S14.E14: Sick and Evil

[Danielg342]

Original airdate: January 30, 2019.

Quote

The BAU travels to Maine to locate the unsub responsible for multiple murders inside houses that are supposedly haunted.

[Danielg342]

What can I say except that this- literally- put me to sleep? This tried to be a B-movie horror story and wound up just being "boring".

...but, hey, Janzy Paraiso was really great as Courteney. That's all, though.

[Annber03]

Yeah, this seemed like a really odd type of case for the team to be working. The idea itself was interesting-if there'd been more oomph to Stephanie's motive, that might've helped. I thought maybe she was either wanting to recreate all the murders that happened in those houses years prior, or wanted Courtney out of the way because she was butting in on her territory or something (though that wouldn't explain her reason for killing the other women). I also would've liked to learn more about the history between her and Patrick, especially since her meeting him led to her getting off her meds and quitting therapy. Her visions of him implied he was a controlling presence, that could've shown up more in her killing spree somehow. 

But yeah, I liked everything with Courtney, and her interactions with Rossi. The end scene on the plane was good, too, if perhaps a bit unsettling in terms of being possible foreshadowing. 

Next week looks QUITE intriguing. For all sorts of reasons. Hmmm. 

[mythoughtis]

I had given up paying attention by the airplane sequence, so I missed the end scene.  I feel like this has become the Prentiss, Luke and Rossi show.   I’m already tired of the Rossi is old and past his prime storyline.  

Interesting that our unsub wasn’t even on the radar until the last few minutes of the show. Turns out to be your basic mentally ill person who stopped taking their medication.  Oh, and with the high school bullying episodes. Can’t forget that.  

[Mysteyman]

I was enjoying it until they  told us  the killer’s identity at the  end of the second act.

note to any aspiring writers who might be reading this forum,

DON’T DO THAT!

[SSA Emily Prentiss]

14 hours ago, mythoughtis said:

I feel like this has become the Prentiss, Luke and Rossi show.  

Man ! If it's just as bad and lasts just as long as the JJ, Reid and Morgan show (and that's a big " If ", because I haven't watched since "Flesh and Blood"), then I can definitely relate to your pain. Definitely.

Edited January 31, 2019 by SSA Emily Prentiss

[Kelda Feegle]

Gosh that was dull, felt like a filler episode with no substance. I have to admit I was hoping blogger girl would get stabbed, she gave me the irrits. 

[Danielg342]

Another frustrating part about this episode is that Reid wasn't in it but he could have been used extensively. This was the perfect opportunity to have the Boy Genius spout about horror stories, the motivations behind them and how they shape these current legends.

I also think he and Courteney might have worked well together. Oh well.

[Mysteyman]

Yeah, I would have liked to see Reid Interpret the meaning of the mask.

The mask actually made me think of Gemini.

I missed Reid’s take on it.

[K42]

Wow, that was boring beyond words. 

[Hotchgirl18]

Yawn. I submitted job applications during this episode.

[Spooky Boo]

22 is my lucky number, that was kind of freaky. It was obvious the person who they wanted to blame wasn't the killer. It would have been nice had she thrown then off and then really had been the killer.

[Chaos Theory]

12 hours ago, Danielg342 said:

Another frustrating part about this episode is that Reid wasn't in it but he could have been used extensively. This was the perfect opportunity to have the Boy Genius spout about horror stories, the motivations behind them and how they shape these current legends.

I also think he and Courteney might have worked well together. Oh well.

Reid wasnt in this episode?  I didn’t notice.  

I liked parts of it.  Always like a female UnSub but it was kinda dull.

[Mystery]

This was strange. I kept finding myself pulled out of the story. Why would the mother of a child go up to confront someone? She'd grab the kid and run outside and call the police, I think. 

And I'm still puzzled by the emphasis on Rossi being sidelined by that guy from last week. That happens all the time. Why is it such a meaningful thing now? 

And since Stephanie took Courtney to that final house, why was Courtney Courtneysplaining the whole thing: just to tell the viewers what happened? That was a poor writing choice. They could have done it better by having Courtney tell the story into a tape recorder, for a ghost-hunting record. It didn't help, for me, that the writers had Courtney apologize for telling all the details. It still made no sense. 

Courtney sure got  lucky that suddenly Stephanie was terrible at stabbing people. 

As usual, it made me crazy to see Garcia able to access patient records and doctors' notes. 

[mamadrama]

As a paranormal mystery author, I was pulled in all kinds of directions in this one. On the one hand, I'm always in for haunted house stories-even when they're the B grade. However, this one didn't quite work as a haunted house story because they just kept tossing in the references as throwaway ideas. I enjoyed Courtney's character a lot, but my 11-year-old son came up with a better idea. He thought that she was killing people in the houses to have material for her blog (and as some kind of "proof" that ghosts exist). Then there was the plot hole...Rossi looks at Courtney and tells her that he needs to know all about local lore, as well as people who would be similar to Courtney in interests. Wouldn't the FIRST person she mentioned be the paranormal investigator that she kind of follows around? I know it would've been the end of the episode then, but it bothered me. I also thought it was funny that Courtney put the houses together before the Dream Team did. 

 

At least this time they weren't like, "Hey Garcia! Look up every man whose first name has the letter 'A' in it and then separate that group into everyone who hates the color orange."

Edited February 2, 2019 by mamadrama

[Welcome5431]

Should Luke have looked in the back of the ruled notebook when asked about the unsub’s most recent entry.
The *Maine thing that the episode accomplished was a nod to Stephen King’s spooky settings 

[SSA Emily Prentiss]

19 hours ago, Mystery said:

And I'm still puzzled by the emphasis on Rossi being sidelined by that guy from last week. That happens all the time. Why is it such a meaningful thing now ?

That's the million dollar question for me too. The one I've been asking myself ever since I've read the reviews and comments about "Chameleon". Good to see I'm not the only one who finds it puzzling. It makes me wonder if I should watch that episode after all to see if I could find the answer.

Edited February 2, 2019 by SSA Emily Prentiss

[Calvada]

Lewiston, Maine, with a population of just over 35,000, has almost a dozen houses with a violent past that are considered to be haunted?  If this was so well known, why couldn't the local police figure out this connection between the murders?   But apparently the locals are so incompetent that Garcia can get the 911 call and the BAU responds before the local police get there.  I found that really unbelievable.  Also ridiculous was the "suspicious" behavior of the local blogger by showing up at a crime scene.  In a city that size, the fact that a third violent murder within a week had occurred would be known very quickly.

And if I've ever been stabbed, am bleeding from multiple wounds, and as I'm being loaded into the ambulance, any law enforcement officer who tries to stop me to have a meaningful conversation will be told to fuck off!  I sure as hell hope my community doesn't have EMTs who would silently acquiesce to a delay in getting victims of attempted homicide to the hospital.  

[ForeverAlone]

For me, this was another episode that had a promising start, but didn't quite stick the landing. I liked the creepy/haunted house premise with murderous histories. I did take issue with the notion that the police had zero understanding of the history of these homes, but it is another example of the local LEO doing very little in the way of prior police work, and just calling the BAU from the outset. I mean, if that town has a history of violent murders (stretched out over years, but still...), there was nothing about the initial murders that necessitated the presence of the BAU. I thought the episode could have made better use of Courtney's involvement, because we didn't see much in the way she contributed. At least, you would think that the BAU might have shared a bit of the profile with her, since she would have run in the same circle as the unsub. But the writing had Courtney just blunder into a final victim scenario that required BAU rescue. And then it just ended with a sudden kill shot to Stephanie. I knew Patrick was a delusion from the get go. All in all, it was an interesting episode, but I would have tweaked the writing a bit more.