he had baked for his co-workers, although he has never stated he is vegetarian, like co-worker Sara Sidle. He told Warrick the pie was "low fat, low sugar, low carb." Warrick replied around a mouthful of pie that it was also "low taste".

Hints of him retiring have been circulating, including an episode where he utters, "I'm getting too old for this."^{[citation needed]}

In the season 6 episode, "Bang-Bang", he mentions that his wife's name is, like actor Hall's, Judy, and that they occasionally attend marriage counseling and take separate vacations once a year when things get rough. In "The Theory of Everything", he mentions that he has bradycardia and has a pacemaker.

References

1. ^ Mike Flaherty and Corinne Marrinan. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Companion. Pocket. ISBN 0-7434-6741-8.