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I continue to enjoy this very much, despite the perfectly valid objections noted in comments to the previous post. Please do not spoil me past season 2's "Ashes and Dust" (the one with the serial arsonist and the completely over the top yet kind of awesome opening scene in which a house burns and a family dies to the weirdly perfect accompaniment of... Enya.)
I had a whole lot to say about other episodes, but then I hit "Revelations" and forgot most of it. Except that the season one finale was profoundly ridiculous, and the fact that the writers had the characters comment on its ridiculousness did not make it any less ridiculous. It was like a cross between bad fanfic of Criminal Minds and bad fanfic of The Phantom of the Opera. Though I did enjoy seeing the team going about their normal lives (best bits were Hotch looking good out of his suit, and Gideon's cabinet video screen - on the one hand, reasonable precaution. On the other hand, I sense a total failure of compartmentalization. Also, his girlfriend is totally going to get refrigerated. Mark my words.)
I was also quite put off by the episode immediately following that one: "The internet is evil! Pedophiles are creepy strangers who inhabit the internet! Parents, don't let your kids get online!" Usually the show is much more realistic about who's really abusing kids: people kids know and trust. (See "Profiler, Profiled," which I thought was excellent, and most other episodes.) Luckily the rest of the season was much better.
One of my very favorite moments of the previous season was the part in "LDSK" when Hotch kicks Reid to get Reid the gun in his ankle holster. (And by the way, if I was on that job, I would definitely have a hidden second gun too. Possibly two of them.) In "Revelations," Reid naming Hotch as Raphael's target, both saving himself and prompting that darkly hilarious scene in which the team members obediently name Hotch's personality flaws, seemed a bit of a call-back to that.
Like I mentioned before, the show is a lot less sexist and exploitative than it could be, given the subject matter (and often is explicitly not that way - the handling of rape is sometimes quite good) but it still has issues with being sexist and exploitative. "Revelations" was a case in point. Reid is captured and tortured. He's always fully clothed, and the emphasis is on his fear and pain, shot in a very unsexy manner: lots of extreme close-ups of his face, no ogling of his body. The woman who gets captured and tortured is stripped, chained in a manner that emphasizes her breasts, and shot to emphasize her splayed-out body. Granted she's a minor character, but the director still could have shot her clothed and with an emphasis on her face and her suffering rather than viewers' titillation.
While I'm bitching about that episode, I will also bitch that the theme of "the internet is evil" recurs. Really, my main objection to that isn't that the internet isn't evil. It's that I have not once seen a mainstream TV show that doesn't think the internet is evil. Unless the producers are all communicating solely by cellphone and semaphore, this is a bit hypocritical.
Bitching aside, it was a very powerful episode. While the focus was on Reid (thankfully not being TV-star stoic), it was full of great character moments for everyone. JJ especially shone, but I was also very intrigued by Prentiss's comment that she compartmentalizes better than most people. I don't think so! The obvious explanation is that, like the rest of team, she experienced such horrific stuff when she was young (which her mother hushed up?) that she's numb to it. The other possibility, though I'm not sure it's logistically possible for Hotch to not know about it, is that she didn't have a desk job but was secretly involved in top secret work of secret trauma. I'm quite interested in Prentiss. There's obviously stuff percolating regarding her mysterious assignment to the team. Maybe she's meant to be a mole and doesn't even know it.
Other episodes I liked a lot were "Profiler, Profiled," "Fear and Loathing," and "Sex, Birth, Death." I loved the concept of the latter, and thought it was very well-done and heartbreaking. Poor homicidal kid! Poor Reid! In "Fear and Loathing," that moment when Reid stared into the mirror resonated a lot for me. I'm not sure what he was actually thinking, but I interpret it via projection as, "How am I still alive? Am I really still here? How can I be carrying this weight of knowledge of what can be done to a person, and not have it be visible on my face? Am I still me?"
In non-Reid-related topics, I have to note that Gideon's decisions seem to frequently result in people getting killed. Hotch's completely out-of-character error in the stupid Fisher King episode notwithstanding, I would much rather have him making the decisions. (I buy him making an error of judgment, such as when he let Elle be the decoy for the rapist. I do not buy that he would be careless over a matter that, under the circumstances, would be the number one issue on his mind.) I am waiting to see who will completely crack up first, Reid or Gideon. Well, I know that Mandy Patinkin abruptly left the show so that has to be coming up, albeit possibly off-screen. But it's possible that Reid will hurry.
I had a whole lot to say about other episodes, but then I hit "Revelations" and forgot most of it. Except that the season one finale was profoundly ridiculous, and the fact that the writers had the characters comment on its ridiculousness did not make it any less ridiculous. It was like a cross between bad fanfic of Criminal Minds and bad fanfic of The Phantom of the Opera. Though I did enjoy seeing the team going about their normal lives (best bits were Hotch looking good out of his suit, and Gideon's cabinet video screen - on the one hand, reasonable precaution. On the other hand, I sense a total failure of compartmentalization. Also, his girlfriend is totally going to get refrigerated. Mark my words.)
I was also quite put off by the episode immediately following that one: "The internet is evil! Pedophiles are creepy strangers who inhabit the internet! Parents, don't let your kids get online!" Usually the show is much more realistic about who's really abusing kids: people kids know and trust. (See "Profiler, Profiled," which I thought was excellent, and most other episodes.) Luckily the rest of the season was much better.
One of my very favorite moments of the previous season was the part in "LDSK" when Hotch kicks Reid to get Reid the gun in his ankle holster. (And by the way, if I was on that job, I would definitely have a hidden second gun too. Possibly two of them.) In "Revelations," Reid naming Hotch as Raphael's target, both saving himself and prompting that darkly hilarious scene in which the team members obediently name Hotch's personality flaws, seemed a bit of a call-back to that.
Like I mentioned before, the show is a lot less sexist and exploitative than it could be, given the subject matter (and often is explicitly not that way - the handling of rape is sometimes quite good) but it still has issues with being sexist and exploitative. "Revelations" was a case in point. Reid is captured and tortured. He's always fully clothed, and the emphasis is on his fear and pain, shot in a very unsexy manner: lots of extreme close-ups of his face, no ogling of his body. The woman who gets captured and tortured is stripped, chained in a manner that emphasizes her breasts, and shot to emphasize her splayed-out body. Granted she's a minor character, but the director still could have shot her clothed and with an emphasis on her face and her suffering rather than viewers' titillation.
While I'm bitching about that episode, I will also bitch that the theme of "the internet is evil" recurs. Really, my main objection to that isn't that the internet isn't evil. It's that I have not once seen a mainstream TV show that doesn't think the internet is evil. Unless the producers are all communicating solely by cellphone and semaphore, this is a bit hypocritical.
Bitching aside, it was a very powerful episode. While the focus was on Reid (thankfully not being TV-star stoic), it was full of great character moments for everyone. JJ especially shone, but I was also very intrigued by Prentiss's comment that she compartmentalizes better than most people. I don't think so! The obvious explanation is that, like the rest of team, she experienced such horrific stuff when she was young (which her mother hushed up?) that she's numb to it. The other possibility, though I'm not sure it's logistically possible for Hotch to not know about it, is that she didn't have a desk job but was secretly involved in top secret work of secret trauma. I'm quite interested in Prentiss. There's obviously stuff percolating regarding her mysterious assignment to the team. Maybe she's meant to be a mole and doesn't even know it.
Other episodes I liked a lot were "Profiler, Profiled," "Fear and Loathing," and "Sex, Birth, Death." I loved the concept of the latter, and thought it was very well-done and heartbreaking. Poor homicidal kid! Poor Reid! In "Fear and Loathing," that moment when Reid stared into the mirror resonated a lot for me. I'm not sure what he was actually thinking, but I interpret it via projection as, "How am I still alive? Am I really still here? How can I be carrying this weight of knowledge of what can be done to a person, and not have it be visible on my face? Am I still me?"
In non-Reid-related topics, I have to note that Gideon's decisions seem to frequently result in people getting killed. Hotch's completely out-of-character error in the stupid Fisher King episode notwithstanding, I would much rather have him making the decisions. (I buy him making an error of judgment, such as when he let Elle be the decoy for the rapist. I do not buy that he would be careless over a matter that, under the circumstances, would be the number one issue on his mind.) I am waiting to see who will completely crack up first, Reid or Gideon. Well, I know that Mandy Patinkin abruptly left the show so that has to be coming up, albeit possibly off-screen. But it's possible that Reid will hurry.
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