Knittzu

LOL, of course not. That would involve writing for Reid, something Messer is adamantly opposed to doing. Using Reid as JJ's wailing wall is blatant, shameless manipulation. I can practically see Messer rubbing her hands together and cackling at her clever tactic.

I admire the sentiment but don't see how it could possible redeem her, considering that the writers and showrunner don't think there's anything to redeem.

Excuse me guys, I need to go find a wall to bash my head against for a while.

I'm way late on this week's episode because I had house guests. Little did I know the utter boredom and irritation they were sparing me from! Good call. It was probably the worst episode of the season, including the awful JJ-centric mess. At least the JJ-centered episodes infuriate me to the point where I'm not nodding off with boredom. Same here. I dislike her even more now that she reminds me of an aging Lena Dunham. At this point I'm kind of glad that they're no longer even pretending that the BAU is a resource for the local police. In fact I'd be fine if they dispensed silly "delivering the profile" scene and just went straight to door-kicking, gun shooting, JJ taking over, etc. This is no longer a show about criminal profiling, so why bother? I'd rather they all just communed around Garcia's magic computer, since it is the true star of this show. Right?? Especially considering that in this stupid universe there are approximately 1000 times as many psycho killers as there are in our world. FFS, citizens of the CM world! If I lived where you do my house would be a fortress. Every window would be secured with iron bars. My pets would be armored pit bulls, and I'd have my husband dig a ten-foot-deep moat around our house while I guarded him with a machine gun. My guess was ten lines. *sigh* Why is he even on this stupid show anymore? Why can't he move on, so I can move on? He's so amazingly talented and he should be making the most of these years in his career, not stagnating in this mess.

I'm not surprised. Like, at all. These writers and showrunner don't like being told they're wrong and are happy to silence their critics. Pretty funny that it was their own poll that turned against them -- but they have the power to take care of little things like that, right? Apparently the data they use to determine that AJ Cook is the bestest, most likable and beautiful actress ever is something called a "Q-Score," which I had been blissfully ignorant of before coming to this board. I read over some of the stuff on the Q-Score website and it's a lot of creepy corporate-speak: "Derived from our data collection model of the Favorites Concept, Q Scores identify the most enthusiastic consumers of a personality, character or licensed property, program, or brand. This measure of likeability is an important predictor of greater consumer involvement. The higher the incidence of favorites, the stronger is the fan base, or consumer franchise. When exposed to their favorites, the consumer has a greater likelihood to be more attentive, be more involved, have higher recall, and have a more positive image." Uh, okay. Can you imagine, say, Breaking Bad deciding to replace Walter White with some obscure bland background character because they somehow obtained a higher Q-score? Oh and Q-scores are determined by "dividing the percentage of people who peg a performer or show as one of their favorites by the percentage of people who have heard of the entity in the first place" -- so, this legion of JJ lovers might not even be watching the show. It's entirely possible that most of them have only HEARD of Criminal Minds, but recognize the bland blond chick, and there you go. Your most popular character who clearly deserves the lead slot!

Two hundred and fourteen words. Wow. So Reid's entire contribution to the episode amounted to a mis-counted drabble.

Wow. So when I said that half the episode was taken up by the (boring, poorly-acted) unsubs, I was only exaggerating by about a minute. Unsubs, Morgan, and JJ. No wonder this show bores me to tears anymore.

That's basically what the show does now, right? The team is split between the characters that EM likes (Garcia, JJ, Morgan) and the ones she doesn't (Reid, Hotch, Rossi). The problem is that one group gets all the action, stories, lines, etc. while the other gets to vanish. Presumably they're doing something while we don't see them -- it's just that the writers don't care enough to show it. (Or maybe they're not. Maybe the FBI is paying these people to sit around at their desks playing Angry Birds and dreaming of the days when they used to be FBI Profilers.) Officially dividing the team into two groups wouldn't change a thing. We'd still be watching the action-adventure show starting JJ and Morgan, with Garcia popping in at the key moment to solve the "mystery." Reid, Hotch, and Rossi would still be featured as little as possible. At this point I have little doubt that EM would fire all three of them if she could.

Because this show is no longer entertaining me, I have to make my own fun. I want to know where Reid goes when he vanishes at the mid-way point of most episodes. Is he being chronically abducted by aliens? Visiting the local sex workers? Working a second (and third, and forth) job on the sly? Browsing the local coffee shops, book stores, etc. because he knows the case will be solved by Garcia's computer in a few minutes anyhow? Just ONCE I want Hotch, the supposed team leader, to look up at the 3/4 point and ask where the heck Reid is. And if your team can function perfectly well with one to three members being completely absent for no particular reason, well, I'd say it's time to downsize.

He's almost as invisible as Reid is these days. Reid is my favorite character, but the near-total absence of Hotch would be even more infuriating to me if I actually cared about this show anymore -- because he's supposed to be the team's leader! FFS, writers. He doesn't even get to be the one who decides when it's time to deliver the profile anymore. MP is annoying and full of himself and a hypocrite to boot, but I also miss Gideon. Irritating as I find MP as a person, he's a gifted actor with the charisma to carry a show. Gideon was a fascinatingly messed-up person and I was always on edge waiting to see what he was going to do next. Contrast that to their perfect bland, utterly dull new lead character. She's never done or said a single interesting thing ever.

That was absolutely terrible. It encapsulated pretty much everything I hate about this show these days ... half the episode was devoted to the unsubs, another retread of the boring Morgan backstory, Reid vanishes mid-episode and only appears at the end in sleeping form, JJ everywhere and doing everything (with what quality I can't say; I've joined the ranks of those who just FF through her because I just can't take any more of that actress.) Don't care about Meg, either, and the last thing I want is another "post your photo online and DIE" story from the CM hacks.

Yeah, I'm afraid this is just wishful thinking from those of us who are sick of Morgan/JJ/Garcia dominating the show. I'm not even convinced that his departure would make things better. At this point I have little doubt that they'd just shift his screen time over to JJ, or maybe promote Garcia so she could be JJ's full-time wisecracking worshipful sidekick. (While doing all her computer stuff off an Ipad, because it's so just so easy for a genius like her!)

I thought that was by far the strongest episode so far. I finally recognize the main character, and he was acting like the main character. I'm still not sold on Zed, though: Yeah, this. She's known him for what, ten minutes?

How embarrassing for them, that they have to write actual propaganda to support their awful lead.

What if he's staying only because he doesn't want to disappoint his loyal fans who look forward to seeing a glimpse or two of him a week? And we're staying only out of loyalty to MGG, who would actually rather be doing anything else? What if we're all just locked into this hellscape for no good reason and meanwhile, these awful writers get to high-five and pat each other on the back over how fantastic their ratings remain even though they just shovel crap at us week after week after week? I think I have the makings of a horror/tragedy here.

Ha, don't give them any ideas! They've already made her a ninja and a super-spy; I'm not at all convinced that they'd think this is a silly idea.

Kudos to you for listening to all of that, Forever Alone. I only listened to the few minutes about MGG and that’s all I could take, so I appreciate you taking the hit for us and giving us a detailed synopsis. Also, why don't any of the characters have actual story arcs? God, doesn't she get enough of the self-insert working-mommy-issues stuff with her Mary Sue play toy? Did she really need to add ANOTHER working mom to the mix? This is beyond self-indulgent to me. In fact, this strikes me as the sort of stuff about which she should just shut her yap... unless she really does have a green light from the network to do absolutely anything she pleases. I can’t even remember the last time they added a new “layer” to any of the characters. Unless she counts JJ turning into an obnoxious know-it-all when she returned? The Reid stuff is just too sad and depressing to even comment on. I’ll just say that I think you’re right and leave it at that. Same with the profiling stuff. *sigh* At this point I feel like the interview has gone totally surreal. She very clearly, very obviously has favorites. And if she prefers the character stories, why are they always so poorly done? “More family, more home life” — sounds like code for “more JJ, more Morgan.” I'd like to pass on the “love letter." IMO it’s only second-tier or outright crappy shows that start creating episodes as “love letters” to their fans. Can you imagine a “love letter to the fans” from the creators of The Wire, Breaking Bad, etc? Of course not, because they didn't need any pandering drivel. They gave us consistently high-quality shows, and that's the "love" I ever required from them.

While binge-watching this show I absolutely thought that MGG's injury was the exact point where he started being pushed into the background. For a while I was hopeful that once he was off the crutches they'd focus on his character again, but aside from the Mauve mess that's never really happened.

Not until January! *sobs* Thank you for this post, I really appreciate you clearing this stuff up.

This isn't enough WORD in the world for this. But I'll try: WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRDDDDDDD.

Me, too. But it was an odd sort of pandering, akin to CSI using middle-aged people who enjoy watching TV as the week's victims, then implying that they sort of deserved what they got. Tara's murder in particular had an almost gleeful feel to it. See this "social media star" and her attention-whoring ways? Hahaha, we'll fix that! Guess you shouldn't have snapped that seflie and transformed yourself from a person into a brand, honey! I suppose it's nice that some of TV's least-talented writers have located the least-demanding audience. Why bother writing a plot at all? They could just show 42 minutes of JJ running around with different hairstyles and be done with it.

The same sort of "love letter" we were given with 200. We'll see how it plays out, but that little moment they shared made my skin crawl in a way no unsub has managed in a long, long time.

Unfortunately that is what I'm implying. Especially after listening to part of that Messer interview where she talks about the fact that they like returning to things they've done with the characters before (LIKE WE KNOW OMG you have ZERO new ideas ever!!). Maybe it's just a coincidence that we've now had odd little JJ/Reid moments two episodes in a row, but last night's moment left me a bit queasy with dread.

It wasn't the worst episode I've sat through, but damn I was bored and annoyed but this one. Pretty much start to finish. For one thing, it felt like something my cranky father-in-law would have enjoyed. "Attention-hungry teens posting duck-face selfies gettin' murdered" would have him in his happy spot. And granted I was bored as hell, but I didn't catch a single character point out that this is totally NORMAL behavior for teens in 2014. Instead we had stupid JJ making stupid comments about Tara being "a brand" rather than a person. Um, no. She was just a kid doing what kids these days do, grandma. Instead of a vacation, Savannah (who just happened to be one of the doctors treating the victims at the end, natch!) has to move in with Morgan? He doesn't ask her about that very serious step in their relationship, or discuss it, or anything, he just takes her to the house and spring that whole thing on her? Okay. I did enjoy the simultaneous "no comment" from Reid and Morgan, though. Seriously, I am so sick of the idea that none of these people can have a life -- or even a weekend away -- because they are the only people in the country who can solve these (actually rather simple) cases. Give me a break. The BAU is loaded with employees; they should all be taking regular vacations on a rotating basis. That would make more story sense than having team members randomly vanish during episodes, wouldn't it? I can only assume that since losing their media liaison, they no longer have the slightest clue about how the media operates because COME ON. Of course the media was going to be all over that case! Anyone with half a brain would have been anticipating that, not acting like they required fainting couches at the nerve of those camera people doing their jobs. That made me squawk with outrage. They were arresting him on what grounds?? Or does the BAU just not require grounds to go around arresting people anymore? Just slap handcuffs on him in public and drag him away, sure, why not. Does he even fit your profile? Oh, what profile. Never-mind. What indeed? First we had him calling her "Jennifer" last episode, and now that strange little exchange. Am I the only one starting to get a sinking feeling about this situation?

Good for Matthew for standing his ground, but I'm afraid this means Reid won't be getting any sort of plot this season.