Fun With Keywords: Fake Nude Andrew McCarthy Edition

Happy New Year, everyone. Let’s close out 2010 with another look at the search terms visitors used to find this site in recent weeks.

andrew mccarthy fake nude
For some reason, the idea of someone diligently hunting online for doctored Andrew McCarthy nude photos delights me to no end.

is helen hunt in pretty in pink
No, but it does seem like the kind of movie she’d crop up in, doesn’t it? Both Gina Gershon and Kristy Swanson have small parts in Pretty in Pink, however, and that’s got to count for something.

psych mocks the mentalist
At every possible turn.

"criminal minds""25 to life""hotch"
25 to life criminal minds no hotch
25 to life where was hotch
Glad to see I’m not the only one who was concerned and/or miffed about that. According to internet scuttlebutt, there was no Hotch in “25 to Life” because Thomas Gibson was off playing in a golf tournament in Wales during filming. I have no idea whether this is true. I do know, however, that “I was playing golf in Wales” is my new go-to excuse for skipping work.

an artist, finds an old canoe in woods behind her property. her neighbors consider it abandoned. elle cleans it, paints scenes on it depicting native american rituals, and displays it in her art gallery. flo, the canoe's original owner, claims it, but a court grants elle title.
elle, an artist, finds an old canoe in woods behind her property. her neighbors consider it abandoned. elle cleans it, paints scenes on it depicting native american rituals, and displays it in her art gallery. flo, the canoe's original owner, claims it, but a court grants elle title. this is
canoe's original owner, claims it, but a court grants elle title
Lord. I don’t… I can’t… Why does this search keep coming up? What’s this all about? I’ve had people from Indiana, Arizona, South Dakota, Texas and California find this site by searching for this. Someone, please, drop me a note in the comments and explain.

charlie hobbitt
I’m pretty sure Dominic Monaghan answers to “Charlie Hobbit.” It’s easier that way.

who plays raj on psych's bollywood
I’ve answered this one before, but it’s included again because it’s been a couple months since I’ve mentioned Sendhil Ramamurthy on this site, and that seems like a crying shame.

who played gus's wife in the polarizing express
Little Rudy Huxtable, who grew up to become a knockout.

what season charles beauchamp criminal minds
criminal minds episodes on charles beauchamp
None. Charles Beauchamp is Agent Seaver’s serial-killing father, but he’s never been seen on the show. Hotch and Rossi -- remember, Rossi was a member of the BAU years ago before retiring and then rejoining the team after Gideon left -- arrested him when Seaver was a child, which would have been maybe fifteen years ago.

criminal minds best morgan episodes
Let’s see…. Well, “Profiler, Profiled” is pretty much all Morgan, all the time, so that’s cool. My favorite Morgan moment might be the savoir-faire he showed in dealing with the pack of buttheady, white power-sympathizing, FBI-hating militia members in “Identity.” (I also loved Rossi’s decision to send Morgan to deal with them in the first place. Rossi is a world-class troublemaker). He gets some quality screen time in “Lucky” and “Penelope,” too. There are a handful of other Morgan-heavy episodes -- “25 to Life,” “Hopeless,” “Brothers in Arms” -- but I wouldn’t consider any of them standouts.

criminal minds reflection of desire horrible
Yes. Awful. Ghastly. Pretentious. Embarrassing for all concerned.

what happened to criminal minds writers now hackneyed
“Hackneyed” is exactly the right word. Thank you. I don’t know what’s going on, but the same staff writers who’ve turned out strong episodes in seasons past are now churning up crap. “25 to Life” and “Reflections of Desire” are both poorly written by any reasonable standard… and they’re both credited to writers/producers who’ve also been responsible for very good episodes. Good writers usually don’t suddenly turn bad, so something wonky is happening behind the scenes. I’ve read that showrunner Edward Bernero has left the show in the hands of other staff members while he focuses his energies on the upcoming spin-off. Maybe that has something to do with the dip in quality, maybe not.

did not get psych twin peaks dancing ending
Judging by my keyword statistics after that episode aired, you’re not alone. The ending was an homage to a number of Twin Peaks’ most baffling moments. If you were a regular Twin Peaks viewer, you’d get it; if not, you wouldn’t. I attempted to parse a bunch of the references in the comment thread following my recap of that episode, but it’s almost beyond explanation.

garcia as communication liason?
Pretty dumb idea, huh? Garcia is without peer as a technical analyst, but she’s no damn good at filling J.J.’s shoes as the public face of the BAU. Nor should she be. It makes no sense that she’d try to fit into that role after J.J.’s departure. It’s one of several creative missteps the show has made this season.

thomas gibson shirtless
I’m feeling especially service-y today, so here you go. This is from Love and Human Remains. If the center-parted bangs don’t tip you off that this was filmed in the early Nineties, those extra-long high-waisted boxer-briefs certainly will.

reid kidnapped turns in hotch
Heh. I’m presuming this refers to the awesome scene in “Revelations” in which villain du jour James Van Der Beek holds a kidnapped Reid at gunpoint and, while the rest of the team watches on live webcam, threatens to kill him unless he picks one of his teammates to die in his place. Reid picks Hotch, and awesomeness ensues. The clip’s on YouTube, starting around the three-minute mark.

love honour and obey johnny lee miller karaoke song
“Avenues & Alleyways.” It’s pretty great. It’s hard to find, but if you can, track down the whole soundtrack, which, as an added bonus, also features Jude Law singing “Rock On.”

lost cast member double rows eyelashes
That could only be Nestor Carbonnell.

jennifer jarreau sexy
Hmm. Not sure. J.J. is beautiful, obviously, but she looks too much like an adorable woodland creature to be sexy. It'd be like lusting after Bambi.

criminal minds jj weak character
I’d disagree with this. For all its flaws, Criminal Minds doesn’t get enough credit for its strong development of the series regulars, J.J. included. She didn’t always have much to do, but up until she left the show, J.J. was consistently kick-ass. We saw only a glimpse of her background (she escaped from her stifling hometown on a soccer scholarship, and she had an older sister who committed suicide), and we discovered only bits about her personal life (her interests included: a) butterflies, and b) guys with improbable Cajun accents), but we learned plenty about J.J. just by watching her do her job. Check her out in “The Big Game,” in which she cheerfully trounces a bunch of random guys at darts, then sweetly manipulates the local cops into letting her look through their files, then grimly faces down a pack of rabid dogs who’d just torn another woman to pieces. Nobody would ever consider “The Big Game” a J.J.-centric episode, but doesn’t seeing the way she reacts to these situations tell you a lot about her character?

sylar character traits
personality anaylsis peter petrelli
In terms of character development, Heroes is the flip side of the coin from Criminal Minds. Viewers received a glut of backstory and personal information about both Sylar and Peter… but much of it was nonsensical and contradictory, and it ultimately weakened both characters. Along with most of the other major characters on Heroes, neither Peter nor Sylar behave in a consistent manner from episode to episode. Thus, they’re impossible to analyze, because their actions don’t. make. sense.

Merry 2011, everyone. Please make it a good one.
Read more!

Psych: Yang 3 in 2D

Psych season finale! Let’s get down to the nuts and bolts:

A young college student named Allison Cowley (Mena Suvari) claims to have escaped from the evil clutches of Shawn’s mysterious longtime nemesis, Mr. Yin. Yin chained her up in a house, but she managed to escape, after stealing a framed photo showing an adolescent Shawn posing with Yin’s cohort and his own other longtime nemesis, Mr. Yang (Ally Sheedy).

The Santa Barbara Police Department storms Yin’s house and finds it now occupied by a nice family eating breakfast (Lassiter: “Aw, crap.”). Chief Vick suspects Allison made up the entire story of her abduction, but Allison proves her familiarity with the house by blindfolding herself and describing the furnishings. Convinced Allison is still in danger, Shawn takes her to stay in his childhood bedroom in Henry’s home. Shortly thereafter, Allison disappears, leaving behind a yin/yang symbol painted on Shawn’s bedspread.

Shawn and Gus visit Yang in the mental institution to ask for help tracking down Yin and Allison. Yang, who is still sweetly/creepily obsessed with Shawn, agrees to help, provided she’s allowed to visit the crime scene -- i.e. Shawn’s bedroom.

Yang examines Shawn’s room and tells him Yin probably left behind some kind of clue. After sorting through his album collection (Depeche Mode, Echo and the Bunnymen… Shawn, you have awesome taste in music), Shawn realizes Yin stole both The Smiths’ Meat is Murder and Van Halen’s 1984. As 1984 contains the song “Hot for Teacher,” Shawn decides Yin must be one of Allison’s professors.

…Yes, on any show other than Psych, that dizzying leap in logic would make me wrinkle my nose in disdain. On this show? It works. Are you really watching Psych for the crackerjack detective work and logical deductions?

Meanwhile, Henry contacts his ex-wife Maddy (Cybill Shepherd, hooray), hoping she might know where the old photo of Yang and Shawn was taken. Maddy, who was kidnapped by Yang in the episode “An Evening With Mr. Yang,” comes charging over to Santa Barbara to protect her son.

Yin turns out to be one Karl Rotmensen, Allison’s Romantic History professor, who hasn’t shown up to class for the past week. When Shawn and Gus go to Rotmensen’s listed home address, they find a box of VHS tapes in a field.

The tapes contain the video diaries of Mary (Jimmi Simpson), who hunted down Yin and was then murdered by him in last season’s finale, “Mr. Yin Presents.” On the tapes, Mary rambles on about how One Tree Hill is just a poorly-executed Dawson’s Creek, before getting to the point: He thinks Yang is merely Yin’s pawn, and that Yin is planning something big and terrible.

Maddy realizes she took the photo of Yang posing with Shawn for her photography class -- Yang was a creepy, lonely woman who lived three blocks away from the Spencers. Shawn and Gus rush over to Yang’s old house and find a note in the mailbox instructing them to use the key under the mat. As soon as they enter the house, the door locks behind them, trapping them inside. The windows are reinforced with metal grates; when Lassiter and Juliet and Henry arrive, they’re unable to break in.

Yang claims to know a secret entrance. She offers to help Juliet sneak into the house, provided Juliet lets her pose for another photo with Shawn.

Shawn and Gus find Allison in the basement of the house. She pulls a shotgun on them and informs them she’s Yin’s new apprentice. She leads them upstairs to the study to meet Mr. Yin…

Who turns out to be… Peter Weller! Huh. Didn’t see that one coming. Pretty cool, though I confess to a lingering disappointment that it wasn’t Judd Nelson. Yin threatens to kill them with a syringe filled with a combination of cyanide, strychnine, atropine, and boat cleaner. Shawn and Gus squabble over who should die first (Gus: “Do you have just the one needle? Do you plan on sterilizing it between uses?” Shawn: “Gus, you can’t be serious.” Gus: “I don’t know where all you’ve been, Shawn.”).

Juliet and Yang sneak into the basement. While The Smiths plays in the background, Juliet gets into a huge, messy, violent, awesome fight with Allison (coffee tables are smashed, water heaters get dented) before emerging victorious.

Before Yin can kill Gus, Yang bursts into the study. She reveals that Yin is her father, climbs into his lap, swipes the syringe from him, and kills him.

And everything ends well. Yang confesses that she wasn’t responsible for the earlier murders -- it was Yin’s doing all along. As her reward, she gets her photo taken with Shawn again, before she’s carted back off to the mental institution. And in the tag ending, Lassiter accidentally discovers that Shawn and Juliet are secretly dating. Which, presumably, will not sit well with him.

None of that made a damn lick of sense, but you know what? Doesn’t matter. It was fun anyway.

Lassiter-based awesomeness:
(Officer McNab marvels at Lassiter’s nonchalance over wrapping up the Yin/Yang case.)
McNab: You don’t feel anything?
Lassiter: Closure. Indifference. Hunger.
McNab: Wow. You’re like a robot.
Lassiter: Thank you. I got the same comment on my eHarmony page, so it must be true.

Awesome Eighties references:
Shawn (riffing on what Yin might’ve done in his formative years to indicate he’d later become a psychotic killer): Memorize episodes of Perfect Strangers, line for line?

Gus (arguing that Yin should kill him before Shawn): You must be out of your damn mind if you think I’m going to sit here and die after watching you die with some ridiculous grin on your face, like you’re thinking about sopapillas or that stupid scene from Summer School where all the students pretend to be dead.

At Allison’s school, a kid in the hallway passes out “Save Ferris” flyers.

Lassiter: Start talking, Yang, or it’s back to the rubber room.
Gus: What does Lassie think this is, Shutter Island?
Shawn: Either that, or Tootsie.

Shawn (showing Allison around his childhood bedroom): I hope the He-Man sheets are acceptable.

Yang (explaining that she doesn’t want to miss the afternoon movie at the mental institution): They’re screening Carbon Copy. I can’t resist a young Susan Saint James. Spunky.
Read more!

Psych: The Polarizing Express

When Shawn is caught on a surveillance camera performing an illegal search of an office, the district attorney’s case against a notorious mobster named Czarsky for tax fraud is thrown out. The mayor comes down hard on Chief Vick, so she places Shawn on indefinite suspension and, for good measure, fires Henry. Furious with his son for his devil-may-care attitude toward police work, Henry wonders aloud whether things would’ve turned out better if Shawn hadn’t returned to Santa Barbara and re-entered his life five years ago.

Yep, it’s an It’s a Wonderful Life-themed episode, folks. ‘Tis the season.

Shawn falls asleep in the Psych office, which is festively decked out for the holidays, and wakes to find Bad Santa’s Tony Cox, playing himself, clad in an elf outfit and throwing snowballs at him.

This episode is a doozy. I mean that in the best possible way.

In Shawn’s dream, Tony informs Shawn that he’s his superego. He’s going to show Shawn what life would’ve been like had he stayed away from Santa Barbara. (While Shawn and Tony chat, the Grinch scampers through the background outside the office windows, wrestling presents away from people. Random! Yet sort of awesome!)

First up: Henry’s house. The place is a disaster, filled with dirty dishes and garbage. Henry, bloated and with long, unkempt hair, sits on the couch in his underwear watching television and sobbing on the phone to his ex-wife Madeline, who has just remarried an African prince.

Next stop: Gus. Since it’s Shawn’s dream, he decides he wants to see Gus’s alternate future in the form of a mid-Nineties UPN sitcom, which is titled Wilin’ With Da Gusters. Gus has a materialistic bombshell wife (former Cosby kid Keshia Knight Pulliam), an obnoxious teenage son, and a mustache. The sitcom is loaded with inane catch phrases and random dance numbers, and it’s really sort of awesome. If it were a real show, I wouldn’t watch it, but I’d have due respect for a universe where Wilin’ With Da Gusters exists.

S.B.P.D. headquarters: Since Shawn had rewatched Austin Powers the previous night, his dream version of Chief Vick sports a German accent and a dominatrix-inspired uniform, a la Frau Farbissina. In this version of reality, she’s second-in-command to Lassiter, who wears a monocle and a sword and reprimands his officers for being too reluctant to shoot suspects.

Juliet: In Shawn’s dream, Juliet never received her transfer to Santa Barbara, because Shawn never exposed Lassiter’s affair with his pre-Juliet partner. Instead, she’s a cop in the Miami Police Department, with huge feathered hair, a la Heather Locklear in T.J. Hooker. She’s currently involved in a big shootout with a horde of heavily-armed, pink-Cadillac-driving Cuban gangsters, and it’s pretty much the best cheeseball Eighties cop show ever.

Shawn also receives a visit from a dream-version of his younger self, played by Skyler Gisondo, who sometimes plays Young Shawn in those childhood flashbacks that kick off every episode. Or used to kick off every episode, at least -- the flashbacks have been few and far between this season, and it seems like they’re being slowly phased out. Tony remarks that Young Shawn doesn’t look much like Old Shawn. Young Shawn quips, “Well, we changed -- sometimes week to week,” in reference to way Young Shawn used to be played by Liam James.

Shawn wakes from his dream and abruptly realizes there were no surveillance cameras in Czarsky’s office, and thus the footage of his illicit search must’ve been shot from somewhere outside. Shawn and Gus find the apartment from where the camera was set up. To make sure they follow police procedure this time, they take Lassiter with them to search it.

Inside, they find bomb-making equipment and a cell phone recently used to place calls to Miami. The inhabitant of the apartment, a young man named Juan (Jacob Vargas), was the fiancé of a woman who was killed by Czarsky when she refused to pay him protection money.

Lassiter arrests Juan. Shawn realizes Juan’s watch is actually a timer, and that his bomb is set to kill Czarsky. Lassiter and Juliet hurry to protect Czarsky, but by the time the explosives experts arrive, they find no trace of a bomb -- because Gus, with help from Shawn and Juan, already secretly disarmed it to prevent Juan from going to prison.

Shawn and Gus rally the people who’ve been harassed by Czarsky to testify against him. With a newly solid case, Lassiter re-arrests Czarsky while Shawn and Gus drink Juan’s special lactose-free eggnog in celebration. And Shawn gets back in Chief Vick’s good graces and even arranges for Henry to get his job back.

An exceedingly odd yet by no means displeasing episode.

Lassiter-based awesomeness:
(On the charges against Czarsky being dropped): “If I weren’t a cop, I’d shoot him in a dark alley and leave evidence suggesting his own people were behind it. And when I say ‘I’, I mean a fake, imaginary detective, to be played by Powers Boothe.”

Awesome opening credits:
Special Christmas-themed credits, complete with snowfall and twinkling lights.
Read more!

Psych: Dead Bear Walking

I’ve got a lot of recapping to blast through today, so this’ll be fast and dirty. I’d make some kind of “bear with me” pun here, but I don’t want you all to lose respect for me.

Lassiter’s surprisingly normal and friendly kid sister Lauren (April Bowlby), an aspiring filmmaker, decides to trail her big brother around while filming a documentary on police work. A zoo trainer named Jasper Zane is found murdered, presumably mauled by a polar bear. The bear is set to be euthanized, though Shawn suspects the bear is being framed. Shortly thereafter, animal-rights activist Macleod Sinclaire (Brian Klugman) emancipates the bear from the zoo and stashes him in the Psych offices to hide him from the authorities. Shawn is totally cool with this, Gus is less so.

Lassiter swiftly traces the bear back to Shawn and Gus and takes him back into custody. Shawn and Gus search Zane’s home and discover the zoo’s director, C. Lee Banting, has insured the bear for two million dollars. Their theory that this is a motive for framing the bear is blown when Macleod reveals that the insurance money can only be collected if the bear dies of natural causes. If he’s put to death for attacking Zane, the zoo doesn’t profit.

Shawn discovers that the bear has a heart murmur and thus always wears a wireless transmitter that monitors his vital signs. When the county’s Director of Animal Control, Cody Blair (Family Ties’ Michael Gross), shows up to euthanize the bear, Shawn wins a stay of execution by proving that, per the heart monitor results, the bear was asleep at the time Zane was murdered.

Shawn and Gus next suspect the murder was committed by Zane’s fiancée, Gemma, who was jealous of the attention Zane lavished on the bear. When Gemma’s blood-stained shirt is found in Zane’s trash, Lassiter arrests her, but is forced to release her when Shawn determines the blood came from scratches she sustained from cultivating roses.

Meanwhile, Lauren continues to film her documentary (Shawn expresses a wish to be played by Cillian Murphy in her filmed version of events, with Stoney Jackson as Gus and Fyvush Finkel as Henry. Heh). Lauren, who worships her big brother, becomes increasingly disillusioned by watching Lassiter fumble his way through the investigation. To restore Lauren’s faith, Shawn steps aside and lets Lassiter have all the glory for solving the case: After noticing that a boundary fence has been moved, Lassiter realizes Zane was murdered as a result of a property dispute with his neighbor.

Is it ridiculous to complain about a Psych episode being under-plotted? Granted, Psych plots are almost always entirely beside the point, serving merely as a background upon which to present running gags and inspired nonsense, but even so… this episode was under-plotted.

Gus’s fake name:
Gusjay Gupta

Gus’s fake stripper names:
Original G-String, a.k.a. Crowd Pleazah

Gus’s fake name with bonus awesome Eighties reference:
Radio Star.
Shawn, to camcorder-toting Lauren: “I’m afraid your video will kill him.”

Awesome Eighties reference:
Shawn (upon uncovering the property dispute between Zane and his neighbor): Like Belushi and Aykroyd.
Lassiter: Yes! Trading Places!
Shawn. No. Neighbors.

Awesome Seventies reference:
Shawn, on Macleod’s experience working with bears: “He has a signed Dan Haggerty 8x10, so you know we’re in good hands here.”
Read more!

Criminal Minds: 25 to Life

So it’s been a year since Haley’s murder and all the associated awfulness (which I’ve decided to collectively refer to as the Hotchpocalypse), and Hotch is taking some time off to be with his son. Ergo, this is a Hotch-free episode.

No Hotch? At all?

…The hell?

Twenty-five years ago, Donald Sanderson (Kyle Secor) was convicted of murdering his wife and daughter in their DC-area home. He’s now up for parole, and he’s been a model inmate, so Morgan heads to the prison to determine if it’s safe to release him into polite society. Sanderson tells Morgan he’s innocent, claiming a trio of unknown assailants broke into his house and killed his family. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be accused of something you didn’t do?” he asks. Why, yes indeedy, Morgan certainly does. So Morgan goes off and thinks some really deep thoughts about the appropriate course of action. Seriously, we get a pre-credits montage of Morgan furrowing his sexy brow while thinking, and it’s already obvious this episode is going to be padded out all the way to hell and back. After much soul-searching, he recommends parole for Sanderson.

And two days after his release, Sanderson goes out and kills some dude.

Morgan interrogates Sanderson, who claims he killed the man, Tom Wittman, in self-defense -- he visited Wittman to grill him on his suspected involvement in his wife’s murder, Wittman attacked him, and Sanderson had no choice but to stab him. Morgan gets shouty with him, and Sanderson continues to maintain his innocence, and they have one of those long, flabby scenes where both parties talk in endless circles and very little pertinent information comes out.

As with last week’s episode, this premise is filled with plenty of good potential. Also, Kyle Secor (remembered fondly by many for Homicide: Life on the Street, though he’ll always be Veronica Mars’ Jake Kane to me) is a swell guest star. Despite all that, it’s a tedious mess. It’s tempting to point to Hotch’s absence as the source of the problems -- he anchors the show, after all, and it quickly becomes rudderless and adrift without him -- but more to the point, they’re all working off of a weak and unfocused script, and thus this episode is doomed to go nowhere good.

At the time of the murders, Tom Wittman was a teenager who worked at the corner grocery store and who continually perved on Sanderson’s wife. During Sanderson’s incarceration, it (somehow) dawned on him that Wittman was one of the home invaders who killed his wife and daughter, though he never bothered to pass along this information to, like, a lawyer or someone and instead waited patiently in prison for years and years until being granted parole so he could rush out and confront Wittman himself.

Morgan and Rossi take Sanderson back to his old house to revisit the crime scene and try to recall what happened. Sanderson remembers Wittman, plus another man and a woman, attacking his wife and daughter. Garcia identifies the woman as a petty criminal named Mary Rutka. When Prentiss and Morgan head over to Mary’s place, they find she’s been brutally murdered. While examining the body, Prentiss gets Mary’s blood on her hands, which she then cleans off obsessively, to the extent that it draws Morgan’s attention. This bit of oddness is never mentioned again, and while I’m sure it’ll be revisited sometime down the road, probably as an indication that Prentiss is starting to unravel from the stress of the job, it still seems glaring and weird.

Oh, also? Young Agent Ashley Seaver is still along for the ride, having been granted permission from Hotch to finish out her training in the BAU. It was hard to find a graceful point in this recap to mention this, because she’s given very, very little to do in this episode.

Prentiss and Morgan find a dusty VHS tape in Mary’s apartment, which shows Mary and Wittman and an unidentified man breaking into the Sanderson home. The team starts working to find the third man, who presumably also killed Mary to make sure she stayed silent about the Sanderson murders. Extrapolating wildly, they determine he’s an asset-based lender (?), and from there pinpoint him as Congressional candidate James Stanworth (Philip Casnoff), whose family used to own the Sanderson home. Stanworth’s current campaign slogan is “Let’s Do This,” which is a phrase the unidentified man on the tape is heard saying before attacking the Sandersons, and… this is weak, guys.

Section Chief Strauss twirls her mustache in a villainous manner, cackles a bit, and, for no good reason other than to throw some conflict into the paths of our stalwart heroes, refuses to let Morgan arrest Stanworth. Unpopular opinion: I secretly dig Strauss and quietly admire her borderline-nonsensical attempts to undermine and discredit the BAU at every turn. Her open scheming to bring down Hotch in seasons past was so weirdly over-the-top that it ended up being sort of hilarious.

Anyway, the team ignores Strauss’s orders, as usual. Morgan and Rossi and Prentiss crash a fundraising gala at Stanworth’s house, whereupon Morgan needles him into confessing to the murders. Sanderson’s name is cleared, Morgan’s judgment is validated, and Criminal Minds heads off into its winter hiatus a little worse for wear.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to get my delayed weekly Hotch fix by heading over to YouTube and watching one of the several billion fan-made music videos featuring the FBI’s very own ultra-grim angel of death running around in a bulletproof vest while shooting everyone. I’m partial to this one, if only because it’s set to that awesome Chris Cornell song from Casino Royale. New episodes return in mid-January, and Hotch, buddy, please don’t ever leave us again.
Read more!

Criminal Minds: What Happens at Home

Three women are strangled to death in a gated community in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Apart from the residents, no one entered or left the community around the times of the attacks. The community inhabitants are all extremely similar from a demographic perspective, making it difficult for the Behavioral Analysis Unit to whittle down the pool of possible suspects.

Straight off the top: This is a strong premise. Too many episodes this season have tried to jack up viewer interest by featuring either an overly-gimmicky unsub (Reflection of Desire: “He keeps the women alive for three days to correspond with the three-act structure of a screenplay!”) or a gratuitously sadistic one, complete with too many salacious rape/torture scenes (Middle Man, Remembrance of Things Past). The result has been a cluster of uniquely silly and/or off-putting episodes. Here, the writers smartly de-emphasize the unsub and place the importance on the unique setting of the attacks -- a high-security gated community with a contained suspect pool -- thus giving the team a chance to use their clever, clever brains to unravel the case. This is a flawed episode in many ways (notably, the team members don’t use their clever, clever brains and indeed blunder their way into finding the unsub), but it’s a step in a better direction.

Hotch and Rossi decide they need a fresh perspective to bring their number of suspects down to a more manageable size. Cut to plucky young Agent Ashley Seaver (Rachel Nichols) zipping around an obstacle course at Quantico, getting her Clarice Starling on. Rossi pulls her off the course and brings her into the BAU to talk with Hotch, and my goodness, they’re piling on the Silence of the Lambs parallels a little thick, aren’t they? Seaver’s father was Charles Beauchamp, aka the Redmond Ripper, who murdered twenty-five women in North Dakota when Seaver was a kid, until Hotch and Rossi finally tracked him down and captured him (Rossi, in reference to Seaver now being an FBI agent herself: “Kind of makes you feel old, doesn’t it?” Hotch: “No.”). The profile of the unsub in the New Mexico killings suggests he’s a family man; Hotch and Rossi think Seaver’s first-hand knowledge of being raised by a murderer will give them some insights into the behavioral patterns of the children in the gated community, which might help them locate the unsub.

…Why, yes, this is a contrived and unlikely way to incorporate young Seaver into the elite BAU. I’m guessing the controversial shakeups to the regular cast, both those that have already taken place and the ones still to come, are at least partially motivated by CBS’s desire to lure in that coveted younger demographic; hence the addition of a young, fresh character to the show. Here’s the problem, though: To state the obvious, the BAU is not 21 Jump Street, and youth is not an asset. By the very nature of what the team does, it should be comprised of seasoned, experienced agents. Making an exception for young Reid is fine -- he’s a super-genius! he was hand-picked as Gideon’s protégé! -- but making another exception for Seaver weakens the premise of the show.

That said, Seaver appears to be a likeable enough character, and Nichols did a fine job in this episode. If she ends up sticking around for the duration (which is not yet a done deal), her presence is not going to damage the series.

The team, plus Seaver, jets off to New Mexico, where they meet with lead detective/community resident Felix Ruiz (Alex Fernandez) and set up headquarters in a model home. Ruiz and his officers, plus the community’s security chief Harvey Brinkman (Scott Subiono), present the BAU with meticulous files on the community residents. Ruiz has already whipped up his own surprisingly accurate profile of the unsub. He’s even interviewed all sixty-four possible suspects.

(The almost-creepy efficiency of Ruiz and the weird hyper-vigilant vibe of the gated community as a whole are nice touches. It’s a shame the episode doesn’t quite live up to all the abundant promise of the premise and the individual elements.)

The BAU conducts a town meeting at a local church, ostensibly to discuss the murders but really to give Seaver a chance to observe the interactions of the families. While Hotch leads the meeting, Seaver relays her impressions to Prentiss and Morgan. Hey, Morgan is sporting some really… interesting… facial hair this season. Shemar Moore is one of the more attractive men on the planet, but damn, between the shaved head and the sculpted eyebrows and those odd little lines running down his chin, somebody needs to wrestle the clippers away from him.

Seaver dredges up a couple of relevant tidbits from her childhood: Her father, who rarely showed anger and who was highly protective of her in public places, would often buy her gifts and would never let her own a pet. Prentiss and Morgan duly add this information to their profile.

Meanwhile, while the meeting is taking place, someone breaks into another house and strangles another woman.

Prentiss goes off with Brinkman to determine which community members own pets. Left to her own devices, Seaver, who has been a sharp cookie up to this point, decides to violate Hotch’s order to stay out of the investigation. This is where Seaver and I part ways: I don’t think you could pay me enough to disobey Hotch. For someone so soft-spoken and so fundamentally nice, he gets scary pretty fast. She strolls off to visit Drew Jacobs (Kenneth Mitchell), the husband of one of the victims, plus his young daughter Heather. She babbles on to Drew about how she wants to apologize on behalf of the unsub’s family, explaining that she knows how much guilt they must be feeling. This would probably be disconcerting enough for Drew under any circumstances. Since he is in fact the unsub, it’s made doubly so.

Hotch, concerned that Seaver has wandered off by herself, calls her. Realizing she’s trapped with the unsub, Seaver manages to pass a coded warning to him. Drew attacks her with a knife, but Hotch charges to her rescue and shoots him.

On the jet back to Quantico, Hotch bawls out Seaver for going off on her own (on the grand spectrum of Scary Hotch Moments, it’s pretty mild, though it’s probably enough to make Seaver think twice about deviating from his instructions again). Then Seaver and Rossi have a conversation that lasts for about forty-three minutes, in which Seaver rambles on about how her dad once killed a puppy she brought home, but she still can’t bring herself to hate him, even though she refuses to read his letters or visit him in prison, and wow, it’s a really long, slow, meandering scene. Criminal Minds has these weird pacing problems sometimes, where there’s far too much time left over post-climax, leading to these odd, disjointed, drawn-out denouements. Sometimes it’s fine -- some of the very best little character moments have taken place on the jet post-case -- but I’d much rather watch Reid cheat at poker, or Prentiss and Morgan mock-complain about the lack of chilled Cristal, than listen to this dreary business about Seaver’s troubled past.

Not a bad episode, though. Whether it’s temporary or permanent, welcome to the show, Agent Seaver.
Read more!

Psych: We’d Like to Thank the Academy

After Shawn and Gus muck up a drug bust with their utter lack of reverence for appropriate police procedures, a fed-up Chief Vick orders them to attend a three-week crash course at the Santa Barbara Police Academy, under the tutelage of Officer Nick Conforth (Ralph Macchio). Nick graduated first in his class at the Academy, just ahead of his arch-rival Lassiter, yet has never been able to hack it in the field, due to his tendency to go all to pieces in times of stress.

Ralph Macchio! Outstanding. Cross another name off the master list of Psych dream guest stars.

Meanwhile, a number of check-cashing establishments run by noted crime boss DeVry Longsdale (Doron Bell Jr.) have been robbed, most likely by a petty criminal named David Arnold. When another robbery takes place, Shawn and Gus prey on Nick’s feelings of inferiority and persuade him to take them to the crime scene, in the hopes of solving the case first and showing up Lassiter. They spot Arnold fleeing on foot; Nick freezes up, but Gus and Shawn take off in hot pursuit. Arnold ducks into a dormitory at the Santa Barbara Institute of Technology and gets away.

(Is "DeVry Longsdale" a nod to Avon Barksdale from The Wire? If so, I'm duly impressed.)

Chief Vick suspends Nick for his participation in Shawn and Gus’s shenanigans, then sends the boys back to the Academy to complete their training, this time with Juliet as their instructor.

An investigation into David Arnold shows that everything in his file -- his police record, his license plate number, his address -- has been faked. Arnold, in fact, doesn’t exist at all -- he’s the creation of two computer wunderkinds at SBIT, Chris and Dickie. Despite being under strict orders to stay out of the investigation, Shawn and Gus snoop around Chris and Dickie’s dorm room. They’re forced to hide in the closet when DeVry Longsdale breaks into the room, searching for the quarter million in cash that the students stole from him.

Chris and Dickie used their technological savvy to steal the cash from Longsdale to repay their gambling debt to a grocery store owner/bookie named Bazo. DeVry kidnaps Chris and threatens to kill him unless Dickie returns the cash to him. Dickie eludes police custody, intent on stealing the cash back from Bazo to repay DeVry.

Shawn and Gus grab Nick and drag him along with them to Bazo’s store, where a big, messy shootout between Bazo and DeVry and Dickie takes place (Gus runs interference by flawlessly mimicking the sound of machine-gun fire, a la Michael Winslow’s character in the Police Academy films). Nick finally overcomes his fears long enough to burst in and save the day. After apprehending Bazo and DeVry, he runs off to barf.

Nick gets reinstated as the top instructor at the academy. He and Lassiter share a tremendously awkward hug.

A perfectly decent mid-level episode, distinguished mostly by a nice guest turn from Macchio, who is looser and funnier here than he was in his (strangely underwhelming) recurring role in the (strangely underwhelming) final season of Ugly Betty.

Gus’s fake name:
Mission Figz

Awesome Eighties references:
Gus speculates that the awards for outstanding police work should be called the Bustys. Shawn argues that Bustys should be reserved for strippers or sculptors: “Lionel Richie has one.”

Shawn, after Vick yells at them for their lack of knowledge of appropriate police procedure: “Fine. We’ll dust off our ChiPs DVDs and meet you back here Monday morning.”

Shawn, ogling his new academy instructor Juliet: “It’s Top Gun. I’m Cruise, she’s Kelly McGillis.” To Gus: “You’re Sundown.”

Shawn, after discovering “David Arnold” is a phony: “Someone made him up, like Kelly LeBrock in Weird Science.”

Awesome Karate Kid-specific Eighties references:
Nick, after sternly telling Shawn and Gus their police-issued gadgets are not toys: “Is that clear?”
Shawn: “Yes, Sensei!”

Shawn, after Nick grouses about feeling inadequate to Lassiter: “Don’t just stand there and wax on about it.”
Read more!

Psych: Dual Spires

It’s the much-heralded Twin Peaks tribute episode, and it’s a good one. It’s much too cluttered with awesome references to hit them all individually, so I’ll just point out a few as I go, and then clump the rest together in a big coffee-and-cherry-pie-soaked wad of awesomeness at the end. Here’s the plot: Shawn and Gus receive a mysterious email inviting them to the annual Cinnamon Festival in the itty bitty mountain town of Dual Spires. Upon arriving in town, they first hit the Sawmill Diner, which is run by Bob Barker (Dana Ashbrook) and his wife Michelle (Robyn Lively), and which boasts the finest cinnamon pie and apple cider Shawn and Gus have ever tasted. Shawn and Gus also meet the town’s friendly sheriff, Andrew Jackson (Lenny Von Dohlen).

The festival is interrupted when the body of homecoming queen Paula Merral is found by the side of the river, wrapped in plastic. As Bob and Michelle grieve beside their niece’s corpse, Shawn receives a mysterious text message: “Who killed Paula Merral?”

(If I tried to individually unravel all the in-jokes, we’d be here forever. Here’s an example of the fast-and-loose nature of the references: Sheriff Jackson’s second-in-command is a Native American man with long, flowing hair named Deputy Frost, which is a reference to Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost and an even more obvious reference to Michael Horse’s character, Deputy Hawk. Sheriff Andrew Jackson is a riff on Michael Ontkean’s Sheriff Harry S. Truman. “Paula Merral” is an anagram of “Laura Palmer,” the dead homecoming queen played by Sheryl Lee, who, in this incarnation, is playing the town doctor, Donna Gooden, which is a reference to Lara Flynn Boyle’s character, Donna Hayward. And so on, and so forth.)

Doc Gooden rules the death an accidental drowning, which Sheriff Jackson is all too eager to accept. Convinced foul play was involved, Shawn and Gus offer their investigative services to Bob and Michelle. Sheriff Jackson’s son Randy, the town’s star athlete, was secretly dating Paula, who apparently had a wild side. Shawn calls Juliet and asks her to do some research into Paula’s background.

Shawn and Gus meet the bombshell town librarian, Maudette Hornsby. Wow, Sherilyn Fenn looks great! The whole cast has held up well -- Dana Ashbrook in particular is still a looker, even with gray hair -- but Fenn is even more of a knockout now than she was in her Johnny Depp-dating early years.

Juliet and Lassiter show up in Dual Spires to help with the investigation. It turns out that Paula Merral drowned seven years ago, though her body was never found. Bob and Michelle confess their role in this: Paula’s mother, Michelle’s sister, was an unstable and abusive drug addict, so they faked Paula’s death and secretly moved her to Dual Spires to give her a better life. Bob is actually Paula’s father, though Michelle is oblivious to this.

Shawn and Gus search Paula’s bedroom and find her diary, which is written in Latin. They call upon their old friend Father Westley (Ray Wise, Twin Peaks’ Leland Palmer, making his second Psych appearance) to help with the translation. Father Westley informs them that Laura was secretly involved with both Randy and another boy, identified only by the letter J.

J turns out to be Jack Smith, Paula’s best friend, who is both: a) an avid photographer, and b) legally blind. Jack was out walking with Paula before she drowned. He claims Paula told him of her intentions to secretly leave Dual Spires with Randy. Jack also claims someone attacked him from behind and knocked him out -- when he woke up, Paula was gone. Shawn and Gus examine the photos Jack took during his stroll with Paula and find one of Randy sneaking up behind her. When they grill Randy about this, he insists he didn’t hurt her -- he was mad at her for spending so much time with Jack, but Paula was equally upset with him for spending so much time with his secret girlfriend, Maudette. Suspecting Maudette killed Paula to prevent Randy from running off with her, Shawn and Gus charge over to the library… and find Maudette hanging from the ceiling. (Gus: “I am so sick of this town.”)

As Maudette was the only person in town with internet access, Gus and Shawn realize she was the one who secretly summoned them to Dual Spires in the first place, presumably to investigate some unknown danger to Paula. The murderers turn out to be Sheriff Jackson and Doc Gooden, who were upset that Randy, the last direct descendant of the town founders, was planning on leaving the town with Paula. They killed Paula to stop him, then killed Maudette when she uncovered their scheme. Juliet and Lassiter arrive and arrest the culprits.

And in the final scene*, Jack wears a red suit and an eye patch while doing a strange dance to the jukebox in the diner while a kid in a football helmet bangs his head on the table, Randy barks like a dog, Lassiter does a crackerjack Special Agent Cooper impression while drinking a damn fine cup of coffee, and a thoroughly creeped-out Shawn and Juliet sneak out of town.

Edited to add: For a detailed explanation of the references in the final scene, please scroll down through the comments. And if you catch any references I missed, please feel free to point them out.

Sundry awesome Twin Peaks references:
I’m missing a bunch, I’m sure, but here’s what I found:
Shawn mentions that a woman in Washington invented a silent window shade in the nineties.
The newspaper announcing the Cinnamon Festival is called the Great Northern.
The Sawmill Diner used to be the town’s sawmill, which burned down in an arson fire.
Dual Spires’ town mascot is Leo, the Cinnamon Owl.
The town mayor: Douglas Fir.
Angelo Badalamenti-inspired music strikes up during key scenes: when Paula’s body is found, during the introduction to Maudette, and during the dance in the diner.
There’s a reference to a club called the Roadhouse.
Catherine Coulsen, Twin Peaks’ Log Lady, wanders through the background of a scene, carrying a log.
Maudette Hornsby drinks Cherry Coke and confesses her love of all things cherry.
Shawn and Gus find a book on golf in the library, written by one Earl Windom.
A black-and-white photo of Paula as the prom queen is shown during the end credits.

Awesome opening credits:
Julee Cruise performs a haunting Twin Peaks-esque version of the theme song over a Peaks-inspired credits montage.

Awesome Eighties reference:
Shawn (to Randy, re: his secret romance with Paula): I get it. It’s Pretty in Pink. You’re Andrew McCarthy.
Randy: Who’s Andrew McCarthy?
Shawn: That’s fair.

Lassiter-based awesomeness:
(After predicting when and where Paula’s drowned body should wash up, in precise detail) “Well, I know this because waiting for corpses to resurface is a passion in my life.”
Read more!