I’ve been watching Criminal Minds at the insistence of my fiance’ and I’ve gotta say I’m impressed so far. I like the cast and the stories.
Tonight, though, I was thoroughly impressed by James van der Beek’s performance. I’ve only ever known him in pretty-boy roles or brief, wink-at-the-audience cameos. Obviously I can’t say whether or not he accurately portrayed a dissassociated identity. However, he managed to be sympathetic, icy, creepy and downright disgusting and made it all entertaining. Props to the Beek.
My gripes: 1) I wonder how a recovering heroin addict was able to keep so much smack in his vicinity without falling off the wagon and use again. The fiance’ and I discussed it and she thinks that once the guy’s personality split the “father” aspect took the lion’s share of his abuse out on others, thus rendering the escape of drug use unnecessary. I don’t buy it because taking away the original problem doesn’t take away the chemical dependency.
2) I really don’t want to watch a Dr. Reid/drug addiction subplot if it’s just a vehicle for backstory flashbacks. The writers better be able to get themselves out of that hole without removing my favorite tv nerd from the show.
Yes, I thought Dawson was very, very good. He really made me hate him in the father persona.
I found the whole story very predictable, however. It was like the writers had a standard list of plot points that they had to check off. I’ve haven’t actually watched the show before. Is it always this predictable?
I loved the whole two hours. The way Reid got the guy to put down his gun was very good thinking.
My take is Reid’s flashbacks were the writer’s way of showing that not every child that grows up in very bad conditions turns out to be a serial killer, or even a bad person. Reid has a genius I.Q., was abandoned by his father and “raised” by a schophenic mother. Yet he has four Ph.D.s and fights crime.
I don’t usually like this show, but I agree with the OP that Van der Beek did a great job in this episode.
Reid is my favorite character in this show; if my daughter didn’t like it I’d probably never watch it because none of the other characters grab me and it’s pretty predictable.
The end was so sad, that little boy’s voice saying “Do you think I’ll get to see my mom now?”
Questions:
Would your typical agent like Reid not have had training on withstanding torture?
More generally for the show’s premise: Would your typical BAU have only one person who can do anything with computers, leaving everyone else to wait for her to process info??
I totally agree. Spencer is one of my favorite characters on this (or any) show; when he bent down to take the Dilaudid out of Tobias’ pocket, Mrs. Know and I both said, “Oh, they better not DARE!”
But see, that’s one of the better things about this show… the charactors actually have to deal with stuff, and it isn’t all happy at the end of the episode…
The other agents are field agents, trained to visit crime scenes and process information. They all have computers in the office, but their job is not to sit in the office.
Garcia is a computer whiz and does most of the computer work. It’s good to have one person taking all the pieces from all the agents and putting them together like a complicated jigsaw puzzle. She and Spencer Reid were secondary characters in the beginning (Garcia wasn’t even in the opening credits) that became major players as they got more popular.
To further Annie-Xmas note… it wasn’t until a recent episode (in season 1) that Reid passed his gun handling thing… JJ is also usually the one that deals with the press…
IOW, they all have thier specialties… the biggest gaffe in this episode was sending JJ and Reid out without backup, given that niether of them are the “rough and tough” ones.
This is atleast the second episode where Gideon has second guessed himself and had to convince himself that he did the right thing… that’s leading somewhere I think.
Reid & JJ were going out to interview someone who had called the police a month ago saying he witnessed a prowler. Nobody knew it was the actual unsub multiple personality religious nut serial killer. JJ & Reid figured it out when they got there and didn’t have the cell phone connections to call in for backup in the deep woods.
Yes, it felt a lot like the end of Silence of the Lambs. :eek:
Could it lead to him offing himself? I love to hate Mandy Patinkin ever since Chicago Hope. Even if my life depended on it I wouldn’t take the medicine he sells.
True enough… but when you ask yourself ‘why this particular person way out here in the boonies witnessed a prowler way over there in the city’ you’d have to think twice… IOW, they should’ve considered that before JJ + Reid ever went there.
Secondly, they’ve had other local enforcement officers go with them on these interviews in other episodes…
Lastly… they no longer carry comm equipment other than cell phones?
Doubtful, but we have to remember that he “returned from time off” due to some type of stress or mental breakdown at the beginning of the first season…
Plus, it’s not a good thing if he questions himself too much, as it will lead to him being inneffective in these situations.
They made a huge mistake splitting up. I mean, this guy commits murders AFTER calling the police, and you’re going to split up to try and catch him on his own turf in the middle of the night?
Sorry, that’s slasher movie logic right there. It’s easily written to get JJ knocked out or otherwise disabled so that Reid could be captured, without having them do something dopey.
