S01.E12: El Toro Bravo

[thewhiteowl]

Quote

The IRT heads to Pamplona, Spain, for the running of the bulls, where the ears of a missing American tourist are found.

[blackwing]

I thought this episode was pretty decent, although I have some nits/questions that I suppose will have to be handwaved away.

How did they know the first set of ears was Clint's ears?  They didn't mention DNA testing or anything.  Clint went missing, they found some ears, and it was immediately stated that they found Clint's ears.  Why couldn't they have belonged to another missing person?

I felt very uncomfortable watching Garrett try to get the killer's identity from the priest.  As the priest said, Garrett is Catholic and should be well aware of the confidentiality of things said in confession.  The fact that the priest gave clues to Garrett in code doesn't make it any better.  The priest knew the FBI would pick up on his clues.  He all but gave them the name.

[BooksRule]

I agree that this episode was pretty decent, although the amount of gore shown (mainly in the scenes where the guy was grinding up the victim and then feeding the remains to the bull) reminded me of original 'Criminal Minds'.  

I don't know much about bullfighting, but when they said that ears had been found, I immediately guessed that the unsub(s) had to be involved with the bullfighting industry somehow (they turned out to be breeders, I think).  Didn't the bullfighter used to cut the ears off of the bull after the fight as a trophy?

[Lebanna]

Again, it is ridiculous that in all of Spain, and especially in Pamplona, we are expected to believe that there was no one who could figure out for over a year that cutting off someone's ears with a knife in the middle of their famous bull festival might just possibly have something to do with the traditional cutting off of the bull's ears at a bull fight.

And in an advanced Western European country, there is no team of forensic scientists capable of figuring out the kind of knife used to kill the victims - no, they just sling the ears in a drawer and leave them there until the FBI show up and immediately work all this stuff out, despite having no idea about the local bull related culture or traditions.

This kind of rubbish is why this show continues to suck. The story might even be ok, but the level of stupidity is such that it's impossible to ignore.

I also noticed the random accents (all from various parts of Latin America except the detective - IMDB says he's actually Swiss, so I guess he did quite well.) And, really, set department, you couldn't resist having wild succulents growing out of cracks in the walls of buildings in flipping Pamplona. Did they even look at a picture of Pamplona? It's basically got the climate of Southern France. Not exactly cactus country. 

Step it up, show.

[ForeverAlone]

I do like the fact that the profile wasn't set from the beginning, but it constantly evolved as the team got more information. They didn't get it right the first couple times, but the more they learned about the crimes, the more they refined their profile. 

But yeah, the initial start to this episode was weak in the sense that they would not have known those ears were Clint's, so there was no real reason to call in the FBI in the first place.

And yes, even though I am a lapsed Catholic, I didn't like the way Garrett was trying to weasel information out of the priest. I see it all the time in movies and TV where the cops always manage to get confidential information from priests. It's a narrative cheat in my opinion.