Criminal Minds: Devil's Night

It’s the Halloween episode, and it’s a doozy. Let’s get to it:

At the Hotchner household, a refreshingly chipper Hotch and his toddler son Jack (Cade Owens) get hopped up on pumpkin-shaped sugar cookies and squabble adorably about Halloween costumes. Jack doesn’t want to wear his usual old Spider-Man™ duds, and I can’t say I blame him; the kid’s grown at least a foot since the last time we saw him, and it seems highly unlikely that last year’s costume is still going to fit.

Back at Quantico, Reid bores the snot out of the rest of the team with arcane Halloween trivia. Everyone’s in an upbeat mood, until Hotch swoops in, having reverted back to his usual angel-of-death persona, and smashes all their fun holiday plans to bits: There’s been a series of grisly murders in Detroit, and the BAU must investigate.

For the past two years, the unsub has struck during Detroit’s annual Devil’s Night festivities, a citywide Mardi Gras-esque celebration that takes place over the three nights before Halloween. The unsub kidnaps one apparently random victim each night of the festival, chains them up in an abandoned building, douses them with gasoline, and burns them alive. He murdered his seventh and most recent victim the previous night, which was the first night of the festivities. Hence, Detroit is gearing up for two more victims.

The team coordinates with Lieutenant Al Garner (Ghostbusters’ Ernie Hudson) of Detroit’s fire department, who informs them that the entire city is on high alert because of the killings. Prentiss and Rossi interview the widow of the most recent victim. She remembers seeing a young man with half his face obliterated by horrible burns approaching her husband during the festival, right before his abduction. The team theorizes that the unsub is seeking revenge for whatever horrific accident caused his disfiguration, which suggests that his victims might not be random after all. Is this an homage to Phantom of the Opera, or an homage to Gotham City D.A. Harvey Dent? Either works for me.

Meanwhile, the unsub abducts his next victim, a general contractor named Chris Edwards (Ken Olandt). As soon as the team gets news of the abduction, Garcia combs through lists of subcontractors who were recently laid off by Edwards, and swiftly identifies the unsub as one Kaman Scott (Leonard Roberts, best known as D.L. on the fun first season of Heroes, back before Heroes became an impenetrable vortex of awfulness). Kaman had an extensive criminal record in his youth, but he cleaned up his act several years ago, before becoming tragically disfigured in an auto accident. The driver who caused the accident later became his first victim.

After warbling a few bars of “Music of the Night,” Kaman douses Edwards with gasoline and sets him on fire. The fire is spotted almost immediately by a hyper-vigilant public, so Kaman is forced to flee into the night, running through the mean streets of downtown… Los Angeles? Aw, man. I don’t want to give the Criminal Minds cinematographers and/or location scouts a hard time, because they usually do a bang-up job of disguising L.A. to look like their location of the week, but that iconic downtown skyline really doesn’t look much like Detroit.

Prentiss and Morgan search Kaman’s lair and find a few photos of a young woman. Based solely on these photos, they draw a whole bunch of wild conclusions about her -- that she’s Kaman’s former girlfriend, that he cleaned up his act and gave up his criminal ways when he started dating her, that she abandoned him after his accident and thus served as the trigger for his murderous attacks, that she’s his next target -- all of which turn out to be 100% spot on. They send the photos to Garcia, who identifies the building the young woman is posing in front of as a local diner called Jay-Mo’s. Suspecting Kaman will be headed there next (because… they found some photos of an unidentified woman that were taken there? This is why I could never be an FBI profiler -- all the wild leaps in logic would give me whiplash), the team converges on the diner.

Sure enough, Kaman runs straight to Jay-Mo’s. He confronts the proprietor, James Morris (Carl Lumbly), who is the father of Tracy, the young woman in the photographs. Kaman orders Morris to tell him where he can find Tracy; Morris refuses, so Kaman beats him to a pulp, throws gasoline around the diner, sets it on fire, and leaves him to burn.

Hotch and Lt. Garner arrive on the scene first. Even though the diner is wholly consumed in flames at this point, Hotch saunters into the inferno and carries Morris out to safety. The diner explodes into a fireball that sends them both flying, but Hotch (somehow) emerges totally unscathed. Morris is a little crispy around the edges, but he manages to urge Hotch to keep Tracy safe from Kaman before being hauled off in an ambulance.

Kaman next breaks into a house owned by Tracy’s aunt and uncle. He douses them with gasoline and threatens to burn them to death unless they stop hiding Tracy from him. Again with the gasoline, Kaman? As far as unsubs go, he’s a bit of a one-trick pony. Tracy finally shows herself. She begs him not to kill her family and apologizes for abandoning him while he was in a coma after his accident. Unmoved, Kaman whips out a blowtorch and threatens to ignite the gasoline.

SWAT has the house surrounded, but can’t safely move in because it’s such a volatile (literally!) situation. Hotch, who is on a roll with the impromptu heroics this episode, slinks into the house and confronts Kaman on his own. He mentions that Tracy has a young son with Kaman, whom she’s never told Kaman about, even though she and Kaman were apparently very much in love prior to Kaman’s accident (after which she was so repulsed by him that her family has spent the past several years hiding her from him? Tracy is a bit of an enigma). Tracy trots the kid out to meet his father, and there’s a huge schmaltzy scene where the kid strokes his dad’s mangled face while Kaman stares adoringly at his son, then Kaman extinguishes the blowtorch and surrenders to Hotch without incident.

Denouement: Back at Casa Hotchner, little Jack finally settles on a Halloween costume: Commenting that Spider-Man™ isn’t a real hero, he’s decided to dress up in a little dark suit and tie and go as Hotch. I was popping antacid last night while watching this for reasons having nothing to do with this episode, but scenes like this did little to ease my nausea. For the record, I think dressing like Hotch is a pretty awesome idea for a last-minute costume -- just break out your darkest suit and your crispest white shirt and affix a permanent scowl on your face, and you’re all set -- but all I could think about is how poor little Jack is going to get snickered out of kindergarten for dressing up as his dad for Halloween.

Terrible episode. Slapdash, improbable, and unrealistic. Sheer melodramatic crap. I loved it anyway.
Read more!

Criminal Minds: Top Ten Episodes

I’ve been on a Criminal Minds kick lately. This is odd, since I’m pretty indifferent to both crime procedurals and shows or movies or books about serial killers. Still, while the subject matter of the show doesn’t push my buttons, I sure do like the major characters. They’re smart. They’re good at their jobs. They’re likeable. They’re certainly attractive (two of the six current regular cast members -- Shemar Moore and Matthew Gray Gubler -- are former male models. Those are my kind of odds). Ergo, this list of my top episodes.

One caveat: This is a Top Ten list, not a Ten Best list. I’m not going for quality here. In fact, some of these episodes are distinctly… ungood. These are simply the ten episodes I view with the most fondness at this moment. I make no claims that this list is either comprehensive or balanced. I rewatched Season One most recently, so it’s freshest in my head and thus is disproportionately represented. I also have a discernable pro-Hotch bias. Grimness mixed with competence works like catnip on me, and FBI unit chief Aaron Hotchner (Thomas Gibson) is the most awesomely bleak character on television since Edward James Olmos scowled his way through five seasons of Miami Vice. Consider yourself warned.

Here’s my list, warts and all, in chronological order:

“Broken Mirror” (Season One)
After a young woman (Elisabeth Harnois) is kidnapped, the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) moves in to find her assailant and protect her twin sister, whom they suspect will be the next target. This is a rock-solid early episode, which makes my list largely on the strength of one outstanding scene: In an attempt to provoke the kidnapper into doing something reckless, lead profiler Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin) intercepts a taunting phone call to the father of the twins… and hangs up on him. When the unsub (unknown subject) repeatedly tries to call back, Gideon disconnects each subsequent call as well, cutting him off in mid-sentence again and again.

Whipped into an apoplectic froth by this show of disrespect, the unsub calls back once more and launches into a venomous tirade, in which he provides his own spiteful -- yet not inaccurate -- profile of each team member: Gideon is arrogant and bonkers, Hotch is callous and ambitious, socially-maladroit genius Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler) is borderline autistic, new recruit Elle Greenaway (Lola Glaudini) is out of her league in “the BAU Boys’ Club,” and hunky Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore) is a “pumped-up side of beef” who desperately wants to be taken seriously.

In general, exposition-heavy dialogue like this is a bad idea -- information about characters should emerge through their speech and actions, not from the writers spelling it out for viewers -- but this diatribe was a clever way to spotlight the flaws of the major characters in one fell swoop. It was also funny. The team members react to the criticism: Reid is baffled, Hotch is unfazed, Elle and Morgan are disgruntled and secretly wounded, and crazy old Gideon is delighted, since the only way the unsub could know so much about them is if he’s someone close to the case. With this bit of information, Gideon and the team track down the kidnapper, who turns out to be an agent at the local FBI field office, and recover the missing twin.

“L.D.S.K.” (Season One)
An L.D.S.K. -- a long-distance serial killer, more commonly known as a sniper -- shoots several random people in a park. Meanwhile, back at Quantico, gun-shy Reid falls into a funk after he botches his weapons qualifications exam, despite Hotch’s patient attempts to coach him at the shooting range.

The BAU investigates the shootings and deduces that their suspect has a background in law enforcement. The unsub turns out to be Philip Dowd, a gun-crazy, narcissistic, paranoid ex-cop, played by Timothy Omundson, who is best known as gun-crazy, narcissistic, paranoid Detective Lassiter on Psych. Psych is a comedy, whereas Criminal Minds is decidedly not, but really, there’s only the merest whisper of a difference between Dowd and Lassiter. This adds to the bizarre hilarity of the climax, in which Reid and Hotch are taken hostage by Dowd in a crowded hospital. Drawing upon the information the team has gleaned from profiling Dowd, Hotch slips into a spiteful, bitter, Reid-hating persona to win his trust. All the profilers do this sort of thing to some extent, particularly during interrogations, but Hotch (and Gideon, before Mandy Patinkin left the show) does it best. Just watch him turning submissive and sycophantic to coax information out of alpha-male unsubs in “The Perfect Storm” and “The Tribe” -- it’s startling and more than a little creepy.

Dowd falls for Hotch’s act and grants him a final request: Kicking the crap out of poor Reid. While Hotch does precisely that (with gusto!), Reid swipes Hotch’s spare gun out of his ankle holster and kills Dowd with one clean shot to the forehead. Consider his weapons examination passed.

“Riding the Lightning” (Season One)
The team heads to a Texas prison to interview Jacob (Michael Massee) and his wife Sarah Jean (Jeannetta Arnette, fondly remembered from her days as Ms. Meara on Head of the Class), who are on death row for raping and murdering at least fourteen young women. It’s a matter of hours before their scheduled executions, so the BAU seizes one final opportunity to grill the couple about possible additional victims.

Gideon interviews Sarah Jean, who turns out to be a gracious and thoughtful woman. While Sarah Jean seems to accept her fate, Gideon becomes convinced she was an innocent party to her husband’s murderous exploits. Against Sarah Jean’s protests, Gideon tries to find proof of her innocence and stop her execution.

Meanwhile, in the next room over, Hotch interrogates Jacob. Hotch tends to be a magnet for unsubs of the extra-creepy variety, and Jacob is no exception: “I like you,” Jacob tells him, “I do like you.” Jacob exerts a fair amount of effort trying to get Hotch to crack a grin, but it’s an exercise in futility: Hotch doles out smiles at the rate of about one per season, and he’s not about to squander one on the likes of Jacob.

Hotch gets nowhere useful with Jacob, so the BAU’s communications liaison, Jennifer Jarreau, commonly known as J.J. (A.J. Cook), joins the interrogation. J.J. is Jacob’s preferred victim type -- blonde and lovely -- so Jacob suggests a hand of poker: If Hotch wins, Jacob will tell him where to find the bodies of his remaining victims. If Jacob wins, he gets to smell J.J.’s hair. Hotch, bless him, shoots down this idea before the suggestion is even fully out of Jacob’s mouth, but J.J., who has nerves of steel, is game for it. Hotch wins the hand, and J.J.’s hair remains safely unsniffed, but Jacob still refuses to give up the locations. He goes to the electric chair after letting Hotch know he killed four additional women the FBI knows nothing about.

Gideon figures out Sarah Jean’s secret: Her young son, whom she was presumed to have murdered, was raised in secrecy by another family, safely away from Jacob. This information is enough to grant her a stay of execution, but Sarah Jean, desperate for her son to remain unaware of the nasty truth of his parentage, convinces Gideon to let the matter drop. She, too, is executed as scheduled.

“The Tribe” (Season One)
A group of partying college kids is massacred on a construction site in New Mexico in ways that mimic antiquated Native American war rituals. Since there’s been some animosity between land developers and the inhabitants of the local Apache reservation, suspicion initially falls on an Apache activist, John Blackwolf (Gregory Cruz), whose father was killed by federal agents in the 1973 Wounded Knee incident. Blackwolf is soon cleared of any connection to the crime, but the team asks him to stick around to contribute his insights into the killings. Blackwolf, who distrusts the U.S. government in general and the FBI in particular, butts head with quintessential G-Man Hotch. They slide into that time-honored “outward antagonism and sarcastic insults masking grudging admiration” routine familiar to aficionados of buddy-cop films. It’s cute.

The killings turn out to be the work of a murderous cult, comprised of idiot white college kids and headed by a psychotic twerp (played by former child star Chad Allen) who bases his philosophy upon mismatched scraps of knowledge about various Native American cultures and who wants to spark a race war between the townspeople and the Apache. When heavily-armed cult members swarm the reservation schoolhouse intent on slaughtering the Apache kids, Hotch and Blackwolf are first to arrive on the scene. Blackwolf, who eschews firearms, convinces Hotch to apprehend the cultists without using his gun. By the time the rest of the team arrive, they find Blackwolf and Hotch sitting triumphantly on the steps of the school, surrounded by a slew of hogtied cult members.

Fine stuff. Points deducted for a hackneyed subplot in which Hotch squabbles with his hunky younger brother Sean (Eric Johnson, of Smallville and Flash Gordon fame) -- Hotch wants Sean to enroll in law school at Georgetown, while Sean wants to follow his heart and become a chef in New York, and you know, I’m pretty sure I’ve already seen this episode of Dharma & Greg. Also, the Hotchner brothers’ light banter about what their late father would have wanted for his sons seems wildly incongruous, coming as it does just a handful of episodes after “Natural Born Killer,” in which Hotch makes an oblique reference to his scarily abusive childhood. Sean is erased from the show’s continuity after this episode, never to be seen or mentioned again. I’m okay with that.

“The Big Game”/"Revelations” (Season Two)
Sometimes it seems like the Criminal Minds writers spend a lot of their time reading fanfiction about the show in search of plot ideas.

This should not be interpreted as any kind of criticism.

You know what I mentioned earlier about these being my favorite episodes, but not necessarily the best in terms of quality? This is what I’m talking about, right here. This two-part episode is a mess. However, it’s something of a delightful mess.

Tobias Hankel (Dawson’s Creek star James Van Der Beek) is a tech support specialist who plants hidden cameras in his prospective victims’ houses, which he then secretly monitors. As soon as he spots one of his targets committing a Biblical sin (greed, adultery, the usual), he breaks into the house and slaughters him or her, then uploads a video of the murder to the internet. He also likes to call the police from the victim’s house before starting in on the carnage, just to give them a heads-up about the attack. Oh, also? Hankel has three separate personalities: mild-mannered Tobias, his abusive father Charles, and, er, the archangel Raphael.

Yep, it’s a mess. But I mean that in a good way. I think.

(Tobias’s abusive father appears via flashbacks, in which he’s played by Don Swayze. Swayze is a fine actor, but due to his strong resemblance to his more-famous sibling, his presence tends to add a weird veneer of surreality to any project. See also: Frank Stallone, Joe Estevez.)

The BAU (now featuring Paget Brewster as smart, gutsy new profiler Emily Prentiss, who joined the team after Elle went rogue and started stone-cold murdering suspected unsubs) investigates the killings. Reid, who has an unerring knack for wandering into bad situations, promptly gets kidnapped by Hankel, who shoots him up with drugs and brutally tortures him over the course of a couple of days, all while trying to get him to confess to a sin so he can murder him with a clean conscience. This proves difficult, as Reid has led a pretty squeaky-clean life, everything considered. While frantically searching for Reid, the rest of the team watch his drama unfold on live webcam.

The Sturm und Drang builds: Hankel plays Russian Roulette with Reid! Reid suffers drug-induced flashbacks to childhood traumas! Hankel forces Reid to dig his own grave! Hankel makes Reid choose one of his teammates to die in his place! Reid picks Hotch (heh), but manages to pass along a secret message to him via the webcam, which helps the team find Reid and rescue him from Hankel’s clutches.

Like I said, it’s a delightful mess. I can almost forgive it for the way it then kicked off a Very Special “Reid struggles with his newfound drug addiction” plot arc, which wheezed along for several episodes before losing steam and fading away.

“Profiler, Profiled” (Season Two)
Morgan goes home to Chicago to visit his mom and sisters (his cop father was killed in the line of duty while Morgan was a kid). The opening scenes of this episode, in which Morgan tangles with his former gang-member nemesis from his hardscrabble childhood and acts as the cool big brother to some at-risk inner-city kids, are as weirdly wholesome and retro as an A-Team episode, with Morgan subbing for both B.A. (the soft-hearted tough guy) and Face (the ridiculously good-looking chick magnet). Remember how the A-Team spent much of their time helping out at orphanages and community centers? Yeah, that’s pretty much what’s going on here. The goony good fun soon ends, though, when one of the kids turns up dead and Morgan is arrested on suspicion of, yep, being a serial killer.

Well, that seems unlikely.

The rest of the team zip up to Chicago to straighten out all this nonsense. They find out about Morgan’s troubled childhood, which involves an extensive (and improbable) juvenile criminal record for gang activity. Morgan strongly resents his teammates mucking about in his past, even in the interest of helping him out of his present troubles. Distrustful of everyone by nature, he can’t bring himself to confide in the people he’s worked closely with for the past several years: He was sexually abused as a teenager by Carl Buford, a respected community leader/child murderer, who is now attempting to frame Morgan for this most recent killing. In fact, Morgan never does unbend enough to disclose this information. Instead, he slips out of police custody and confronts Buford on his own, extracting a confession for the murder and clearing his own name.

Side note: One of Morgan’s sisters is played by Fame’s Erica Gimpel, who also played Wallace’s mother on the much-missed Veronica Mars. In the epic Veronica Mars/Criminal Minds crossover episode that exists only in my brain, in which Veronica interns for the BAU for course credit while working on her Criminology degree, Morgan turns out to be Wallace’s cool Uncle Derek. Makes sense to me.

“Lucky”/“Penelope” (Season Three)
Not really a two-part episode, per se, but actually two successive episodes, in which a minor subplot in “Lucky” burgeons into the main plot of “Penelope.” In “Lucky,” the team hunts down a cannibalistic serial killer (Jamie Kennedy). It’s a by-the-numbers episode, though it’s worth mentioning the presence of new cast member Joe Mantegna as wry, laconic Dave Rossi, who joins the team as the lead profiler after Gideon leaves at the start of the third season.

Meanwhile, back at Quantico, Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness), the team’s eccentric technical analyst, meets a handsome stranger (Bailey Chase) in a coffee shop, who takes an immediate romantic interest in her. Garcia confides her uncertainty about this possible new relationship to her good buddy Morgan, who urges her to be cautious. Upset at the implication that she’s not conventionally appealing enough to attract a hot guy unless he has a diabolical ulterior motive, Garcia throws a hissyfit and dates the stranger just to spite Morgan. All goes well… until the stranger drops Garcia off at her apartment at the end of a magical evening, then shoots her in the chest and leaves her for dead.

“Penelope” concerns the team’s attempts to track down Garcia’s attacker and unravel the reason behind the attempted murder while protecting her from further harm. Morgan moves himself into Garcia’s apartment and sleeps on her couch to keep a close eye on her, and I tell you, I am an enormous sucker for the Morgan-Garcia odd-couple relationship, which somehow manages to be cute and sexy and funny and touching all at once. They’re adorable together. The episode is also notable for the first appearance of Kevin Lynch (Buffy’s Nicholas Brendon), Garcia’s fellow FBI technical analyst and eventual long-term boyfriend.

“Pleasure is My Business” (Season Four)
General rule: Any episode where someone calls Hotch a whore is automatically going to rank high among my favorites.

This is a bit brighter and fluffier than the typical installment, but it’s got a lot going for it, starting with Brianna Brown’s guest turn as Megan, a smart, charming, sexy high-class escort who slinks about in frilly lingerie and murders her wealthy and influential johns (but only the ones who are behind in their child support payments -- she’s got standards) with poisoned Perrier-Jouet. When the BAU arrives to investigate, Megan monitors them from afar and develops a sweetly inappropriate crush on Hotch. Hey, you and me both, girlfriend. Because Megan is gobs more likeable than the average unsub (granted, that bar is set pretty low), it hurts to watch her devolve into senseless violence. Throw in a cool appearance from vintage SNL cast member Nora Dunn as a madam-slash-real estate agent who schools Prentiss and Reid in the world of high-priced prostitution, and you’ve got a keeper.

“Faceless, Nameless” (Season Five)
In the Season Four finale, the team solves a grisly, grueling case in Canada, then flies back to Virginia, exhausted and emotionally drained. Hotch returns to his apartment, pours himself a Scotch… and discovers at-large serial killer George Foyet, known to a frightened public as the Reaper, whom the team last encountered in the fourth-season episode “Omnivore,” hanging out in his living room.

Season Five opens with the team, sans Hotch, working on another case. Hotch isn’t answering his phone, and while the team members are a bit surprised by this, they’re not especially concerned. Even for FBI profilers, “overslept and forgot to turn on his phone” is a more logical assumption than “ambushed by a serial killer.”

Prentiss eventually heads over to Hotch’s apartment to drag him out of bed. She finds evidence of a struggle and blood on the carpet, but no sign of Hotch. With Garcia’s help, she finally tracks him down: He’s in the hospital, Foyet having thoughtfully driven him straight to the emergency room after stabbing him nine times.

The team wraps up their current case (which barely warrants mentioning in light of everything that goes on with Hotch in this episode) and rushes to the hospital. When Prentiss asks Hotch about the attack, he claims he can’t remember much. He’s lying.

Hotch flashes back to the attack. It’s awful: Foyet overpowers Hotch, then keeps up a friendly, intimate line of patter with him while stabbing away, making sure to inflict only non-lethal wounds. There’s a tasteful cutaway, and it’s left purposefully vague, but contextual clues in this episode and the ones that follow suggest Foyet rapes him as well. (Interesting tidbit: The CBS teaser promo for this episode overdubbed Foyet’s line, “It goes in so much easier if you relax” to “The blade goes in so much easier.” When combined with the sexually suggestive staging -- shirtless Foyet pinning Hotch to the floor -- the original line was probably a bit too on the nose.)

The episode ends with Hotch’s ex-wife Haley (Meredith Monroe) and son whisked off into protective custody to keep them safe from Foyet (spoiler: it doesn’t work), while Rossi reassures his friend that they’ll find his attacker, someday. Hotch is unconvinced of this.

It’s a hell of an episode. There’s something invulnerable and untouchable about Hotch -- he’s been compared to Captain America more than once in the series, and it fits (see also: the behind-the-scenes featurette where Shemar Moore affectionately refers to Hotch as a Ken doll). Seeing him brought down by Foyet is jolting. Former teen heartthrob C. Thomas Howell -- Tommy Howell to those of us who read a lot of Tiger Beat in the Eighties -- acts his socks off as Foyet: smart, sadistic, obnoxious, and thoroughly nuts (this, after all, is the guy who stabbed himself repeatedly, just to pose as one of the Reaper’s victims and throw the police off the trail).

The next eight episodes deal with the aftermath: Morgan takes temporary charge of the team while Hotch goes rather entertainingly wonky, of the “wandering into a volatile hostage situation without a gun” variety. Still, Hotch more or less manages to keep his marbles together, even as Foyet continues to taunt him from a distance. Events reach a bloody conclusion in “100” (the show’s 100th episode), in which Foyet tracks down and murders Haley, before Hotch beats him to death with his bare hands to prevent him from attacking his son as well. The FBI usually frowns on this sort of behavior from their agents, but in this instance, the top brass considers the circumstances, shrugs, and agrees it was probably a reasonable response.

“The Uncanny Valley” (Season Five)
A mentally ill and badly abused woman named Samantha (Jennifer Hasty) kidnaps young women, injects them with paralysis-inducing medications, dresses them in elaborate hand-sewn costumes, and keeps them as a collection of living dolls. The women remain awake and painfully aware throughout the entire process, unable to do much more than widen their eyes in terror. It’s seriously creepy.

Tempering the creepiness is Reid, who informally takes the lead in the investigation to find the missing women. He’s at his very best here. Reid is always whip-smart, of course, but in this episode, he’s also level-headed and compassionate; his interactions with Samantha, who lacks the mental capacity to realize her actions are wrong, are oddly touching. Special added bonus: an icky guest turn from Commander Riker as Samantha’s pedophile father.
Read more!

Criminal Minds: Safe Haven

Two families -- the Bennetts in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and the Archers across the state line in Omaha -- are found bound and stabbed to death. In the case of one of the families, the father was gruesomely and amateurishly disemboweled after being slaughtered. Suspecting they’re dealing with a dangerous spree killer, the BAU jets off to the Midwest to investigate.

Show of hands: How many viewers want to join the BAU solely so they can zip across the country in that cute little private plane with the big comfy seats and the flattering mood lighting? Just me?

Meanwhile, young Ellie Spicer (Isabella Murad), the kid who was kidnapped by Tim Curry’s character after he murdered her father in last season’s finale, runs away from her neglectful foster family in Los Angeles and seeks refuge with Morgan (there’s been a running subplot over the past several episodes about Morgan keeping in constant touch with Ellie, but frankly, it’s been too dull to warrant a mention before this). He stashes her at Quantico in Garcia’s care while he investigates the murders in Nebraska and Iowa. Not wanting to return Ellie to Child Protective Services, Garcia tries to track down Ellie’s absent mother.

From their investigation of the Iowa crime scene, Reid and Rossi conclude the unsub was someone known to the Bennett family, or at least someone they didn’t perceive as any kind of threat -- he ate dinner and socialized with them prior to the murders.

A kindly reverend picks up a teen hitchhiker, Jeremy. Jeremy seems polite and non-threatening, but since he’s played by Sterling Beaumon, best known as creepy young Ben Linus on Lost, it’s immediately obvious he’s the unsub. Beaumon is a cute, likeable actor, but it must kind of suck to be typecast as a murderer by age fifteen. Jeremy stabs the reverend to death, then, just to be icky, partially dissects his hand. Rossi and Reid, who seem to be doing all the heavy lifting investigation-wise, examine the crime scene and decide that the reckless nature of the crime, combined with the experimental postmortem mutilation, means the unsub is a teenager. Chalk up another hash mark in the “teens suck” column.

Question: Jeremy is a scrawny thirteen-year-old. Even armed with a knife, even with the element of surprise on his side, how likely is he to overpower and slaughter two entire families -- father, mother, children -- without them fighting him off? I could buy that he’d be lucky enough to take out one family entirely by surprise, but two? Without a gun? Really?

Creepy Jeremy moves on to a new target: single mom Nancy Riverton (Mare Winningham) and her two young kids. Jeremy approaches Nancy and claims his bus, which he was taking to visit his mother, left him behind at a rest stop. Soft-hearted Nancy offers to let Jeremy spend the night at her house. When she asks Jeremy for his phone number so she can call his mom and let her know where he is, Jeremy gives her the number for the murdered Archers. Nancy blithely leaves a message on the Archers’ answering machine.

The team assembles a profile of Jeremy: He’s a victim of extreme abuse or neglect, who might’ve been recently abandoned by his parents under Nebraska’s wonky safe-haven law (safe-haven laws give parents the right to legally abandon unharmed newborn infants at designated sites, such as hospitals and police stations; until recently, unclear wording in Nebraska’s version of the law allowed parents to abandon any child under age eighteen). As Monica Archer worked as a nurse in an Omaha hospital, the team suspects she may have brought Jeremy home with her after he was abandoned, instead of turning him over to the custody of the state.

Reid and Rossi (again) head over to the Archer house to see if they can find a clue as to Jeremy’s true identity. While there, they listen to the message Nancy left for the Archers (despite having been crowded out of the market by voicemail, answering machines are still a go-to plot device on television) and realize she’s Jeremy’s next victim.

Prentiss and Morgan raid the Riverton house and find Nancy’s kids unharmed but Jeremy and Nancy missing. Per the kids, Jeremy was using the alias Niko Bellic, which Rossi instantly pegs as the name of a character in Grand Theft Auto IV. (Rossi, in response to his teammates’ incredulous stares: “What? I know things.” Heh. And thank you very much, Mr. Joe Mantegna, for injecting a bit of wry humor into this otherwise drab episode. Your muffin basket is in the mail.)

While driving Jeremy to his mom’s house at knifepoint, Nancy is relentlessly sweet and reasonable (question: has Mare Winningham ever played a character who couldn’t be described as “sweet and reasonable”?), even though he’s a foul little rodent to her. Upon arriving at his home, Jeremy brutally stabs Nancy.

After poring over the juvenile records of Omaha-area teens, Garcia finally identifies the kid as a budding psychopath named Jeremy Sayer, whose mother abandoned him at a local hospital ten days ago after he badly injured his little sister. Morgan and Prentiss burst into Jeremy’s house and find him holding his sister at knifepoint. Morgan gives him a much-needed tongue-lashing, and Jeremy surrenders without incident.

On the plane ride home, the team learns that Nancy Riverton is expected to survive Jeremy’s attack. Garcia finally tracks down Ellie Spicer’s elusive mom, who was wholly unaware of her daughter’s various recent traumas. The remaining ten minutes or so are then sucked up by a tedious reunion scene between Ellie and her mom.

…Okay. On the one hand, I get that the point of this whole Ellie subplot is to drive home how the agents don’t just move on after a case is closed -- they remain connected to the victims of these horrible crimes, sometimes to an extensive and borderline unhealthy degree. Ellie’s young life was shattered by the murders of her father and her aunt, and Morgan feels responsible for helping her find some measure of stability. It also parallels the main plot, which shows the terrible things that can happen to a child without a stable home life. But it’s a little too pat, and not terribly interesting, and it comes across as an attempt to pad out this skimpy and somewhat disappointing episode to the full running time.

Next week: Halloween episode! Fingers crossed for a good one...
Read more!

Criminal Minds: Compromising Positions

In Akron, two married couples are murdered after being forced to have sex with their spouses at gunpoint. Both male victims were traditional alpha males: educated and athletic overachievers with attractive wives. The male victims were shot, while the female victims were stabbed. This, plus the highly sexualized staging of the crimes (the men wore condoms and had Viagra in their systems), suggests to the BAU that the unsub is impotent. While Reid yammers on about the established stabbing-impotency link, Hotch looks glum and refrains from mentioning the time the Reaper gave him a highly personal demonstration about how being stab-happy doesn’t always equal impotent.

(Hey, we’re four episodes into the new season, and nothing soul-wrenchingly awful has happened to Hotch yet! This is a good omen.)

The team jets off to Ohio to investigate. Garcia offers to help them out by taking over J.J.’s former duties. Hotch agrees to this nonsense on a trial basis, though he seems to secretly think it’s a terrible idea. So do I. There’s a galaxy of difference between J.J.’s job (ultra-diplomatic and low-key communication liaison) and Garcia’s job (quirky and emotional tech goddess). By firing A.J. Cook and -- I guess this is a spoiler, though this news has been widely reported and circulated at this point -- announcing plans to phase out Paget Brewster’s role while introducing a new, cute, young female agent to be played by Rachel Nichols, CBS has already established that it considers the female characters disposable and/or replaceable. Handing J.J.’s job duties to Garcia -- who is in many way J.J.’s polar opposite and who possesses an entirely antithetical skills set -- suggests they’re interchangeable as well.

In any case, Garcia ditches her glasses for contacts, tones down her flamboyant wardrobe, and tags along on the flight to Akron. While Rossi and Reid interview the grieving families of the victims, Prentiss and Morgan scope out the crime scene. Garcia shows off her heretofore unseen hyper-organized side and, despite a few hiccups along the way (when a journalist preys on Garcia’s trusting nature by trying to wheedle details about the case out of her under false pretenses, Hotch steps in just long enough to rip his head off before handing the reins back to her), does a pretty kickass job of being the new J.J.

Meanwhile, the unsub attacks another couple. Even with his hands handcuffed behind his back, the husband manages to kickbox the crap out of him. Alas, his ineffectual wife botches the escape attempt by failing to, like, pick up the abandoned gun, and the unsub shoots and kills them both.

Hey, the unsub is played by Craig Sheffer! Outstanding. I’m always sort of happy to see Sheffer pop up in things, though I’d be hard-pressed to explain why. Eighties nostalgia, maybe. Fun fact: Sheffer starred alongside Criminal Minds’ Thomas Gibson in the 1994 independent film Sleep With Me, which I analyzed in one of my classes at USC’s film school; I haven’t seen it since then, and I don’t remember a damn thing about it, apart from: a) I liked it, in a nonspecific kind of way, and b) Gibson was sporting a hit-or-miss English accent. The world is small and strange.

Prentiss and Morgan examine the fresh crime scene. They try to reenact the attack, which ends up being kind of hot. I know plenty of viewers out there have their hopes set high for a future Prentiss/Hotch romance; I’m opposed to this for many reasons, not least of which is the utter lack of potential for a cute portmanteau (Pretch? Protch?), but between this scene and the one a few seasons back where Morgan and Prentiss gush about their mutual love of Vonnegut novels, I’d be willing to give Prentiss/Morgan (Prorgan? Mortiss?) a test drive. Anyway, after groping each other a bit (not enough, sadly) in the service of their investigation, Morgan and Prentiss (somehow) conclude the unsub was part of Akron’s surprisingly active and extensive swingers’ scene.

Meanwhile, the unsub (hi, Craig!) shows up at a swingers’ party, which is hosted by a woman named Leslie (Sarah Buxton), who doesn’t seem thrilled to see him. She’s even less thrilled after he opens fire on her guests, slaughtering eight hapless swingers, all of them male. He even picks the deadbolt of a back bedroom to get to one of the victims, which suggests to the team that he has a background as a locksmith. Considering how he could have simply shot through the lock, it was mighty sporting of him to hand the team this crucial break in their investigation.

Overtaxed with trying to do too much at once, Garcia has a bit of meltdown. Morgan tosses her contact lenses in the trash, hands her back her glasses, and gives her a pep talk about Just Being Herself. The most adorable nonsexual couple on television then exchange a round of I-love-yous (the fierce bond between Morgan and Garcia is one of the few things that give me hope in this crazy, awful world), then Garcia changes into her usual outlandish garb and reverts back to her usual brilliant self to track down the unsub electronically.

The unsub, it seems, is one James Thomas, a locksmith who recently became impotent due to prostate problems. The team raids his home and finds his wife, Maryann (Erin Matthews), who is pregnant even though James is physiologically incapable of being the father. Maryann refuses to believe James could be a murderer. As she seems to be intimidated by alpha males, the team sends in its sole beta male -- sweet, non-threatening Reid -- to talk to her.

Reid randomly babbles on to Maryann about hunter-gatherers for a while, then proves that James murdered the father of her unborn child. Convinced of her husband’s bad-seed nature, Maryann points the team in the direction of James’s favorite local bar, where he’s currently scouting for fresh victims. Since James is armed and dangerous, Prentiss approaches him first in the hopes of distracting him long enough for the rest of the team to move in and take him out without incident.

Pretending to recognize James from the swinger scene, Prentiss flirts broadly with him while Morgan and Hotch move into position. James quickly figures out that she’s lying -- she claims she and her boyfriend had a tryst with him, whereas James and Maryann exclusively limited their swinging to married couples. Before Prentiss can even get her gun out of her purse, James kills himself with a shot to the chest.

Back at Quantico, Hotch decides that, hey, maybe the team’s resident eccentric computer whiz should keep doing tech-related stuff instead of branching out into public-relations duties. Oh, you think? It’s more or less decided that J.J.’s job will be distributed amongst Garcia and the rest of the team, which is an unsatisfying solution to an unsatisfying situation.
Read more!

Criminal Minds: Remembrance of Things Past

Hey, look! There’s a brand-new credit sequence with a slightly revamped version of the theme music, plus new footage where the cast members show off their kicky new hairstyles. I approve, apart from this business about how A.J. Cook is no longer a cast member. That part still sucks.

In Bristol, Virginia, a young woman named Jenny leaves a distraught message on her parents’ answering machine: “When you get this message, I’ll probably be dead.” Shortly thereafter, her corpse is found, along with that of another young woman, who made a similar phone call to her fiancé before being horrifically tortured and murdered as well. The MO is nearly identical to that of a serial killer known as The Butcher, who murdered twenty women from 1984 to 1993 before stopping. This was one of Rossi’s old cases, and he’s taking it verrrrry personally that he was never able to capture the culprit.

Oh. It’s a Rossi-heavy episode. This doesn’t bode well.

Don’t get me wrong: I adore Rossi. He’s smart, dry, and funny, and Joe Mantegna is so firmly in my good graces that he could spend an episode picking his nose and flicking boogers at his coworkers, and I’d still be in his corner. But to the best of my recollection, there hasn’t yet been a standout Rossi-focused episode. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s just coincidence, or maybe it’s because he’s so low-key that he’s ended up receiving less lovingly detailed character development than his some of his glamorous drama-queen teammates (hi, Reid! Hi, Morgan!).

Due to key differences in the murders (the recent killings are messier, and the scripted message the victims were forced to deliver to their loved ones are slightly different), Hotch suspects the unsub is a copycat instead of the original Butcher. Rossi has a gut feeling the Butcher is directly involved, so Hotch gives him permission to pursue his theories on his own while the rest of the team generates a brand-new profile of the killer.

Two more young women -- blonde and pretty, just like all the previous victims -- are abducted, tortured, and murdered. Evidence suggests the involvement of two unsubs working as a team. The unsubs turn out to be the original Butcher (Hill Street Blues’ Daniel Travanti), now an Alzheimer’s-riddled old man, and his son, Colby (Josh Braatan), who keeps showing his dad slides of former crime scenes to rekindle his memories of past murders and restore his enthusiasm for murdering. Gosh, thanks, Colby.

I’m kind of blasting through the plot here, because I had a pretty comprehensively negative reaction to this episode, and I’d like to spend as little time dwelling on it as possible. None of our regular characters have any standout moments, and far too much time is spent focusing on the unsubs. Despite the relentlessly grim subject matter, Criminal Minds typically does a great job of keeping plots from being needlessly sensationalistic and exploitative. With this episode, though, the balance seems… off. The unsubs on this show are almost invariably highly unpleasant* and unsympathetic people, which is exactly how it should be (serial killers, you know), but the Butcher -- real name Lee Mullens -- and Colby are both so vile, and monopolize so much screen time, that the episode ends up being dour and joyless. They’re not interesting characters, and the plot itself isn’t unique or involving enough to compensate for the off-putting sadism of their actions. Look, if you’re going to show scenes of a terrified young woman stripped down to her bra and panties and strapped to a table, about to be sodomized with an electrical rod and stabbed to death, there needs to be a damn good point to it all, apart from trying to pander to a certain bottom-dwelling segment of the audience.

*Key exception to the “unpleasant unsubs” rule: the sweet-natured but homicidal high-class call girl in the fourth-season episode “Pleasure is My Business,” who, despite a nasty habit of killing her clients, seemed like she’d be a whole lot of fun to hang out with. I can see myself splitting a bottle of Prosecco with her while indulging in plenty of giggly speculation about how Hotch, despite his grim and straight-laced exterior, is probably secretly a tiger in the sack. Which brings me to my next point: Last night I watched Denys Arcand’s Love and Human Remains, a cheerfully tawdry 1993 Canadian independent film in which an endearingly slutty Thomas Gibson snorts lines and indulges in plenty of hot boy-on-boy action, all while sporting this totally fierce haircut with long center-parted bangs that would’ve made Kurt Cobain weep with jealousy. Let me tell you, coming right on the heels of all that awesomeness, Criminal Minds was bound to disappoint. I’m not saying this episode would have been improved if it’d dropped all this business with Lee and Colby and instead featured Hotch getting it on with a cute guy in the back room of a Montreal nightclub… oh, screw it. That’s exactly what I’m saying. I like sleaze, not sadism.

Anyway, let’s wrap this up: After too many young women are murdered, the BAU finally apprehends Lee and Colby and rescues their final victim, and Rossi gets some measure of satisfaction at last at having finally stopped the Butcher.

Well. That was… Yeah. Maybe next week’s episode will improve.
Read more!

Fun With Keywords: Trampy Jai Wilcox Edition

Here’s another look at some search terms used to find this site over the past few months, courtesy of Google Analytics. Is this post just a shameless excuse to look at photos of Sendhil Ramamurthy? Yep. Sure is.

is conrad sheehan still on covert affairs
No. The character was written out after the pilot, and sexy Jai Wilcox replaced him. And there was much rejoicing. Jai is pretty.

jai/ben
jai/joan
auggie/jai
jai/auggie sex
Wow. Jai gets around, huh? Gotta say, I’m a little disappointed the Jai/Arthur crowd is keeping quiet. I thought that pairing would be a natural.

covert affairs will annie and jai ever hook up
I doubt it. Looks like he’ll be too busy with Ben, Joan and Auggie.

covert affairs bud light
Shameless product placement. Bud Light, Adidas, BMW… it’s not tough to figure out Covert Affairs’ major sponsors.

flashforward douche hero
Oh, that’d be Mark. I’m pretty sure his FBI credentials read, “Mark Benford: Douche Hero.”

best los angeles thrift stores
Depends on your interests. My personal favorite, as I’ve rhapsodized before, is It’s a Wrap on Robertson just north of Pico (there’s also one in Burbank). The inventory is limited to clothes, shoes and jewelry; if you’re looking for books or furnishings, I’d recommend either the Goodwill on Beverly and Fairfax (it’s new, big, and clean, and the staff is super-friendly) or any Out of the Closet store -- the one on Fairfax south of Melrose is a favorite. But for clothes -- particularly upscale designer clothes -- It’s a Wrap has the best selection.

mohinder's paisley shirt godsend
It’s glorious, isn’t it? Hey, speaking of It’s a Wrap, I searched long and hard through racks of Heroes wardrobe there for that paisley shirt, but to no avail. However, I do own the turquoise shirt he wore underneath it. Because wardrobe people tend to buy in multiples, they had two of it in stock; my sister owns the other one. It’s a damn good shirt. Manufactured by Guess?, mens size small. Comfy and flattering.


heroes humor mohinder scarf
Oh, yes. Mohinder’s scarf -- really, that whole outfit, with the hot pink shirt and the corduroy jacket -- is always good for a laugh.

i love joan covert affairs
Me too. Joan is fabulous.

beverly center or glendale galleria
Skip them both and hang out at The Grove. Best celebrity sightings in Los Angeles.

covert affairs what kind of shoes
Christian Louboutin, of the iconic red soles.

covert affairs, is jay wilcox adopted
why is jai's father white on covert affairs
what was jai's mother on covert affairs
Jai’s mother has been described only as “a neurosurgeon in Mumbai.” While it’s never explicitly stated that Henry is Jai’s natural father, that’s the conclusion we’re clearly meant to draw, based on Auggie’s burst of expository dialogue to Annie about Jai’s origins.

preppies of the apocalypse bad train movie
You say bad train movie. I say 83 minutes of sheer cheeseball delight.

describe miami vice season 3
Totally awesome. A slight dip in quality from the first two seasons, but pretty solid nonetheless. Let’s see… Zito got murdered, Sonny fell in love with smack-addicted surgeon Helena Bonham Carter, and Jeff Fahey blew up Sonny’s Ferrari with a rocket launcher, just to be a butthead.

emmanuelle vaugier is very hot in covert affairs
Oh, hell, Emmanuelle Vaugier is very hot in everything she does. Remember when she was Lex’s evil wife on Smallville?

foods judd nelson loves
I’m going to guess… Doritos and Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers.

hackers the movie strange how people viewed computers
Yes.

harry shum is my crush on glee
Mine, too. He’s cute.

is annie a noc covert affairs
Yep, Annie’s a NOC. Her cover is a mild-mannered Smithsonian employee.

last episode of covert affairs,is moxi dead
This threw me at first, but I think it refers to Mozzie on the White Collar finale, which aired immediately before Covert Affairs. Mozzie got shot in the chest at close range and sure seemed to be in bad shape, but I’m about 90% sure he’ll be just fine. He’s too good a character for the show to lose like that.

white collar don't kill mozzie sign here
Aw. Something about this seems very, very sweet and earnest.

likelihood of covert affairs being picked up
It’s a done deal. The second season will air next summer, which seems very far away.

matt bomer, cheekbones
Outstanding.

sendhil ramamurthy bone structure
Also outstanding.

mister william ocean psych
psych "william ocean"
what did mr william ocean say on psych
“When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

narrow shoulders looks weird in t shirt
As long as the fit is good -- if the shoulder seams match up with the natural shoulders -- everyone can look good in a t-shirt, regardless of body type.

television psych agent driggs filmography
C. Thomas Howell. His full filmography can be viewed here. He was a teen star in the Eighties (The Outsiders, Red Dawn, The Hitcher, Soul Man… hell, he was even in E.T.) and has acted steadily, albeit with a lower profile, since then.

none of the actors on covert affairs carries a gun, why?
Because it’s a terrible idea to arm actors. As to the characters, I’ve heard the idea floated around that CIA agents aren’t allowed to be armed on home soil. However, we’ve seen Jai run around with a gun, looking all sexy and businesslike, both within the US (“What Is and What Should Never Be”) and abroad (“I Can’t Quit You, Baby” and “When the Levee Breaks”). Thus far, Annie has never carried a gun; maybe that will change as she becomes a more experienced operative. And off the top of my head, I can think of one excellent reason why Auggie should never, ever be armed.

opening sequence of covert affairs sucks
I like the theme music. As to the animated sequence, it’s growing on me, even though it does raise expectations the show can’t fulfill (really, we’ve yet to see Annie hop on a motorcycle and zip past the Eiffel Tower). It’s rare these days to find a show that still bothers to do an opening sequence, so I appreciate the effort, if nothing else.

what did annie call vivian on covert affairs
A wonk.

white collar neal alex what they were doing in the swimming pool
Well, ostensibly Alex wanted to make sure the FBI couldn’t wiretap their conversation, which is why she had him shed his clothes and jump in the water with her. On the other hand, they’re two incredibly attractive people frolicking naked in a swimming pool. Odds are good some hanky-panky was involved after the tasteful cutaway to the next scene.

personal email of morgan richter
me_richter (at) yahoo (dot) com is the best way to reach me.
Read more!