S10.E22: Protection

[thewhiteowl]

 

When shooting victims are found in the Los Angeles area with possible links to criminal activity, the BAU searches for a vigilante UnSub.

 

[normasm]

We don't get a sneak peek? 

[Old Dog]

We normally get one, sometimes two sneak peeks as well as the promo. Maybe they don't want to spoil the finale build up - although Messer as already given away most of it anyway!

[Danielg342]

I'm going to guess the “hostage” at the end will turn out to be some kind of baddie herself- otherwise, why would he hold her?

[secnarf]

Wow was that Wylie from The Mentalist?! It's going to be weird seeing him (Joe Adler) as a criminal.

[Droogie]

15 minutes in. JJ is a mother! *drinks*

Edited April 30, 2015 by Droogie

[Droogie]

Surely I can't be the first to weigh in! This won't be very deep.

Too much UnSub. "The UnSub Show, with appearances by the BAU."

Seriously, the UnSub is schizophrenic and Reid isn't the one trying to negotiate with him? Just, no.

The finale concerning Meg? Here we go.

Was Hotch even there?

Reid looked fine. Otherwise, a letdown.

[Chaos Theory]

Ok educated guess: Too much JJ not enough Reid people on this Board on going to hate this episode?  

 

My opinion:  I liked the scene where JJ picked up the hooker otherwise I was bored.  My problem with the episode is that it was boring.  I did like the reveal that the two women the Unsub was talking to had been dead all along but besides that I was kinda bored.  

[ForeverAlone]

Wow...I thought that episode sucked ass. Like I can count on one hand (even after removing a couple fingers) of things I actually liked about this episode. Basically the only thing I liked was the prostitute checking out Reid. After all, prostitutes LOVE Reid. I think Virgil outsourced the writing of this episode to a group of crayon toting monkeys, because I felt it made no sense. And judging by what I have seen on Twitter, I am not the only one. And Virgil is not taking it well, because he feels compelled to quote their tweets and respond with his own disdain. But that is Virgil for you. He always does that when he receives any sort of criticism about his writing.

 

I personally thought this episode was all over the place and just felt disjointed with no clear, or frankly interesting, narrative. This episode had WAY too much unsub, and completely uninteresting unsub at that. Finding out that they were all delusions didn't make me like this episode any more. I could not get a handle on this guy's motivations, probably because the profiling was rather deficient and all over the place. 

 

In earlier seasons, Reid would have mentioned that the vast majority of paranoid schizophrenics were NOT violent, even off their medication, and instead are more likely to be victims of crimes. And I agree, Reid should have been the one to negotiate with the unsub. Reid has an insight and a sensitivity to persons with severe mental disorders. He should be the one to talk mentally ill unsubs down, and when he does it, it is masterful.

 

I found it rather weird that Cruz would call Penelope to have her tell the team that they needed to work late. Since Hotch runs that team, you would think his boss would call HIM and not the technical analyst. I mean, did Strauss go through Penelope for things? No, she went to Hotch directly.

 

Since this episode leads directly into the season finale, and JJ is supposed to reveal her pregnancy in that episode, that means that JJ is already pregnant and she knows it (unless there is a massive time shift at the end of the finale and that is when JJ reveals her pregnancy). Which makes it a bit odd that JJ would not have said something to Hotch to at least get removed from tactical raids. I mean, considering what happened the last time JJ went on a tactical mission when she knew she was pregnant (I could grumble about that point forever) and considering how much JJ and Will were trying for another baby, you would think she would be EXTRA cautious this time around. I am waiting until the end of the finale before I pass judgment about that because there might be a time shift, but if there isn't, I am going to give a bit of side eye to the choice to put JJ in the field for this one. It wouldn't ring true for what we know about JJ. 

 

The entire time I was watching this episode, I kept thinking about "A Real Rain", a far superior vigilante killer episode. I am usually not a fan of vigilante killers, but I thought that one was well plotted, with in depth profiling that built upon each kill. We didn't even see the unsub until the end, but we had a clear understanding of what was driving him. In this case, it was like a bunch of stuff was thrown against a wall to see what stuck. And unlike this episode, the team in  "A Real Rain" profiled it down so specific that Penelope just had to check one thing, whereas Penelope pretty much had to do all the sleuthing for the team. I put this very much in the MISS category for Virgil, and considering I had the same thought about his other two episodes this season (that the unsub's stated motive didn't really line up with his actions and didn't make much sense to me), I can't say there is one episode of his this season where I roundly liked. "Lockdown" comes the closest and even that one had some serious storytelling flaws for me. 

 

Oh and nothing about the ending makes me interested in the finale, but I will wait and see what that one brings. Maybe, since Jim is co-writing that one, it will turn around and be good enough (especially since I haven't really liked any of Erica's season finales- season five being the best one in my opinion). 

Edited April 30, 2015 by ForeverAlone

[Droogie]

Yes, the takedown should've been ALL Reid. Lazy, lazy writing.

And I hated the ep so much I forgot about the prostitute! Nice nod to his appeal to the ladies of the night.

[secnarf]

I know I already said I was fully expecting there to be no fallout from last week for Hotch, but I'm still disappointed that Hotch was fine. At least, I think he was fine. He was barely onscreen so it was hard to get a good read on him.
I love Joe Adler, but him onscreen for ~50% of the episode was a bit much.
The case itself was bland. I caught on fairly quickly that the mom and daughter were hallucinations.

I did like JJ and Kate interrogating the woman, and JJ giving her a ride later on. I know people on here get annoyed whenever they bring up the fact that JJ is a mother, but it didn't feel forced - it was clearly the right way to get through to the woman and JJ (rightly) took advantage of that. To me, that is very different from something like the Cinderella connection.
I really don't care much about Meg, but I like Kate and I'm hoping that Meg's abduction will put more focus on the team as a whole (because presumably Kate won't be locked up in a room by herself) and less on the unsub. At this point, that would be a win in my books.

[Russet29]

I'll wait until tomorrow to post my full thoughts (hint: not good) but to your point ForeverAlone about JJ already being pregnant, I'm pretty sure the writers had no idea they would write it in until they were actually sitting down and writing the finale. Something Jim Clemente tweeted to a fan made me realize they were deciding while writing the final episode so they really had no plan. I just don't understand, if you're mulling the idea of writing in a pregnancy, why not write that character as if she is pregnant, in case you decide to write it in. In other words: no kevlar for JJ. What would be the harm in that? 

[Saje]

Boring. I was reworking a friend's resume during and THAT was more interesting than the show. It had elements of True Night, With Friends Like These, and Normal in it, but was far less entertaining than any of those episodes. 

 

I liked the way Garcia broke down the case over the phone while Morgan and JJ were running in the woods, that was at least different from the usual round table, and like Chaos Theory said the scene where JJ picked up the girl was good. Again, different from the norm. 

 

But far too much big-headed unsub. For a minute I thought the girl in the leg braces was the planner, she gave off a 'evil' vibe to me. Once I saw the unsub give the mom roses though, I thought she was a hallucination.

 

Not horrible, but boring. Not enough Reid, for sure.

 

Reid was incredibly gorgeous and his contributions made sense. The adorable shy look he got when the hooker hit on him (and Rossi lol).

[ForeverAlone]

Unless the decision to write in AJ's pregnancy happened on the fly during the actual filming of the finale (and if that DID happen, I would love to know why the last minute change), there was time to rework some scenes that would line up with JJ announcing she is pregnant in the finale. This is a show that managed to adjust to Mandy suddenly not showing up for work one day and having to rework the early season 3 scripts. So considering this episode, I am deeply curious how JJ's pregnancy announcement will be made, and what time in the Criminal Minds universe it happens. 

Edited April 30, 2015 by ForeverAlone

[Cobalt Stargazer]

Ok educated guess: Too much JJ not enough Reid people on this Board on going to hate this episode? 

 

I wish that was the only thing wrong with this episode, which I had high hopes for after last week's awesomeness.

 

I'll have more later, but for now I'll say that I thought the UnSub was played by Noel Fisher, who portrayed the equally unstable Dale Stuckey on SVU.  Fisher did have a one-shot role on the spinoff, though.

[Russet29]

Oh I couldn't agree more about JJ's pregnancy. I'm not sure my post conveyed that. My complaint is that they didn't plan ahead at all. What was so difficult about deciding to write it in that they waited until the finale? Especially because we all knew it would be written in. It's just further evidence that the people in charge don't plan ahead.

[Saje]

Russet29, AJ just announced her news about a month ago, I believe?

[ForeverAlone]

AJ made a public announcement 1 March (halfway through filming episode 20), but she already was showing by that point, and was nearly halfway through her pregnancy. So you know that the people she works with (including the writers and producers) must have known before that. 

[Saje]

Maybe, though Harry Bring said he had no idea until she announced it. He might have been just saying that, though.

[JMO]

I kept flashing on this dream I used to have, which is apparently a common one.  It's the end of the semester,  there's  a class I've completely forgotten to attend, and there's a term paper due, right now.  This episode was so derivative of others in CM's history that it seemed precisely like that term paper produced with absolutely no notice.  We've had the psychotic unsub talking to his delusions at least three times, vigilante themes (including psychotic ones) multiple times, and minor themes like the hooker hitting on a hapless Reid, JJ bonding over motherhood, etc. etc.  It didn't feel like an original episode at all.  Certainly not one of the writer's best efforts.

 

I'm assuming we were supposed to notice that the hallucinations weren't visible in the unsub's full length oval mirror.  I did appreciate that attention to detail, but I only noticed it because I thought it was bizarre that there was a mirror placed where it was.  Clunky.

 

I started shouting at my television when they realized their unsub was a young man who'd inherited schizophrenia from his mother and Reid didn't even blink.  Shouted again when the genius had to be told to look under the dead bouquet lying all by itself out there on the lawn, instead of digging up the garden. 

 

I thought it strange that JJ and Morgan would be running together on a Saturday.  Apparently JJ finds Will as unpalatable as I do.

 

The JJ pregnancy issue is a nonstarter for me.  So what if she knows in a contiguous episode?  As with all pregnancies, there's that moment before the test, and that moment after.  That moment before the first 'ooh, I wonder', and the moment after.  Maybe we're just seeing her in her moments before.  Next week we'll see the moments after.

 

The Reid-meter:  This is one of those episodes where he has some presence, but is done a disservice by the writing.  So it's worth a fast-forward, because he is quite delicious, especially in his dark shirt.  But keep the volume on 'mute'. 

[ForeverAlone]

Even if 1 March was when everybody figured it out, that is still more than enough time to set up the storyline for JJ's pregnancy reveal. It wouldn't have taken much. Hell, in this episode they would not have even had to say anything; just not have JJ go on a tactical raid. But again, that all depends on HOW JJ's pregnancy is revealed in the finale. Maybe, just maybe, it might make sense. It really all comes down (for me) to the timeline. Though if JJ magically discovers she is pregnant halfway through the episode, my eyes might roll out of their sockets. :) :) :)

[LexiconDevilOne]

Man this episode was such a missed opportunity.

 

If the unsub had been that guy from Los Angeles who was a comic book author/drawer, who's girlfriend was murdered and he became a vigilante, while carrying her phone. He ended up institutionalized (still with her phone). The unsub from this episode cold have been him, recently released.

 

It's basically the same story, that could have been tied together.

 

This 'stand alone' was boring.

Edited April 30, 2015 by LexiconDevilOne

[zannej]

I actually missed the episode because I forgot what day it was and what time it was. I was just hanging out with my mother watching Mystery Diners with her and bringing her food. I glanced at the clock and saw it was after 8:30 and started to get up to go watch and then said "Nevermind, I'll just find it online later". I wasn't expecting it to be all that great after the previous episode. It sounds like people were not happy with it..

 

And Virgil is whining on Twitter about how he worked his ass off trying to please the fans. Someone replied that maybe the fans are the reason he has a job to work his ass off instead of scratching it and he replied that they sounded hostile. So, he's been trying to drum up sympathy. Really not a professional way to respond to criticism. He's quoting critical tweets and whining about how it makes him feel bad. Well, if he was trying to please some subset of the fandom (not sure which one though) then he really should have been focusing on delivering a good story instead. I can understand not liking unhelpful critiques- just saying "it sucks" instead of explaining why, but in his line of worker he needs thicker skin. If I were a showrunner or someone in the business and I saw a writer whining like that on Twitter, that would be someone I would not consider hiring because that just looks bad and can repel fans and advertisers.

 

Anyway, I will still watch with an open mind and share my thoughts later.

[threebluestars]

The whole episode I felt like I'd seen this same episode on this show before.

 

I would rather have had the daughter be a mastermind using the schizophrenic for her own purpose.

[zannej]

I didn't hate it, but it really was a rehash of a couple of previous episodes and I felt that it was not a solid case. It had the unsub hallucinating people who were speaking to him ala Derailed, Normal, Reflections of Desire, and With Friends Like These. Like Normal, it also had the unsub not realizing that he had killed the people who were speaking to him. Had the vigilante killing ala True Night and a Real Rain (but it was more like the former).

 

It failed the Reid-meter. In fact, I felt like Matthew was somewhat phoning it in during some scenes. He seemed rather glib in scenes where he shouldn't have been. Nobody on the team seemed terribly upset about the two dead women.

There was a lack of sense of urgency.

And they did a thing where the cameraman filmed from behind other people and at one point, a person's blurry ear was in the forefront and distracted from the view. It was annoying.

I want to know how this guy got his hands on a gun and, furthermore, that much ammunition. Bullets are not cheap and gun stores will think it is odd of someone is buying up a ton of bullets. This guy was supposedly using about 13 rounds per victim? Or per crime? I'm not sure. Where did he carry the extra bullets? Also, wouldn't there have been shells? They could have been checked for fingerprints.

 

There was a lot of JJ, but in this one it didn't seem like such a bad thing. I think this is prior to JJ knowing she's pregnant-- otherwise she would be taking things easy. I think Mr. Scratch helped soften me up on JJ and in this one she wasn't being mean, snooty, or rude. I didn't mind her bringing up that she was a mother because it was done in a way where she was trying to get the prostitute to open up to her. I liked that the hooker recommended some travel sickness bracelets for Kate-- I wonder if JLH was actually feeling that sick, or if they are just having her character be sick as a TV trope. I'm glad that someone for once actually commented on her pregnancy (aside from team members). 

 

I liked the supporting characters and I thought the guy playing the unsub did a good job. He looks very familiar but I can't place him. He reminds me of someone from another episode of the show, but I can't remember that either. I thought he did a good job with what he was given. He was sympathetic as the stricken suffering psycho who thought he was doing the right thing. I liked the supporting cops-- and I found the way they broke up the delivering of the profile to be interesting, with the team members at different locations talking.

 

At the end, it did seem like it would have made sense for Reid to talk to the unsub, but it seemed he had a problem with males and had more of an affinity for females, so maybe hearing a female voice was what he needed. I do wish Reid had been able to give more input-- like maybe telling JJ what to say or *something*.

 

Despite all of the focus we had on the unsub, it didn't really explain much-- like how he killed the woman and her daughter or why he would blame the daughter and want to kill her. And if he didn't know he killed them, how could he know to tell the team that they were out by the flowers? that didn't make sense.

 

It also didn't make sense how he was able to get home covered in blood without being noticed and without leaving blood all over.

 

Another bone of contention is the visual hallucinations being associated with schizophrenia and the fact that Reid never once mentioned how rare it is for schizophrenics to actually get violent. Usually schizophrenics hear voices, but I think hallucinating and seeing people is another illness (but I could be wrong). 

 

I agree that Reid should have been more sympathetic because he could have ended up mentally ill and he knows how it affected his mother-- so when he was back at the BAU looking happy, it seemed odd. He was the only one who didn't seem bothered by having to do more work.

 

One teeny Reid info bit-- he seems to like mushrooms on his pizza.

 

I did like that Meg thought it was strange that the supposed mother was coming to pick them up, but I didn't like that she still got into the mini-van anyway. It was just stupid. Also, why the hell does Kate NOT have the gps thing on Meg's phone? Rossi's daughter put that tracking thing on his phone so she would know where he was-- it would make perfect sense for Kate to do the same with Meg given her line of work. And I don't care how much Meg would protest and say it meant she wasn't trusted-- it would be for her own safety. So to not have that is irresponsible of Kate, IMO.

 

It was rather disjointed, but I did enjoy some parts. I didn't hate the JJ parts, and despite the fact that JJ seemed to dominate the episode over the other team members, I thought that at least some of the contributions made sense to come from her. I just wish that they'd given Hotch more to do. The writers need to figure out how to balance the team and get contributions from everyone equally in a way that makes sense based on their expertise... and if that means they have to tweak the story so that each person has a contribution, then so be it. The team leader should not be disappearing for most of the episode like that.

 

I think I give this one a 5 out of 10. It lacked creativity, case was sloppy, lack of urgency, lack of Hotch, lack of Reid, and the mental illness part was not realistically handled. The acting is one of the saving graces of the episode and was the only reason I kept watching.

[Old Dog]

Just watched it. Bored. It seemed very like several episodes from the past cobbled together so we all knew all about it right from the start. The only time I was surprised when when the unsub gave up instead of shooting himself or being shot. Forgettable. And as for the Meg thing - they will have to pull some kind of mega rabbit out of their hat to get me interested in that!

[Bookish Jen]

15 minutes in. JJ is a mother! *drinks*

If I took a drink everytime CM mentioned "JJ IS A MOTHER. THE FIRST MOTHER TO EVER EXIST!!!!!" I'd probably need a liver transplant.

 

And apparently Hotch fell off the face of the earth.

 

I did have one moment of fun during last night's episode: When Morgan made the reference to Walter Payton (RIP) to the only "Sweetness" that mattered. That one line did manage to make me giggle.

 

If CM based on minor character on me, a character that has a sweet little flirtation with Reid, the viewers would probably ask, "Since when do hookers dress like a hipster version of a woman in a Renoir painting?"

Edited April 30, 2015 by Bookish Jen

[WordFreak]

Meh. This whole episode has pretty much been done before, as many others have noted here. After last week's awesomeness, this was rather subpar. Way too much unsub, and the case didn't make much sense. 

 

I did like the hooker hitting on Reid, and Reid looked good in the episode, but that's about all the positives I can think of.

 

Though I like Kate, I just can't muster up any enthusiasm or concern over what happens to her niece. I guess I'm getting tired of the season finales where a member of the team or someone connected to them is in peril, but the niece just seems so peripheral to the show that I'm really not invested in anything involving her.

 

Also, I guess Hotch is just fine and dandy now, even after the trauma he suffered in the last episode. Either that, or they'll someday tack on a PTSD episode for him, much like the one we got this season with JJ. The lack of rhyme or reason for events and plot lines on this show lately can be mind boggling sometimes.

[normasm]

I get so tired of being negative that it's hard for me to comment, which may be fine with everyone (OK, stop cheering now!), but when the episode is so bad, I have to say something. While my expectations were low, primarily because MGG and Breen broke the mold last week, I didn't expect the show to out-and-out fall to the ground. It had nearly everything that most of us (at least here) can't stand and have been vocal about - toomuchunsub, tooearlyunsub, Reidisonlyheretobeprettyhedoesntknowathingaboutschizophrenia, JJisamom, nobodycaresaboutKatesniece, wheresHotch, BAUdoesthejobofSWATagain  - and the story was a mashup of several episodes that were much better, as has been noted.

 

I guess i can point out some positives.

 

1)I thought JJ, although she was far too dominant in this episode, was more like her old self. I actually liked her going after the prostitute in the van. 

2)Reid's hair was perfect; i wish it could be cast in bronze this way, although then it wouldn't have that "flow…." but i digress.

3)I'm trying to think of a 3...

 

And I have to say the dustup that Virgil created when people said his episode wasn't very good was horribly unprofessional, and he ought to be ashamed of his childishness. My grandma would say, "That's just ugly."

[The Wild Sow]

All I could think of was, did somebody dust of the "Road Warrior" (aka "Normal") script?!  

 

Forgot all about "With Friends Like These", but yeah, that one too.

[zannej]

I think Virgil's reaction just made it all the more worse. This episode had the lowest ratings of the season and he's acting like fans don't have a right to complain about what he wrote.

 

I believe at least some of the writers do read CMRT-- so if anyone wants to read or comment:

http://criminalmindsroundtable.blogspot.com/2015/04/criminal-minds-season-10-1022_29.html

 

Normasm, you have very good points about the themes that many of us have said we don't need to see. We also didn't need to see him beating and shooting the victims.

[Danielg342]

Horrible, horrible, horrible. Maybe not the worst episode ever but it was close.
 
(I seem to have said that multiple times this season...what's going on here, CM?)
 
First, I didn't find anything really all that compelling. The UnSub was just pretty rote, being a knockoff of an UnSub I actually did enjoy- Ben Foster (With Friends Like These...)- plus I found this guy to rambling and incoherent for no apparent reason. Okay, so I got that he's after the killer of his mother, but why did he kill the other two girls he hallucinated were staying with him, and why did he hallucinate those girls to begin with? At least with Foster, we had his guilt over killing his friends accidentally, so he hallucinated that they were there with him all along. This guy? Sounds like Virgil Williams needed some women in this episode, so in those hallucinogens go.
 
Furthermore, he didn't have much of a "purpose". He sure claimed that he did, and acted like he did- but the results did not indicate that there was a purpose. He just seemed to shoot anyone indiscriminately, and imagined things just because, well, he "imagined" it happening. Yeah, he was supposed to be random- but even when you're random, the images that pop up in your head are things you have experienced or thought of before. He just seemed to go on strolls and imagine crimes just because he "felt" like it- there was no attempt to associate what he saw or where he went with his own experiences, and it could have been all tied in if the things he imagined and went to were somehow tied to his mother and her death. At least then his "randomness" would have made sense.
 
Second of all, I never did quite understand how the police "failed" the UnSub. Sure, he believed they didn't catch his mother's killer, but why did he think that they didn't do it? Did he one day examine how the investigation proceeded and believed the police were doing it all wrong? Did he discover a crucial piece of evidence that the police dismissed? Did he constantly go to the police station and saw them do nothing except eat doughnuts?
 
If I think about it, his descent into "vigilantism" doesn't make sense either- if all he was concerned about was avenging his mother's death, why would he care about rapists or muggers or prostitutes? To my knowledge, none of them had anything to do with his mother's death. At least with Jonny McHale he only went after a gang that murdered his girlfriend- he didn't "branch out" like this guy did. Had the UnSub developed a philosophy where the police's overall inadequacy led to his mother's death- perhaps in a story that examines the "broken windows" theory- then his turn to vigilantism would have made sense, since it would have been established that the police are idiots that can't be trusted. The way the story went, we were just "told" the UnSub didn't trust the police- we were never "shown" it.

 

(Another nitpick- why did he first kill people committing "actual" crimes but then switch to imagining that others are committing crimes when they weren't? Seems like Virgil desperately needed to get the BAU thinking "vigilante", so he lazily made his first victims actual criminals. Yet another example of lazy writing)

Thirdly- and I think most importantly- a familiar refrain popped up when watching this episode:

 

WHY, OH WHY, WAS THE BAU CALLED IN?

 

Sorry for the all-caps...but this had to have been the worst example of that glaring misstep. The case was so easy, there was no reason why the local police couldn't have handled it.

 

(Well, I guess it is the LAPD...but still...)

 

Not only was this guy random, he was reckless. Very reckless. He left witnesses behind. He wore the same kind of shirt. He had blood all over him. Fired the same gun. Never picked up the shell casings. Got up close and personal with a lot of his victims. Shot people in broad daylight. Walked around. Drew attention to himself by not paying attention to where he's going. Fired a lot of ammunition. Never did try to flee.

 

...and so on and so forth. Only thing he seemed to be aware of was not using his hands, but not even that would have been foolproof.

 

Pretty sure if someone lifted so much as a finger, this guy would have been caught already. No BAU needed.

 

(Oh wait, maybe Virgil made them stupid in this episode to show us why the UnSub didn't think the police were competent. Nice try, but it won't work. There was nothing in this episode to indicate that, in-universe, they were incompetent, since no attempt was made at presenting that as an actual theme, not even just a line from someone in the BAU about how the shoddy police work that was going on. Rather, the incompetence appears to come from Virgil simply failing to execute in his portrayal of the police)

 

Finally...Meg. I have yet find a reason to care. I guess it was good seeing that she finally developed a little bit of apprehension when seeing the minivan roll up, but still- none of that makes up for the many missteps she made before, missteps that I think as the daughter of a FBI agent who once worked undercover in sex trafficking would not actually do. This came up in the "Vents" thread, but I'll mention it here because it applies- there was someone who said, "at least we have a storyline that underlines how dangerous the Internet can actually be". That might actually be a positive, but I think it's still a hollow positive, since this story really doesn't present anything that's actually new. At this stage, Meg's story has been repeated thousands of times, and, worse, Meg's story really doesn't go much in depth into the "online predator" game at all- all the scenes we've been given look like they could be your rudimentary PSA about the dangers of meeting people online. In fact, I think an actual pamphlet or website on the dangers of online predators would be a better resource than the Meg story.

 

Worse...even though this story is one giant cliche, there was no attempt at a deeper exploration of why things were happening. I guess we'll have some more answers next week, but I think some of the questions left unanswered should have been answered before, central to them is why Meg's friend is just so into this boy? He's cute...so what? So are millions of other boys, yet Markayla is drawn to him. Is Markayla so insecure that she doesn't get any attention at all from the boys at her school (hard to believe, given the age range of those boys)? Does the "boy" know this and decided to use this against Markayla? Does Markayla find the boys she deals with to be boring, hence why she went online in the first place? Why did Meg want to talk to this boy as well? She's clearly the more reluctant of the pair to go on this date, and yet we have no idea why.

 

Bottom line...why should I care? Just because Markayla and Meg are young girls? Please...I shouldn't even need to go into how bad that kind of thinking is. It's the 21st century...just "being a girl" isn't enough to draw audience sympathy like it may have in the past. Besides, what little we do know of Meg and Markayla really doesn't make them at all sympathetic- Meg has shown no love or affection towards Kate, constantly bombarding her with scornful glares and statements, while Markayla is an immature, "pie-in-the-sky" dreamer who, dare I say it, seems "way too dumb to live". I just can't get invested in this story if I don't care about the potential victims, and I could really care less about those two.

 

If I had a chance to re-write this story, I would have had the first scene- and it doesn't even have to be a long one- between the two girls to involve Meg complaining to Markayla about how her aunt is "never around", perhaps believing- as almost all teens do at that age- that whenever she does see her aunt, she's too hard on her. Perhaps here we find out that Meg is going through all those hormonal changes that puberty brings and is really trying to wrestle with them (such as starting to like boys), and really wishes that she had her mother or her aunt to talk to about all this, because there's no way she could confide in Chris. Then perhaps we'd find out Markayla has similar issues with her parents (whom, as I understand, we have yet to even meet), who could be in a similar line of work (which is why the two of them seem to get babysat together)- which is why they turn to online chatrooms and meeting people online, because they fill a void in their "real" lives.

 

Or, even, perhaps Meg just misses her parents and actually has nothing against Kate. She may not be old enough to truly comprehend what happened to her parents and the ramifications behind it and going forward, but she is old enough to understand that something happened and that her parents are missing from her life. Thus, her going online is a manifestation of simply another way she deals with the fact she's missing arguably the most important people in her life, and there's nothing Kate can do to change that.

 

All of this would have been completely natural and wouldn't have made Kate look bad, because it's reality- and the show had a wonderful opportunity to explore said reality...and, like always, the show dropped the ball. Hard.

 

I know Kate liked to lament how she's never home, but it rings hollow, since we never saw the effects of that. In this respect, Hayley's story was much better done because even though we really only got the one time Hotch missed a special occasion (I forget what it was), we still at least got a sense that Hotch's busy life doesn't exist in a vacuum, whereas in Kate's situation, it seems to. Without Meg expressing some remorse or regret that she misses Kate and/or her parents, Kate's lamentations ring hollow, since there's no indication that the things she worries about are even happening. Perhaps we'll see that come out in the finale, but if you ask me, it's 23 episodes too late.

 

From here I could mention what I liked about the episode, which is:

 

...

 

Okay, just kidding. Reid's awkward smile at the compliment from the hooker was funny, and I thought the prostitute that lied nailed her emotions (JJ, on the other hand...). The whole "Sweetness" thing- from the Walter Payton (RIP) reference to the character himself and Rossi and Morgan's interrogation of him- was also pretty amusing, and the lead detective was pretty engaging.

 

Other than that...blah. A very, very, very big "Blah".

[Calamity Jane]

Quite disappointing after last week's episode.  And reminded me way too much of the Frankie Muniz one, also set in LA, right?  Is this the show's way of making commentary on SoCal?  Anyway, the two women confused me until I figured out they were hallucinations.  I agree with whoever above said that it would have been more interesting if the girl had been manipulating the unsub to do the killings.  To me it's another sign the show is running out of gas. 

[beowoof]

I'm really disappointed that the events of last week's episode weren't even mentioned. Hotch is one of my favorite characters, I want to know how he's doing. Since he was barely in this episode, they could have just cut him completely and had someone else say that he was at home because he needed to recover.

The other thing that bothered me about the episode is that when they were digging up the bodies, it seemed like they were buried in the front yard. It might have been the backyard but either way it was in full view of the neighbors. Someone should have noticed him burying them. And didn't they say that the unsub lived in his mother's building, which had other tenants. How would he move two bodies around without one of them noticing, especially if he's walking around with his hands covered in blood. It's the kind of thing I would ignore if I liked the rest of the story but since I didn't it stood out to me.

[zannej]

Did I mention that they had Reid walk right by the bouquet of flowers and not notice it and then told the people to dig in the wrong place so they could have JJ be the one to find the bouquet and tell them where to dig? WTF? Why did they have to make Reid look dumb? If they had not had Reid start them in the wrong place and had just had JJ finding the flowers, it wouldn't have bothered me.

[MCatry]

Did I mention that they had Reid walk right by the bouquet of flowers and not notice it and then told the people to dig in the wrong place so they could have JJ be the one to find the bouquet and tell them where to dig? WTF? Why did they have to make Reid look dumb? If they had not had Reid start them in the wrong place and had just had JJ finding the flowers, it wouldn't have bothered me.

Same old tactic of this team of writers: dumb everyone in the room to make the one favoured character look so bright it competes with the sun.

We've seen this before, and I'm afraid if there's a season eleven, this is not the last time we'll witness these type of scenes. Unfortunately.

[Droogie]

Did I mention that they had Reid walk right by the bouquet of flowers and not notice it and then told the people to dig in the wrong place so they could have JJ be the one to find the bouquet and tell them where to dig? WTF? Why did they have to make Reid look dumb? If they had not had Reid start them in the wrong place and had just had JJ finding the flowers, it wouldn't have bothered me.

OH YES. Come ON.

It was another highly-annoying aspect of a highly-annoying episode that really annoyed me.

[candall]

Geez, he dug up a double-wide grave in the front yard right next to the steps and nobody noticed?  Did he use a big yellow earth-mover from Rent-A-Tool, too?

 

Well, at least Casting did a good job.  There are any number of guys who look just like that, hanging around the parking lot of my local convenience store.  Big and beefy, sweaty, hoodie, pube-y beard, angry psycho eyes...

 

Yikes.

Edited May 1, 2015 by candall

[normasm]

Did I mention that they had Reid walk right by the bouquet of flowers and not notice it and then told the people to dig in the wrong place so they could have JJ be the one to find the bouquet and tell them where to dig? WTF? Why did they have to make Reid look dumb? If they had not had Reid start them in the wrong place and had just had JJ finding the flowers, it wouldn't have bothered me.

I guess i was holding on to consciousness by a thread by that point, so I didn't catch that when i watched. I really don't care to view it again to check it out. Did I mention this episode was underwhelming? *yawns*

[Setra]

One nitpick that nobody has mentioned yet (I think) - the Unsub shot his first 3 victims 13 times: full magazine and one in the chamber (paraphrasing Reid). Yet I heard 14 shots when the mugger was shot.

[MCatry]

so i finally had some time to kill and I half-watched this new episode while counting seconds to add to the sum of every character.

Most of my complaints have been already stated, so I won´t say much:

Just that this episode contained everything I hate:

- too much unsub, too much JJ, too much Morgan

- pc magic

- cheesy family moment

- dumbing down intelligent characters 

- favouring action over brains

- JJ and Morgan again showing up how fit they are (as if THAT would be a key asset for being part of the BAU).

 

All in all, this turned out to be as I expected to be. Which is pretty sad, really.

[Watermelon]

It seems like everyone knew the mother and girl were delusions, but up until the end, I was getting the impression the girl was the dominant encouraging him to kill people and stay off his meds.

 

That would have been at least more original than murdered delusions.

[Bookish Jen]

The more I think of this episode, the more pissed I get. "Protection" focused strongly on schizophrenia and hallucinations. If any two characters should have been front and center in this episode it should have been Spencer and Hotch. Spencer grew up with a schizophrenic mother and Hotch experienced seriously awful hallucinations. Instead, Spencer was merely wallpaper and Hotch fell off the face of the earth. I am so insulted for these two characters, Matthew and Thomas, and us-the viewers.

[Calamity Jane]

Maybe awful episodes like this one are worth it if every once in a while we get a perfect gem like last week's.  But it was pretty awful.  

[needschocolate]

Was there any profiling, other than the standard "he is a white male in his twenties"?  Okay I guess they figured out that he was schizophrenic - yet they seem to forget that when the go to arrest him. They know he is seeing evil where none of it exists, they know he has no trouble firing multiple shots, they think he may have hostages, yet they are yelling at him through the door instead of trying talk gently to him and get on his good side.  And, no, yelllng, "They have your mother's killer in San Diego, wanna go see him?" wouldn't be enough to get this guy to open the door.  Based on what we saw of him during the episode, he shold have assumed they were bad guys and kept shooting.  

 

My biggest nitpick is how they figured out who he was.  Garcia searches for mentally ill who were victims of violent crimes (would there really be a database of those names?).  When that doesn't help she narrows the  search to see if any of those mentally ill victims of violent crimes have relatives who are mentally ill (there cannot be a database of those names).  So they only found this guy because his mother was also mentally ill.  If she had no mental/emotional issues, they would still be searching for him.  

[Saje]

Doesn't Garcia create her own databases? Design her own algorithms?

 

I've always just assumed that her search parameters not only sought but gathered specific traits/tendencies/occurrences/histories etc., from multiple sources (like online blogs, old archives from publications, postal records, utility and credit card payments, library microfiche, medical records [supposed to be confidential but she's super hackstress so no problem], police reports, accident reports, weather reports... you get the idea], and lumped them all together for her. 

[ForeverAlone]

Yeah, but plenty of the information she pulls up is stuff that simply would not exist online. So no matter how good her homemade databases are, she would not be able to find some of that information. And in recent years, the show has dispensed with the idea that some information is not readily available without a warrant or a subpoena and not even pretending to follow the rule of law. She just goes and gets it with no second thoughts or consequences. But this show hasn't really respected the rule of law in years and seems to celebrate the idea of the team going rogue.

Edited May 11, 2015 by ForeverAlone

[Saje]

Understood. But wasn't the whole point of hiring her in the first place the fact that she was a hacker/coder and could compete with and keep abreast of the illegal online activity of the criminals. To meet them on their playing field and to stay if not one jump ahead, at least at pace with them?

 

I hear what you're saying about what would and wouldn't be available online. I do think however, that there's really no way to know that, unless we were operating at carte blanche levels, like Penelope.

 

I code, and even at my relatively low level I see many things that most people have no clue are available online.

[MCatry]

Doesn't Garcia create her own databases? Design her own algorithms?

 

I've always just assumed that her search parameters not only sought but gathered specific traits/tendencies/occurrences/histories etc., from multiple sources (like online blogs, old archives from publications, postal records, utility and credit card payments, library microfiche, medical records [supposed to be confidential but she's super hackstress so no problem], police reports, accident reports, weather reports... you get the idea], and lumped them all together for her.

No matter how fancy your databases may be designed, you still need to enter the data manually.

That's where Garcia's 'magic' becomes unrealistic. Most databases for regular people are not updated instantaneously, and most information she finds wouldn't worth the pay for the poor person in charge of entering data.

[Jack Sheet]

It was like episode 21 had never happened.  Where is the continuity?  Hotch now totally cured of his mind-rape like it never happened?