A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

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.

( Aaron Hotchner. He's a classic narcissist )

Have gotten sucked in. Spent entire weekend watching first 4 discs of season 1. Am a little bit in love with entire male cast, except for Jason Gideon whom I enjoy watching but who sort of scares me with his resemblance to various men in mentoring positions I've known who got off a little too much on their own wisdom, compassion, and influence over others. Possibly that's just me projecting my own issues. Send help before I mainline the entire series and get no work done in the meantime!

This is the show about the FBI profiling team that catches serial killers via psychology, and the inspiration for "Shadow Unit." I can't help watching it with the Malcolm Gladwell article that says that profiling doesn't actually work in mind (and I am pretty sure that they see more serial killers in a month than the world really gets in a year), but as fiction, it's quite compelling. Note that it is about serial killers and so is extremely violent, disturbing, and gross. (But has no onscreen puking, so I find it much more watchable than Farscape.)

I saw an episode or two a while back and wasn't impressed. No one seemed to have any personality, and I have pretty much zero interest in serial killers. Then I idly started watching a marathon that was running on TV while doing way-overdue housecleaning, and noticed that actually, the detectives do have personality, it's just extremely underplayed. Underplayed in the way that makes you hang upon every brief insight into their psyches. One episode had an exchange which seemed to sum up the show's theme:

Hotch, the icy, controlled, literally and metaphorically buttoned-down team leader whom of course I adore, and look forward to him breaking down spectacularly, which I am sure will happen eventually (quote from memory): "Some abused kids grow up to be monsters. Some of us grow up to catch monsters."

So this a show about how people are shaped by trauma, respond to trauma, and are further chewed up and spit out by their job. The portrayal of PTSD and related issues is very good, for the most part, though I'd like to have some of the hypervigilance and other stuff be shown rather than told. (We hear that Gideon won't sit with his back to a door and avoids windows, but so far we haven't seen this in action.)

In other issues, the victims are given an unusual amount of autonomy (I mean by the writers) and character development, which I like. Considering that it's about serial killers, it's less trashily exploitative and sexist than one would expect, which isn't to say that it's not at all. And, while it can be a little PSA-like, the portrayal of mental illness is reasonably sensitive, again considering that this is a show about serial killers, some of whom are mentally ill.

Negatives: Only one major character of color (Morgan, one of the agents, unless Garcia's name is meant to signal that she's Latina.) Except for Garcia, I don't find the female characters as interesting as the men - JJ has so far had little of interest to do, and I'm failing to be intrigued by Elle, though that may be my problem. Gay people mostly don't exist. And the device by which episodes are bracketed by quotes utterly fails to work for me.

Something else which I don't think is a negative per se - it's part of the tone of the show - but which I think is a little unrealistic is the total lack of gallows humor. I guess it would come across as too insensitive, but seriously, in real life those guys would be breaking up on the plane now and then.

To return to the agents and their traumatic pasts, Reid has mentioned being a victim of bullying, and the way he spoke to the schizophrenic train guy did suggest some level of personal experience. The way Reid speaks reminds me of the way some people with Asperger's do, and his body language is a little odd. I think he has some kind of autism spectrum disorder.(I don't actually buy that he could ever get into the FBI in real life, but whatever.)

Because of the TV marathon, I already saw the episode about Morgan and the youth center. (On a side note, how heartbreaking was Reid's "He talks about me?") I think Elle has some kind of sexual trauma on her past. Gideon we already know has been traumatized on the job. I also wonder if his wife was murdered. Hotch I am very curious about. I had been thinking childhood abuse by his father, but he and his brother didn't speak of their father in a way that implied that. Abuse by someone else? Family habits of total denial?

Please don't spoil further developments, but if there's any spectacularly terrible episodes you think I should avoid, feel free to tell me so I can skip them.