Criminal Minds

Criminal Minds - Season Eight Episode Thirteen - Magnum Opus

The team head to San Francisco where several bodies have been found in the Mission District completely drained of blood.  I know what you're thinking first thought vampires but no the killer is not a twi-hard and in fact is an aspiring artist.  While the team is hard at work Reid is grieving for the loss of his girlfriend and the team do their best to help however they can.  Morgan manages to encourage Reid out of hiding by asking his advice on the case.  It was an appropriate episode to follow up last week and showed Reid starting to heal.

Criminal Minds - Season Eight Episode Twelve - Zugzwang

When Reid discovers his girlfriend has been abducted the team come together to try and find her before it is too late.  This was an interesting episode as Reid was so emotionally invested in the case that he could not think straight and admits himself that he is the dumbest person in the room right now.  I really liked the relationship that was developing between Reid and Maeve and thought it was an interesting narrative to explore to have someone on Reid's level.  Maybe it was because I wanted a happy ending but I really didn't see the end coming and when it did I was still in denial as I kept thinking no way.  It was so heartbreaking but the narrative was told really well with a great performance from Matthew Gray Gubler.  

Criminal Minds - Season Eight Episode Eleven - Perrenials

This week the BAU headed down South in order to track and apprehend a mobile killer whose signature matches that of a serial killer thirty years earlier.  After they solve the case though Rossi and Hotch tell the rest of the team that they will be working a new case while they go about their usual day to day activities as someone is copying the crimes of solved BAU cases.  One death matches The Silencer and the other matches the killer signature from episode four where the victim had their leg replaced with one from someone else.  It was an interesting episode and set up a narrative that I would imagine will go on till the end of the season with the copycat turning out to be the person who has been stalking the team.  It would also not surprise me if at one point the evidence pointed at Morgan as the killer has his prints and DNA from the glass he stole from him in episode nine.  I am looking forward to where this narrative will go.

Criminal Minds - Season Eight Episode Ten - The Lesson

This week the team are searching for the killer with a strange ritual.  They get called in after the discovery of male bodies that have been oddly disposed of.  As I expected it was a freaky episode as the killer turns his victims into live puppets which was beyond creepy.  I must confess there was a few moments I hid behind the cushion as some scenes were just gruesome.  Meanwhile, Reid is anxious when it looks like he may be meeting his mystery woman but at the last moment he calls it off for fear of her stalker.  There was a sweet moment though where she had left him a gift which was identical to what he was planning on giving to her so they are clearly meant to be.  One thing I was happy with was how I seemed to have warmed to Blake's character in this episode.  I loved Emily and have been missing her from the show and whilst I still think it was better with Paget Brewster that I did like Blake in this episode.  She was very sweet with Reid and sent him a last minute to text to calm his nerves while respecting his privacy.  It was a good episode that interested me almost as much as it creeped me out.   

Criminal Minds - Season Eight Episode Nine - Magnificent Light

The team head to Seattle where two people have been viciously murdered.  They find a connection to a motivational seminar and at first suspect the speaker of the crimes.  However they need to re-assess their theory when the speaker gets abducted.  Elsewhere Garcia is trying to get to the bottom of why Morgan refuses to attend a dinner to honor a hero of 9/11.  It was a pretty interesting episode and the main thing I thought worked well was that they didn't represent the motivational speaker as a con artist as is the usual.  Rather they showed him to be a good guy who genuinely wanted to help people.  Garcia ate up his words and he left a gift for Morgan at the end.  It was refreshing as sometimes motivational seminars genuinely help people and are not always bad or cons to make money.  The narrative with Morgan was a little weak I felt but allowed some character development and the opportunity for whoever is stalking the team to get his glass with his DNA and fingerprints on.  With this act I would expect a future episode to have Morgan's prints or DNA found at a crime scene and the team have to prove his innocence and work out what is going on.    

Criminal Minds - Season Eight Episode Eight - The Wheels on the Bus...

The team search for a missing school bus full of kids just outside of Washington DC and there are getting nowhere until Rossi makes a break through when he connects the case to a video game.  It was a very interesting episode and highlighted what people are pushed to in order to survive or protect their loved ones. It also had a sweet moment with Rossi and Garcia at the end of the episode which was nice but the show has suffered since the departure of Paget Brewster.  Prentiss was a great character who was funny, smart and witty.  She was also a character that the others could talk to and as you may have guessed one of my favorite characters.  I hope that the show will recover but Jeanne Tripplehorn is not filling the void left by Brewster's departure.  

Criminal Minds - Season Eight Episode Seven - The Fallen

When burned bodies of homeless people begin showing up in Santa Monica the BAU is called in which leads to Rossi reconnecting with his Marine Sergeant from Vietnam.  It was a pretty average and predictable episode of Criminal Minds where you knew what was going to happen from one moment to the next.  However, it was still an interesting narrative and I did enjoy the episode that revealed more about Rossi and his past as a marine.  

Criminal Minds -Season Eight Episode 6 - The Apprenticeship

This was one of the Criminal Minds episodes where the team personal narrative and the case narrative intersect and the themes parallel.  Here the theme being mentorship.  The team gets called to Miami when prostitutes are being killed in the same manner as some animals and so the working theory is an evolving serial killer whose confidence is escalating.  Turns out the killer is being mentored in his evolution as is Reid with his softball career.  Morgan recruits Reid to the softball team and in a shocking turn of events it works out (never saw that coming right).  Even though it was predictable it was very sweet and Matthew Gray Gubler is great as the sweet, nerdy Reid as ever.  The episode also continues the sinister narrative introduced in the premiere episode as someone takes photos of the softball game so I am interested to see where that goes.  I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the Silencer as he was mentioned in the episode briefly too but Rossi ruled it out as he assured Hotch that the Silencer is dead.

Criminal Minds - Season Eight Episode 5 - The Good Earth

With four men missing in rural Oregon the team are called in to try to find the common link between them in order to track them down.  The episode was a little all over the place and felt a bit random.  The main narrative while intersting and very messed up just felt a little forced.  Anne Dudek guest stars and I'm not sure if it was the fact that her character irritated me in House for a while or if the episode was just a bit blah.  Anywho that was made up for with the team personal narrative where Henry doesn't want to trick or treat because of all the monsters but as expected in the end he decides to go and his costume is just too adorable.  

Criminal Minds - Season Eight Episode 4 - God Complex

The BAU is called in after a legless body is found in New Mexico and a college student who suffered the same amputation is in the hospital.  They discover the unsub is experimenting on the victims and Reid comes up with a big breakthrough after his phone conversation with a mysterious woman.  The woman is a geneticist that he has been speaking to for a few months to sort his headaches.  Reid was really sweet on the phone with the mystery woman and I'm intrigued to see where that goes.  Otherwise the episode was pretty disturbing as how freaky would it be to wake up in a hotel room with a leg missing, that's even more unsettling than the kidney legend.  An interesting episode overall and had a good mix of team narrative progression and an interesting plot line with the experimenting insane scientist.

Criminal Minds - Season Eight Episode 3 - Through the Looking Glass

This week the BAU rush to try to find an abducted family whilst trying to find a connection to a murdered family in Kansas.  It was a pretty good narrative and the scenes with the trapped family were particularly interesting as the abductor reveals each family members secrets one by one.  Elsewhere, Beth has some surprising news for Hotch.  I really like Hotch in a happy relationship, he was so sweet with Beth and I hope the powers that be keep the couple together. 

Criminal Minds - Season Eight Episode 2 - The Pact



The BAU is called to two crime scenes in Los Angeles and San Diego. Although the murders appear unrelated, the team's profile posits two unsubs working together in a deadly pact. This was an average episode of Criminal Minds as not a lot happened. However what it lacked in action or character progression it made up for with an interesting analysis of human grief. This episode was one of those Criminal Minds episodes where the audience spends as much time with the unsubs as they do with the team. As the trailer above suggests there is a lot of emphasis put on their motive and it gets to the point where you actually empathise with the killers. This has always been one of the strengths of Criminal Minds as it's not the typical crime formula as it is not just about who did it as often you have the killer revealed early in episodes as in The Pact but rather why they did it. The storyline as interesting as it was was anything but original as the Strangers on a Train (1951) storyline of two people killing a person for the other and so are unrelated to one another has been rehashed in several TV shows already; NCIS, CSI, Law and Order both the original and Criminal Intent to name a few. What Criminal Minds have done a little differently here is once they gave their nod to Hitchcock at the start of the episode they move on and focus on the emotional aspect of what drove the killers to this point.