S14.E07: Twenty Seven

[illdoc]

It's literally a race against the clock for the BAU to capture the vigilantes behind a series of attacks taking place every 27 minutes in the nation's capital. Prentiss and Unit Chief Andrew Mendoza lead the effort to identify...

 

Okay, once they figured out that the 911 calls were coming every 27 minutes, why did no one say "why not 24 or 28? what's the significance of 27?" (Emily did say it, but it wasn't until after they had a suspect in custody) Granted, until they figured out why the first victim was chosen & the identity of the suspect in custody, there was no way to figure out "why 27", but the moment they did, Garcia should have been immediately looking for a "27" connection, instead of waiting for Emily to tell her to do so! Incidentally, JJ, when you were helping resuscitate that victim and the bystander kept filming, sure, you kept saying "FBI. Stop filming", but once the EMTs arrived, all you did was stand around while the guy kept filming! You should have grabbed the phone out of his hand! BTW, Emily's "we need to stop this feed" and dispatching the cop/love interest to do it did no good--the feed was never stopped, since the rest of the BAU was able to watch the guy die. No "are you ok, Reid? JJ? You did all you could" from Emily either---part of whose job is to make sure her team is ok. And, on the subject of "27 minutes"...they kept restarting their timers, so they knew how long until the next victim. However, a good 5 (or more) minutes had passed before they would start their timer!!!

[JackONeill]

If nothing else, looks like Emily has her a man!

[Annber03]

I liked this episode. The "real time" format gave it some really good tension and urgency, and I always like it when the show does an episode that goes off the typical formula/episode format. I also liked the scene where they went back and forth between Reid's attempts to revive that guy and Luke trying to hunt down the unsubs, and the various contributions and observations each team member made. The unusual types of clues they had to work with were interesting, too (like the neighborhoods the victims were found in). 

And as obviously scary as the types of attacks Marcus and James committed were, I also still felt for them with their clear and deep grief over the loss of their brother. I sympathized with their anger and frustration over the whole "response time" thing as well. It's a problem that does deserve to be addressed more in general. 

I agree that it would've been good to get a comment from Reid on being unable to save that guy he was trying to help-didn't have to be a big angsty thing, but maybe he noticed something while trying to help him that could've added to the investigation, or maybe remark on how even the relatively quicker response time from the EMTs still wasn't enough to save him, or something of that sort. And I fully agree that JJ or somebody else should've shooed away that idiot trying to film that moment. I also think it would've been interesting to see Luke contribute in another way while adhering to his punishment, simply 'cause I'd like to see that storyline last a few episodes, see how he really deals with it and how restless he might eventually get or whatever. 

But those little issues aside, I thought this was a strong episode overall. Also, Mendoza seems like a cool guy and I'm all for Emily wanting to go out with him :D. 

[UncleChuck]

OK, so I get it that Emily took Luke off of his "desk duty" to give some needed help in the field for this one time, but I also thought that part of his punishment was demotion from Supervisory Special Agent to Special Agent.  Yet, Luke clearly identified himself at one point at "SSA Alvez".

Bad boy, Luke, you can't just decide what rank you want to be...

[The Wild Sow]

4 hours ago, Annber03 said:

I also liked the scene where they went back and forth between Reid's attempts to revive that guy

 

4 hours ago, Annber03 said:

I agree that it would've been good to get a comment from Reid on being unable to save that guy he was trying to help-

He'd have had better luck saving him if he were doing the CPR correctly!  What's with those bent elbows?  Straight arms, Reid, straight arms!  Don't they have, I dunno, technical advisers for stuff like that??

 

4 hours ago, JackONeill said:

If nothing else, looks like Emily has her a man!

Oh yeah, I mostly just came here to say:   "Prentiss has a Boyfriend!  Prentiss has a Boyfriend!"

[kismac]

14 minutes ago, The Wild Sow said:

 

He'd have had better luck saving him if he were doing the CPR correctly!  What's with those bent elbows?  Straight arms, Reid, straight arms!  Don't they have, I dunno, technical advisers for stuff like that??

Yeah, keep the arms straight, and speed it up dude! And what's with JJ just watching? CPR is HARD (when done right), and there's a reason why you're supposed to trade out after 2 minutes. I would assume that superstar JJ (gag) would know CPR and be able to tag in.

[Hotchgirl18]

2 hours ago, UncleChuck said:

OK, so I get it that Emily took Luke off of his "desk duty" to give some needed help in the field for this one time, but I also thought that part of his punishment was demotion from Supervisory Special Agent to Special Agent.  Yet, Luke clearly identified himself at one point at "SSA Alvez".

Bad boy, Luke, you can't just decide what rank you want to be...

Maybe Prentiss got desperate and promoted him and lifted his punishment? Lol.

7 hours ago, illdoc said:

It's literally a race against the clock for the BAU to capture the vigilantes behind a series of attacks taking place every 27 minutes in the nation's capital. Prentiss and Unit Chief Andrew Mendoza lead the effort to identify...

 

Okay, once they figured out that the 911 calls were coming every 27 minutes, why did no one say "why not 24 or 28? what's the significance of 27?" (Emily did say it, but it wasn't until after they had a suspect in custody) Granted, until they figured out why the first victim was chosen & the identity of the suspect in custody, there was no way to figure out "why 27", but the moment they did, Garcia should have been immediately looking for a "27" connection, instead of waiting for Emily to tell her to do so! Incidentally, JJ, when you were helping resuscitate that victim and the bystander kept filming, sure, you kept saying "FBI. Stop filming", but once the EMTs arrived, all you did was stand around while the guy kept filming! You should have grabbed the phone out of his hand! BTW, Emily's "we need to stop this feed" and dispatching the cop/love interest to do it did no good--the feed was never stopped, since the rest of the BAU was able to watch the guy die. No "are you ok, Reid? JJ? You did all you could" from Emily either---part of whose job is to make sure her team is ok. And, on the subject of "27 minutes"...they kept restarting their timers, so they knew how long until the next victim. However, a good 5 (or more) minutes had passed before they would start their timer!!!

Yeah, but remember JJ and Emily are about as useful as a peanut butter jar. 

[The Wild Sow]

2 hours ago, kismac said:

Yeah, keep the arms straight, and speed it up dude! And what's with JJ just watching? CPR is HARD (when done right), and there's a reason why you're supposed to trade out after 2 minutes. I would assume that superstar JJ (gag) would know CPR and be able to tag in.

She tried to relieve him.  He refused.  But that was some bad CPR!

[kismac]

12 hours ago, The Wild Sow said:

She tried to relieve him.  He refused.  But that was some bad CPR!

I thought she was telling him "enough", as in stop trying. But yeah, maybe she was trying to tag in. As a nurse, I HATE seeing CPR done so badly on television, because I worry about whether lay people will think that's right and try it in a time of emergency. No, you can't do actual CPR on an actor, because injury will result, but for those scenes, just throw in a dummy.

[athelyna]

I think I've just become immune to bad CPR, because pretty much every show seems to do it the same way - actor puts hands somewhere on extras chest and proceeds to do pushups rather than straight armed compressions.  And I thought I heard JJ offer to swap out and Reid refuse.

I know it's a show about the BAU and they're our leads and need to look like big damn heroes in the end, but does anyone really believe that if it had been Matt or Luke or even Reid or JJ giving themselves over to the guy at the end that they wouldn't have found a way to overpower the unsub during the transfer or break his hold once he had them.  But it was random FBI love interest, so even though he was a similar size to the unsub and should theoretically have some sort of hand to hand training he gets his stomach sliced open and needs Emily to save him.  And I know, the unsub had a machete and FBI love interest was unarmed, but I guess I've seen too many shows have the good guy defeat a bad guy with a knife to find it believable anymore.  I also found it kind of crazy the unsub actually went for the swap, because swapping a smaller, young civilian woman for a larger male federal agent does not equal maintaining control in the situation.

Obviously our unsubs weren't exactly thinking logically, but I wonder if any response time might have been quick enough.  With the victim Reid and JJ couldn't say I thought one of the paramedics said something about he must have hit an artery.  The likelihood of survival depends as much on the injury actually inflicted as response time, so I have to wonder if the brother actually took 27 minutes to die or if he was past the point of saving within a couple minutes.

[Mystery]

I liked the chemistry between Emily and "her man," but I hated his long speech at the end about how great she was, how he'd heard about how great she was but now he's seen it and man, she's really great. This show does a lot of telling, when showing should be enough. HIs character messed up the evacuation of the students, anyway; the others were quietly giving students a glimpse of their badge and telling them to move away, while his was making a lot of commotion that got the killer's attention. I guess he had to, to serve the story. 

[Danielg342]

I won't have too much to say because there really isn't much to say.

I could go over the nuts and bolts of the case, but the reality is...this is about as unrealistic as you can get. I mean, I get that after 14 years the show doesn't want to do the same old cookie cutter serial killer...but a killer as ridiculous as this one makes me long for the old days when serial killers were nothing but straight up killers who hunted women with their hair parted to the side just because they represented a scorned ex-lover.

Not these ridiculous omnivores who seem to kill at random and act like no one would ever do in real life, forcing the team to make leaps of logic that are way too "on the button" just so the writers can claim they actually laid clues for the crime.

Oh, and for a crime any novice detective could have solved. Do any detectives do any work in the CM world or do they just have the BAU on speed dial?

If so, sign me up for that job.

Other things:

• I did like Agent Mendoza, played by Stephen Bishop. He and Prentiss seem to have actual chemistry, so I'm curious to see where this is going.
• So Luke spends all of...half an episode stuck in the office before Prentiss decides to send him back in the field and even allow him to make an arrest. Some benching that was.
• I might not be as hard on Garcia's outfits as some are here because I think the character now has faults that are much worse, but I gotta say those cat ears were the pinnacle of ridiculousness. Forget about getting into the FBI- how in the world would any workplace accept that ridiculousness?
  • Corollary: why was Garcia horrified that the victims were kidnapped? Uh, you've been doing this job for 14 years...should anything surprise you?
• Good to see Reid actually getting some screen time instead of the usual "dominate an episode, disappear for the rest" that seemed to happen before. The only problem is that he's just spouting lines any other agent could spout- the Reid just isn't there anymore.

[Hotchgirl18]

1 hour ago, Danielg342 said:

I won't have too much to say because there really isn't much to say.

I could go over the nuts and bolts of the case, but the reality is...this is about as unrealistic as you can get. I mean, I get that after 14 years the show doesn't want to do the same old cookie cutter serial killer...but a killer as ridiculous as this one makes me long for the old days when serial killers were nothing but straight up killers who hunted women with their hair parted to the side just because they represented a scorned ex-lover.

Not these ridiculous omnivores who seem to kill at random and act like no one would ever do in real life, forcing the team to make leaps of logic that are way too "on the button" just so the writers can claim they actually laid clues for the crime.

Oh, and for a crime any novice detective could have solved. Do any detectives do any work in the CM world or do they just have the BAU on speed dial?

If so, sign me up for that job.

Other things:

• I did like Agent Mendoza, played by Stephen Bishop. He and Prentiss seem to have actual chemistry, so I'm curious to see where this is going.
• So Luke spends all of...half an episode stuck in the office before Prentiss decides to send him back in the field and even allow him to make an arrest. Some benching that was.
• I might not be as hard on Garcia's outfits as some are here because I think the character now has faults that are much worse, but I gotta say those cat ears were the pinnacle of ridiculousness. Forget about getting into the FBI- how in the world would any workplace accept that ridiculousness?
  • Corollary: why was Garcia horrified that the victims were kidnapped? Uh, you've been doing this job for 14 years...should anything surprise you?
• Good to see Reid actually getting some screen time instead of the usual "dominate an episode, disappear for the rest" that seemed to happen before. The only problem is that he's just spouting lines any other agent could spout- the Reid just isn't there anymore.

Prentiss talks tough, but we all know she wasn't gonna enforce shit. Get Mendoza in as the BAU chief. Stat!! He might be able to fix that team in no time. 

[secnarf]

Add me to the list of people annoyed/concerned about the horrid CPR Reid was doing. Most people have only ever seen CPR done on TV. If they ever tried to do it on a real person like that, they'd do more harm than good. The CPR was so ineffective that it wasn't even causing the guy to bleed out through his wounds! (Seriously, I've seen CPR on a person with deep wounds, and it doesn't go well - you end up circulating all of the blood out through the wounds). I did hear JJ try to take over for Reid though, and he refused, insisting he was fine. That's dangerous as well, but I've seen it happen IRL.

I felt for the unsubs, but the plot seemed extreme. I kept feeling like I was missing something.

[Danielg342]

4 hours ago, secnarf said:

I felt for the unsubs, but the plot seemed extreme. I kept feeling like I was missing something.

Reminds me a little of "Lo-fi/Mayhem" where the Unsubs were also interested in first response times. That one was a bit of a mess too.

I felt like the UnSubs didn't behave believably. Just the logistics of kidnapping someone, bringing them to a different part of town and then slicing them open within the space of half an hour was nonsensical, especially considering the city was on lockdown. I'm also not sure how the leap was made to deduce the UnSubs were after first responders anyway- other than "27 minutes", they just seemed like random attacks.

This would have worked better if they held hostage a 9-1-1 office or if the UnSubs worked the media, especially the latter. These guys were about sending a message about society- why didn't they bother to work the traditional media or social media is beyond me.