JMO

I understand, Old Dog. I just get turned off when the discourse becomes a little venomous, like when people get upset with AJC for 'demanding' screen time, forgetting that there is no documentation of such a demand. There are negative comments made about real people, based on pure speculation that becomes 'pseudofact'. I don't think it's fair to the people at the heart of the discussion. It always makes me grateful not to have random strangers speculating on my life without reason or knowledge.

They did negotiate together. And the only thing made public was that they negotiated for pay equity. Anything else you see is pure speculation. I know some people enjoy the speculation game, but I don't have the time or energy to get upset over anything that isn't fact.

The women negotiated for pay equity with the males. Whether the payors decided the women would need to work longer hours, or more frequently, to achieve said equity, is known only to the parties directly involved. I really don't think the problem is actually the imbalance of screen time---by which I mean that I don't think having solo screen time for any or all of the characters would solve the problem.. I think the problem is that the changes have come at the expense of the group dynamic. I don't necessarily want to see any of the characters on my screen in a solo enterprise (well, except for Reid). It's the group interaction that makes the show so rich. I want to see all of the characters interacting. And, as has been well demonstrated (especially by TG and MGG), it's not necessary for a character to have a spoken line in order to have an impact within a scene. There are only so many minutes to go around, but it is creatively possible to make them inclusive minutes. I doubt the recent seasons' emphasis on JJ and Garcia have anything to do with contract negotiations or demands. I think it's just emblematic of a basic misunderstanding of what was special about this show. I do think we've gotten a little taste of it here and there, this season, so I'm hopeful that it can find that 'special' mix of personalities once again.

I agree with you, Old Dog. That scene at the end of Moseley Lane is a series standout for me as well. I also thought the scene where Morgan has to stand by and watch Ellie's father be killed was powerful. As to Hit/Run----the saddest parts of that were when Emily stopped that bomb Will was attached to, and when JJ made the biggest mistake of her life, at the end of the episode.

I don't know where the technophobe thing came from, since Reid was active on the computer from the very beginning of the show. He was even the go-to guy on site in several episodes. It wouldn't surprise me if the character was more fond of paper communication, as he has been shown to have a love of books. But preferring print doesn't mean he's a technophobe---it's more akin to those of us who still like to turn real pages (me) instead of swiping an electronic device. As to the loss of a story line after turning down the revisiting of Reid's addiction----I very much doubt it was punishment. There's no reason to think that's how the show operates. I just think "ooh, addiction!" was the extent of their creativity. Not going down that road stymied them. Certainly, most of them have demonstrated that they don't know how to write for Reid. I do think that JJ's reaction to the dog attack was a much more realistic response than her reaction to the events of (the awful) 200. Just as we've seen each of the others traumatized by various cases and experiences, it brought home the reality that these are human beings who fight the good fight for the rest of us, sometimes at great cost. It's the heart of what touches me about CM, really. Which was why JJ's non-response to her recent trauma left me cold, the poor attempt at portraying PTSD in The Forever People notwithstanding. My thoughts are based solely on the product presented on screen. I don't know any of the players involved, so I won't get into positing motivations or machinations. I have no reason to think that anyone is self-promoting or purposely doing anything at the cost of another. I think we are simply seeing the results of the current assembly of staffing and talent on the show.

My guess is that the writing is always better at the beginning of a new show. Not necessarily the pilot, but once the writers hit their stride, and the actors begin to find their characterizations, the first couple of seasons are pretty much always the best. After that, they have to reach a bit more for storylines that are unique enough not to be compared with prior ones, and the original writers may feel a need to move on, for the sake of their own creativity. So, the new series may or may not have better writers, but it may seem so, at the beginning. That won't lessen my enjoyment of the original CM. I don't plan to watch the spinoff at all. I was completely blindsided by CM, and how involved I became with it. But, unlike some, I'm very clear that I did so because of the characters, and not the premise. So the idea of a related entity really does nothing for me. And, while it's been a pleasant journey with CM-----and one that I'm hoping will go on for another year or two-----I don't think I can afford the time to get involved with another series. For me, one and done. (Unless MGG turns up on another series.)

Wow, CoStar---that was an impressive, well-written, poignant piece. Thanks for sharing it.

Someone put the question to Sharon Lee Watson viaTwitter, whether Ben Troy was an accomplice, or whether he took advantage. She said he took advantage.

Sound familiar? Found on CNN today. http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/27/us/san-francisco-jail-forced-fights/index.html

Aghh! You're right, FA. Now I know what the character's name displaced in my brain.

So, I'll admit that this episode really didn't need a plot, since there was so much delicious Reid on my screen for so much time. But I did appreciate the plot, and the many attempts at misdirection. I was struck by the sheer amount of evil portrayed among the different players involved, and gratified when their various evil machinations started to interfere with each other. The congressman was played well enough that I never could be quite sure if he was good or evil---including in the final scene. I read it that he decided, after the fact, to accept what his mother had done for him, but had not been aware prior. I still think of Tess Harper as Tasha Yar (and am troubled that her name came to me without effort---what vital piece of information did that displace in my brain?)--so I was (foolishly) shocked to see her older version on screen. Same thing happens in the mirror every morning. I liked all of the characterizations, and that everyone had a reasonable role to play. Liked that Morgan and Garcia were given a moment of affection that didn't include any of their smarminess. It was unnecessary to the plot, which made it just....nice. And I mean that in a good way. Loved the teaming of Hotch and Rossi with the candidate's mother. They can grill like no two others can grill. I did get a kick out of the others looking high and low for Reid at the end. i actually expected them to start looking under desks. Editing was a bit off---I usually don't notice it, which is how it should be. But we had some scenes with people out of position from angle to angle, and we had the 'and action!' start to Dorian pulling Reid back from running out the door. And then there's Reid. I think Sharon Watson has his characterization down (except the handshake thing, since he's freely offered his hand on a number of episodes), and I love what MGG can do when the writer gets it right. (And yes, I think he is completely hindered when the writer gets it wrong.) He was the shy, intelligent, valiant genius I love to watch. I don't know that I got any romantic vibes between him and Dorian, although I could see where something could grow down the road. I just think he found someone interesting, who promised to be intellectually stimulating to him as well, via languages and literature---and he took a chance on making a friend. I also don't think it was coincidence that he arranged their coffee date speaking Russian---I think using the foreign language served as a bit of a shield for him. Regarding the languages, just because it's come up in some posts----we've seen Reid's knowledge of languages referenced several times, but not necessarily his fluency. We knew he knows Spanish, but has a terrible accent (Elle corrected him). We already knew he understood Russian (Emily, Solaris) and Korean (the episode before (the awful) 200), but he would have plenty of company if he could read a language, understand it when it was spoken to him, but have difficulty with pronunciation and accent. So I thought it was a reasonable portrayal. Finally---yes----what a beautiful, sustained camera shot. For that alone, it was a good episode. Fortunately, this time, we got so much more than that.

Yes, I understand. I just think it's strange that Kate and Chris adopted Meg as an infant, yet she doesn't call them Mom and Dad. Same with the 'sibling rivalry' of a teenager. My work is with children and families. While neither of these situations is totally unheard of, they are both exceedingly rare. So I just created my own little backstory, to try to make sense of it. First time in forever that I'm home on a Wednesday night. Now I just have to find a way to stay awake for two more hours....

The new hair doesn't look like it's met a comb, either, but at least the length makes it less wild. Still, I wonder why it happened. They didn't need a new Reid hairstyle to show the passage of time. JLH's showing would suffice.

Ooh----Reid's evil twin! You know what, I wouldn't even mind. It would at least be entertaining.

(The awful) '200' just came on. I haven't seen any of it since the inglorious day it first aired. Now, upon further viewing, I'm amazed that any of the actors were able to utter their lines with a straight face. It's kind of like watching an hour long SNL skit.

I really don't think it's boredom. I think he has a lot on his plate, and he uses social media to expend some of the energy of it, maybe to distract his thinking, while he's letting things marinate. But it's definitely tied to his projects, to the point where, if if he's not known to be directing, I'll wonder what other gem he's got going on.

Ever notice how MGG's social media posts explode just before and during the making of the episodes he directs? Then they taper back down, afterwards. It's like he has an overload of creative energy, and has to find something to do with it.

Finally got to see this one. Of course, curiosity had me reading everyone's comments beforehand, so I was pleasantly surprised to like it a bit more than I'd thought I would. My own thoughts: Failed the 'Reid-meter', so that was a major ding. I've read that he was ill, so maybe he lost a few lines or scenes to that. I didn't think the plot was as lame as I expected, given the '50 Shades' tie-in. If I gathered correctly, the unsub was someone who was already perpetrating, but then discovered what he thought was a much wider subject pool because of the book. But I couldn't quite figure out (and didn't find it interesting enough to go back and try again) if he was sort of courting readers of the book, thinking they would be open to his 'breath play', and then things went too far, over and over again-----or if he was just stalking them. Loved Rossi's "high school" and Kate's reaction. Thought the introduction of Kate's pregnancy was good, although if Morgan needed to see the 'glow' to know she was pregnant, I think he might need glasses. And Garcia might need new ones. As to Reid's patting her baby bump (which was, apparently, obvious to him in a way that it wasn't to the others)----no. My guess is that they were trying to avoid MGG hugging JLH because he was ill-----thereby totally forgetting that neither the hug nor the pat would be in character for Reid. Given JJ's very recent show of PTSD, and her acknowledging the miscarriage at the root of it, I would have liked just an instant of camera time spent on a JJ facial expression that showed regret, a fleeting sadness----something. Then, she could have 'covered' with her comment about the headphones. Where, apparently, she forgot that it was Beethoven (not the Beatles and BeeGees----I know, so confusing, they all start with 'B') that she had coming through those headphones, when Reid suggested Mozart. Meg. So, 13 (she'd better be closing in on 14 if she was about a year when her parents died) is definitely DQ time, so there's that. But the source of her drama doesn't make sense without some significant, currently missing, backstory. So, in my mind, I've created this: Kate and Chris adopted her as an infant, and never told her she was adopted. She called them 'Mom' and 'Dad'. Some time in the past year, they broke the news, or she discovered it somehow. There was a blow-up, and they became 'Kate' and 'Chris' to her. And, now that she knows they're not her biological parents, she's put out because she's interpreting the pregnancy as meaning they want 'one of their own'. Otherwise, I can't make any sense of this kind of sibling rivalry at 13. Both Meg and the teenage daughter of the unsub need to get into therapy, fast. I do like Kate's personality. She doesn't take herself too seriously, yet comes across as a responsible parent. I like her apparent partnership with Chris in both the marriage and the parenting. Even with him off screen, there's more chemistry than with a certain other pairing we've seen on screen multiple times. Finally, I liked Savannah, and her incorporation into something that wasn't a 'Morgan-centric' episode. That's the kind of integration of a recurring character, and a relationship, that makes sense to me. To me, it makes the relationship seem more real, and more stable, because it's not the subject of drama every time we see it.

Thanks for pointing that one out, CoStar. It was wonderful!

I don't know how necessary a choice it is, but if I had to choose, I'd prefer something grounded in a degree of reality, even if it was similar in plot line to another program. It's just too hard to become interested in some of the outlandish ideas they produce when they're trying to be 'original'. They're too ridiculous to inspire fear, too artificial to relate to, and just....boring. TV writers have the same influences as the rest of us----news items, novels, films, etc. So it's no surprise they'll come up with similar story lines to other programs, even if not directly inspired by that program. The thing that was different about CM is that it also had an additional source, in the FBI/BAU files. Same stories we might have read about in the newspaper, but with a degree of detail (and insight into the mind of the perpetrator) that was new.

Agreed. I greatly miss that dynamic with Reid (and found it insultingly dismissive to have heard it dealt with, in God Complex, as 'hey, it happens, it's nobody's fault'---when it was the writers' fault) Back to Morgan---I liked his earlier relationship with Hotch, because it was so multi-dimensional. Each of them was part critic, part supporter, of the other, and there was a bit of mentoring going on, also in both directions. That's faded quite a bit in recent years, as we see much more of Hotch with Rossi, and way too little of him with anyone else. It would be nice to see the writers explore all the permutations of the relationships, as they did in the past. When you have a character-rich show, that's the best way to keep it interesting. If he goes, I, too, will miss Morgan, partly for the character himself, but even more for his dynamic within the team.

This one was just 'okay' for me. I liked it a little better on a re-watch, but not a whole lot. In part, I think I reacted to the dreariness of the setting. If that was purposeful, it worked. It was nice to see Reid deduce a few things, and I appreciated the depiction of his actually remembering the details of all that reading he did, in such little time. I liked his working with Hotch, and Hotch's reliance on him. It just didn't feel suspenseful. Not even when Morgan and Kate were taken. To me, the fight scenes weren't all that convincing. Once they were taken, Morgan looked more worried than Kate did, and the whole thing was over before I had time to become invested in it. We barely saw the rest of the team's concern about their two captive members, and then it was anticlimactic when they all walked, single file and at a normal pace, into the room with all of the prisoners. If any of you understand this better than I, please advise. What did the guard who released the prisoners from their cells hope to accomplish? Was he hoping to have them kill the other guards and the BAU team, thereby covering his tracks? Did he think the glass would protect him from a horde of angry cons? Finally, I found the camera work disturbing, in a motion-sickness kind of way. They were filming in a confined space, so maybe there weren't a whole lot of options to help keep things interesting. But I found the hand-held filming, and then the angles switching from above, to below, and back again, to be hard to watch. It's not something I usually notice at all----maybe it was used more often than usual this episode? Not one I'll watch again (except to fast forward to the Reid scenes).

Crazy world we live in, when acts of kindness are considered creepy. We already know about Reid's insatiable thirst for knowledge. It would be completely in character for him to learn everything there was to know about pregnancy, labor and delivery, and we've pretty much been shown that in canon. So, I think it would be entirely within the realm of normal for him to look out for JJ. After all, said "single, lonely, male coworker" is also supposed to be her best friend. And, it would be out of character for Reid to do something for JJ, yet ignore Kate.

As much as I'd like to pretend (the awful) '200' never happened, those connected with the show seem to be operating under the premise that it did. So I would be okay with this. Who knows---it might even give Reid some focus, since he's the only other person we're sure knows about the miscarriage. And that would be a good thing. Especially if he had to deliver her. You know, since he studied up on it when she was carrying Henry.

My best guesstimate is that each would be delivering early in the filming schedule of the next season. So, whether or not the pregnancies are written in, both characters would have to disappear for a while. Unless, of course, a decision on season 11 was made early enough for them to film some of it before they break for the summer. JJ wasn't in the field very much when AJ was pregnant before, which made it easier to include the pregnancy. The character could easily continue to fulfill her prior role, since most of it took place out of the action. That's no longer true, for either Kate or JJ. If they continue to film as members of the team, I can only think that we might see a shift to more screen time/ field time for the guys. Well, one particular guy in general. And that would be a good thing. Yes, I'm opportunistic. It works.