S12.E10: Seek and Destroy

[smoker]

people who is watching only to see their fav character, usually drop the show or they are pretty vocal. This has happened since season 6.

If MGG had departed the show last year, instead of SM, I don't think it had been a huge damage for the show. Nowadays, there are a lot of changes and the show isn't being more popular, it may be renewed, because it doesn't need much viewers to survive, but it's not going to get better either.

Anyway, this is only a speculation, and the mystery around Reid's future will be good for the ratings, that's for sure.

Edited January 13, 2017 by smoker

[Droogie]

26 minutes ago, Old Dog said:

Also I'm not a big fan of Prentiss since she returned - she overacts.

While I agree with everything you said -- bc what a social media darling our MGG is, this sticks out.  Love PB, love the character of Emily.  Still willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.  But geez-o-whiz, she chews the heck out of the scenery now.  Hoping she will settle in and get more comfortable, act like she used to.

[MMC]

48 minutes ago, Droogie said:

Agreed.  The comments I saw on social media for this ep all amounted to "Where's Spencer?" With promises to stop watching altogether if he is gone.

And yet so far where FaceBook and Twitter are concerned they don't seem to be doing a damn thing to reassure the fans of his return. Instead they are promoting Tatum Oneal's up and coming appearance. And she isn't set till episode 16 for crying out loud. 

Edited January 13, 2017 by MMC
spelling correction

[Droogie]

When I think of Tatum O'Neal, I remember her accounting of Farrah Fawcett's funeral.  Apparently her father (Ryan) was pretty drunk.  Tatum I guess hadn't seen him in awhile.  And he tried to pick her up.

I always thought Ryan O'Neal was pretty icky.  That kinda confirmed it.

Edited January 13, 2017 by Droogie

[JMO]

I wonder if PB is feeling the weight of her role right now.  I've always thought she gave some of the best line deliveries, but I agree that her speech has been too forced, and her demeanor too dour (is it inherent in the unit chief?) since her return.  She always played well off Morgan, who is gone.  And Hotch, who is gone.  She did well with Rossi, but he's not quite the same this season, either.  I used to love her relationship with Reid but, so far, all we've gotten has been the scene with him crying.  Why?  BECAUSE THERE ARE TOO MANY PEOPLE IN THIS CAST!

I believe CM may have gained some viewers attracted by the focus on the women, and by the various newbies.  But I don't think the gains are significant in comparison to the numbers of long time viewers who would like to watch the show they remember, nor have they compensated for the viewers lost through  attrition, or through the loss of two key characters.  The ratings are in slow decline, as is expected for an aging show.  Character losses are factored into those expectations.  

Don't know what to make of the discrepant findings on twitter, except to note that one would have to look under every possible permutation of a hashtag, and who has time for that?  The social media I saw was largely disparaging of the episode, and eagerly awaiting the return of one Spencer Reid.

[MMC]

JMO I would just bet you that the vitriol the actress got from many in the Hotch fandom had to have taken a toll on her. Now in no ways do I feel she deserved to be dumped on like that. However I can't help but feel had she'd been willing to let bygone be bygones, and yes I know she was treated pretty shabbily, but so was AJC, and had stayed with the show or at the very least had return to the show a couple of season or so back this wouldn't be such an issue for her.

I too have a hard time warming up to the character these days. And it breaks my heart because Emily Prentiss was once my favorite female character. Not to mention that Paget and Matthew are close friends in real life and that she is married to one of his best friends.

[secnarf]

3 hours ago, MsJayTee said:

Wouldn't Reid and Rossi be the easiest to write out? Rossi is obviously past retirement age, and Reid obviously has family obligations, and he doesn't have the specialities that Alvarez and Walker do.

Specialties? What specialties? And isn't his name Alvez?

The only one who seems to have a 'specialty' is Tara, but it's not really used often, particularly because she's not there often. Reid's 'specialty' has been reduced to reciting wikipedia verbatim, and what can Walker do that Emily can't?

I think the only person who it would be difficult to write out and not replace is Garcia. The rest of them are interchangeable enough that they could all be written off with little difficulty, and without really changing anything about the show.

[MCatry]

Finally catching Up with criminal minds...

All I'm gonna say is I wish I could un-see this.

?

[smoker]

I think Prentiss problem is that she was already bad written in season 11 episode, and now, instead of taking advantage of her experience as chief in another law enforcement abroad, they are giving her lines they could have written for Hotch. Aside of PB looking uncomfortable in Prentiss new skin, she doesn't have anything to work with.  I hope she is getting a lot of money, after the way she was treated by the brass.

Edited January 14, 2017 by smoker

[thewhiteowl]

Snark the show or writers but not your fellow posters. Use the handy ignore feature or scroll by. 

You've been warned.

[Autistic Queer]

Sorry I didn't mean to ask anyone to justify their opinion, it was just curiousity. 

It is Alvez not Alvarez, I've been watching too much One Day at a Time (that's the family's name on that show)! Isn't he a specialist in tracking escaped prisoners? The new guy was with the BAP, which as I understand is much more about operational support, which is something none of the others have?

[Danielg342]

I believe the bigger issue on this show is that the writers often forget about the agents' specialties and write them to be all "mini-Reids" who know everything there is to know about everything and believe assigning them a "quirk" is enough to differentiate them (if they even get a quirk).

Yeah, Luke Alvez is a fugitive chaser, but I haven't really seen those skills in action. It gets really glaring in an episode like "Profiling 202" when that UnSub was on the loose but Alvez was nowhere to be seen- Rossi wound up finding him. In this one, we had a gang of teenage misfits on the run, perfect for someone of Alvez's supposed instincts, and yet the writers don't feel the need to think, "maybe the team should ask Luke what he thinks?"

It used to be that Reid was the one who knew obscure facts and could recite various different procedures, Morgan was the one who "play-acted" the UnSub to understand his actions, Elle was the tough but personable one, and Gideon was the one who put it all together, while Hotch supervised.

Then it became Reid maintaining his knowledge, Morgan became the skeptic, Prentiss picked up Elle's bit, JJ had her media thing, Garcia had her computer to look things up, Rossi helped keep the team together, Hotch supervised and they all brainstormed together to put it all together.

Yeah, it was all very simplistic...but at least you had a sense what each character brought to the table each week.

Now? Unless the actors are invested in their roles- like Matthew Gray Gubler, Adam Rodriguez and Kirsten Vangsness- you're not noticing the characters anymore. I don't know if this was an Erica Messer thing or an actor thing (where no one wanted to feel "out of place"), but it seems to me the writers are consciously trying to "make everything even" and make sure there's no one who "overpowers" another character, at least over the course of a season.

In truth, there isn't too much wrong with the "everyone's a genius" structure, aside from the bland characterization. This was always supposed to be a show about the crimes and understanding the criminals who committed them, so if the show made a decision to focus on the cases and not on the characters, it's not necessarily too bad a thing.

Unfortunately, when you get a clunker like this, where the writing is all over the place and the acting subpar, everything else that's wrong rears its ugly head.

[zannej]

I've been trying to think what would have made this a better episode.

• The unsubs should have taken some sort of forensic countermeasures-- wiping things up, making sure they didn't leave hair, prints or bodily fluids-- because otherwise this was pretty much a case that could have been solved by the CSIs. They must have left hair, prints, and probably spit (on the beverage cans/bottles) all over the place.
• Much less focus on the unsubs. They should have been a mystery-- remained hooded- and when we did see them in action, it could have been as the team imagined how things were done.
• There should have been more victimology. Show the interviews with the distraught family members of the victims (or at least show the family members-- I don't remember them doing that much). Maybe interview a co-worker.
• They should have canvassed the neighborhood and we could have gotten some info from neighbors.
• The break could have come when they devolved, got sloppy, and left some evidence at the scene-- like a print that could be used to trace one of them that was then used to identify the guy and then they would try to trace his known associates.
• Or maybe one victim could have escaped and told their story to the police so they would know more about the dynamics.
• That whole mess at the end with the unsubs parents was just a mess. Not sure how to fix that.
• They could have mentioned Tara and Reid to acknowledge that they still exist but just weren't there.

Any other ideas?

[Bookish Jen]

13 minutes ago, Danielg342 said:

I believe the bigger issue on this show is that the writers often forget about the agents' specialties and write them to be all "mini-Reids" who know everything there is to know about everything and believe assigning them a "quirk" is enough to differentiate them (if they even get a quirk).

Yeah, Luke Alvez is a fugitive chaser, but I haven't really seen those skills in action. It gets really glaring in an episode like "Profiling 202" when that UnSub was on the loose but Alvez was nowhere to be seen- Rossi wound up finding him. In this one, we had a gang of teenage misfits on the run, perfect for someone of Alvez's supposed instincts, and yet the writers don't feel the need to think, "maybe the team should ask Luke what he thinks?"

It used to be that Reid was the one who knew obscure facts and could recite various different procedures, Morgan was the one who "play-acted" the UnSub to understand his actions, Elle was the tough but personable one, and Gideon was the one who put it all together, while Hotch supervised.

Then it became Reid maintaining his knowledge, Morgan became the skeptic, Prentiss picked up Elle's bit, JJ had her media thing, Garcia had her computer to look things up, Rossi helped keep the team together, Hotch supervised and they all brainstormed together to put it all together.

Yeah, it was all very simplistic...but at least you had a sense what each character brought to the table each week.

Now? Unless the actors are invested in their roles- like Matthew Gray Gubler, Adam Rodriguez and Kirsten Vangsness- you're not noticing the characters anymore. I don't know if this was an Erica Messer thing or an actor thing (where no one wanted to feel "out of place"), but it seems to me the writers are consciously trying to "make everything even" and make sure there's no one who "overpowers" another character, at least over the course of a season.

In truth, there isn't too much wrong with the "everyone's a genius" structure, aside from the bland characterization. This was always supposed to be a show about the crimes and understanding the criminals who committed them, so if the show made a decision to focus on the cases and not on the characters, it's not necessarily too bad a thing.

Unfortunately, when you get a clunker like this, where the writing is all over the place and the acting subpar, everything else that's wrong rears its ugly head.

Yes to your entire post! CM used to be a palatable potluck of prudent and pensive profiling provisions.

Now it is a provincial porridge of purposeless, perfunctory, and pedestrian pabulum.

[ReidFan]

18 minutes ago, zannej said:

I've been trying to think what would have made this a better episode.

<<legitimate list deleted for space conservation

Any other ideas?

yeah, delete this idea and write a better episode..............

[autumnmountains]

14 minutes ago, ReidFan said:

yeah, delete this idea and write a better episode..............

Amen!

Hmm. . .ideas. . .

• better reason for Bea
• way less unsub
• mentioning Reid and Tara
• No Garcia's magic computer
• not seeing unsub until the team solves it using profiling

In short everything that's already been discussed. I think Reidfan is correct, I don't really think this episode could be saved or redeemed.

[ReidFan]

to be fair, there was one really really good redeeming factor in this episode:  Reid wasn't in it, ergo he wasn't sullied by this drek :D

[autumnmountains]

11 minutes ago, ReidFan said:

to be fair, there was one really really good redeeming factor in this episode:  Reid wasn't in it, ergo he wasn't sullied by this drek :D

haha true.

[Danielg342]

1 hour ago, Bookish Jen said:

Yes to your entire post! CM used to be a palatable potluck of prudent and pensive profiling provisions.

Now it is a provincial porridge of purposeless, perfunctory, and pedestrian pabulum.

Thank you. :) I think I will borrow your wonderful quote.

1 hour ago, zannej said:

Any other ideas?

Redo the episode? My specialty.

For me, it's actually pretty simple- ditch the gang and focus on a single UnSub, Bea. I think Stevie Lynn Jones was great enough to have an episode for herself, and doing it that way would have made a more compelling story.

It also wouldn't require changing much of the fundamentals- this episode was supposed to be about Bea lashing out against her parents for abandoning her, so changing the episode to focus on her benefits that story better. Bea also had the perfect ruse- pretending to be in need- which allowed her to gain her victim's trust which eventually allowed her to overpower them. Add some stalking- so she'd know which houses are the best targets- and a cell phone jammer to prevent the husband from calling the police and she could easily kill the families and escape with loot, especially considering Bea is incredibly efficient.

Perhaps in this story Bea is a runaway and lives on the streets- maybe out of a stolen car- where the "gang" becomes her "family" for whom she provides for with the good she steals from her victims. Perhaps this makes them protective of Bea, making them refuse to talk to the authorities, so the BAU needs to come in and use their interview tactics to unlock what they're hiding. Maybe then, eventually, someone cracks out of remorse and tells the team all about Bea, and this snitch feels bad about it because Bea gives them hope. Maybe then the team feels somewhat sorry for arresting Bea, because she's become a modern day "Robin Hood" with a kind heart that had been stomped on by people who were supposed to take care of her.

Perhaps you even make the families Bea victimizes as "a-hole victims" who are too wrapped up in their greed and you can have an episode where you can really ask the questions about who truly *is* the bad guy in this episode.

[katisha]

I wasn't particularly gripped by the episode, except that I spent quite a lot of it racking my brains to work out where I'd seen Stevie Lynn Jones, and finally it came to me.  She may get typecast as spoilt brat teen headcases because she was in a fairly recent SVU episode playing a character who was pretty much Lindsay Lohan.