Criminal Minds: Coda

Sammy Sparks (Skyler Brigmann), an autistic ten-year-old boy in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana, plays a classical piece on the piano. This is intercut with a montage of our BAU members going through their morning routines -- Reid walks to work with a book on migraines tucked under his arm, Hotch helps young Jack get ready for the day. It’s a fitting start for a case that will hinge upon the importance of routines. More, with just these fleeting nods to past developments in the lives of our characters (Reid is now plagued with crippling migraines, Hotch is now raising a young son on his own), it’s already clear we’re in better hands in this episode than we’ve been for much of this season.

…My standards for this show are so very, very low these days. Throw me a few scraps of decent character development or intra-episode continuity, and I’m pathetically grateful.

While Sammy continues to play the piano, his mother, Alison (Jessica Lundy), struggles with a shadowy figure in the background. A spray of blood splatters Sammy’s face from some unclear burst of violence behind him. Sammy stops playing and wipes off his face. He looks at the smeared blood on his hand with nothing more than idle curiosity. Later, he shows up at his elementary school, lunchbox in hand, his face still splattered with blood.

Back in Virginia, Prentiss grows nervous and twitchy about the possibility that the mysterious Ian Doyle is out to kill her. Before getting into her car, she checks underneath it, then steps back and starts the engine remotely. She then has a clandestine meeting with her former Interpol cohorts Tsia, whom we met last episode, and Clyde (Fringe’s Sebastian Roche). It’s all very secret agent-y, with more than a faint whisper of absurdity: They sit close together in an open public area, not looking at each other, and carry on a conference about Doyle in hushed tones on disposable cell phones, which they toss immediately after hanging up. Prentiss wants to bring in the BAU to track down Doyle, but Clyde and Tsia shoot down that idea.

The New Orleans police ask the BAU for their help with the Sparks case. Sammy’s parents, Charlie and Alison, are both missing, and blood was found in their home. There’s been no ransom demand, and Sammy is non-responsive to their attempts to ask him about the attacks on his parents. Though it’s technically not a BAU case -- it seems to be a straightforward kidnapping -- the police think profilers might have a better chance of getting information out of Sammy.

The BAU goes over the case details en route to Louisiana. In the back of the jet, Reid rambles on about Doctor Who, and Seaver bluntly lets him know he’s boring her. Hmm. The show is facing an uphill battle to get viewers to like and accept Seaver, given the controversial circumstances of her addition to the cast, and I’m not sure having her snub both Doctor Who and Reid in one fell swoop is the best way to do that. Sure, the rest of the team hassle Reid all the time for his love of geeky minutiae, but Seaver hasn’t yet earned that right. The scene strikes a bad note.

Overall, though? This episode isn’t bad, especially by the greatly lowered standards of this season. Chasing a kidnapper instead of a serial killer is a nice change of pace, and it’s good to see the team attempt some actual, like, profiling, instead of standing around aimlessly waiting for Garcia to solve their case for them. Also? With the exception of the opening scene, the unsub doesn’t make an appearance until twenty minutes into the episode, which leaves more time to devote to the team. If given a choice between spending time with the unsub and spending time with Hotch and the gang, I’ll pick the team every single blasted time, no question.

Charlie and Alison Sparks own a music store, which, like many other businesses in this oil spill-devastated area, is on the rocks. They recently took out a large bank loan, which the BAU thinks might be motivation for a robbery. While Hotch and Morgan examine the crime scene, Seaver and Prentiss head to the music store, and Reid and Rossi try to interview Sammy.

Garcia, meanwhile, tracks down Sammy’s nearest family member, who happens to be his father’s sister Lizzie. By the way, Garcia appears to be wearing a pair of cat ears, for no special reason apart from the preposterous cuteness factor.

Reid and Rossi don’t get very far with Sammy -- he keeps scrawling what looks like the letter “L” on a sheet of paper -- so they consult with his teacher, Ms. Rogers (Dharma & Greg’s Mimi Kennedy), for ideas on how to break through to him. From her, they discover that Sammy learns how to do his daily tasks by adhering to a firm schedule based on a series of pictures in a flip book. Ergo, he headed directly to school at the appropriate time, even after his parents were attacked in front of him, because it was what his book instructed him to do.

Meanwhile, Alison Sparks shows up at her local bank, withdrawing ten thousand dollars from her savings account. She tries to close out her account, which has a balance of over forty grand, but the cash-strapped bank doesn’t have enough to cover it. She heads out to the parking lot, where the unsub, a bankrupt local fisherman-turned-delivery man named Bill Thomas (Lew Temple), flies into a rage. He tells her she’ll need to get more cash if she ever wants to see her husband alive again. Bill takes Alison to a check cashing place, where she’s able to get him another twenty-five grand, but by the time they return to his fishing boat where he’s keeping Charlie Sparks chained below the deck, Charlie has bled to death from a gunshot wound inflicted when Bill kidnapped him. Alison is naturally devastated; even Bill seems genuinely contrite about this.

When Sammy’s Aunt Lizzie arrives to take temporary custody of Sammy, Reid and Rossi get her permission to take Sammy back to his home to see if revisiting the crime scene might trigger some reaction that will help them identify his parents’ attacker. Sammy immediately plops himself down at the piano. Reid sits behind him and starts plunking out scales, which prompts Rossi to exclaim, “I didn’t know you could play!” Scales, Rossi. Scales. Reid modestly replies that he doesn’t play, really, but music is closely linked to math. I repeat, he’s plunking out scales.

Sammy launches into the same classical piece he played when his parents were ambushed; he takes Reid’s hand and helps him to pound out the same notes. To his credit, Reid does a pretty impressive job of following along. Maybe they should have shifted Rossi’s super-impressed reaction about Reid’s piano prowess to a few lines later in the script?

While Sammy and Reid bond at the piano, Lizzie has a nice chat with Rossi about how she’s estranged from her brother and thus barely knows her nephew. Rossi, with the air of someone with close personal experience on the issue, talks about the challenges presented by caring for someone with autism. While glancing through Sammy’s flip book, it occurs to him that Sammy communicates through symbols, not words. Ergo, the “L” that he’s been repeatedly drawing isn’t a letter -- it’s a representation of the clock hands for three o’clock, which is the time he arrives at his parents’ music store after school each day.

Prentiss and Seaver examine the surveillance tape from the music store for three o’clock on the day of the kidnapping. On it, Sammy enters the store and immediately starts playing the piano. Bill Thomas arrives shortly thereafter and delivers packages to Charlie and Alison. The team makes a few of their customary wild leaps in logic, which as usual turn out to be 100% correct, and accurately peg Bill as the unsub.

Morgan and Reid head for Bill’s boat. Cornered by the FBI, Bill gives a distraught Alison his gun and tries to goad her into killing him -- he’d do it himself, but his kids won’t get his life insurance money if he commits suicide. I’m not 100% clear on policy terms, but it’s probably a fair guess they won’t get any money if he dies while in the commission of a felony anyway. Alison is initially reluctant, but Bill finally talks her into pulling the trigger. Morgan and Reid swarm the boat and find Bill dead and Alison sobbing over Charlie’s body.

Back in Virginia, the team members fall back into routines: Morgan and Garcia settle in with popcorn to watch movies together (cute!), Hotch tucks in his sleeping son (cute!), Rossi and Seaver play video games in his office (random! but sort of cute!), and Reid buys himself a keyboard (freaking adorable!).

And Prentiss sits on a bench outside in the dark by herself for a couple of hours, sipping coffee and looking tense and glamorous. The mysterious Ian Doyle plops beside her and addresses her as “Lauren.” (Prentiss: “I’ve got a Glock leveled at your crotch.” Prentiss, as always, rocks.) Doyle makes a series of vague threats against the rest of the team members, each of whom he identifies by name and clearly has under close surveillance. Aha! This is promising! Glad to see that Prentiss’s oddball swan-song plotline is finally going to hook up with the main story. It’s all been sort of fitfully interesting, this cloak-and-dagger stuff with her mysterious (and improbable) Interpol past, but it’s high time to start incorporating the rest of the BAU into it. Doyle cheerfully tells her he’s going to kill her soon, then gives her a gold matchbook emblazoned with a shamrock and quotes a little Balzac at her. Evil though he may be, this Doyle character is going to blend right in with our quote-spewing BAU members.

Diminished expectations are working in Criminal Minds’ favor, because, unremarkable as it was in many ways, I liked this episode.
Read more!

Criminal Minds: Today I Do

Get your act together, Criminal Minds.

I know you’ve got a lot of well-publicized behind-the-scenes drama taking place right now: fired actors, new characters, upset and increasingly vocal cast members, contract disputes, shady statements from your parent network, and a wholly ill-advised and unwanted new spin-off series that seems to be cannibalizing your resources. Yeah, that all stinks, and it probably makes for a rocky work environment. Criminal Minds staff writers and producers, you have my sympathy.

Still, while all that might (or might not) be something of an explanation for why the scripts this season have been so tired and/or silly and/or sloppy and/or sensationalistic, it’s not an excuse. You’ve been on this rapid downward trajectory for well over half a season now, and it’s ruining the show. Raise your game.

This is a pallid, lifeless, repetitive episode, and while it’s far from the worst we’ve seen lately -- it’s no “The Thirteenth Step” or “Reflection of Desire,” in other words -- it’s not worth devoting much time to recapping in detail. So in the broadest possible strokes: The drowned body of a young woman, Gail, is found in a lake, her hands and feet smashed with a mallet. Another young woman, Molly (Californication’s Rachel Miner), has disappeared and is suspected of being the unsub’s next victim. The unsub is a self-proclaimed and uncredentialed self-help guru named Jane (Rebecca Field), who befriended both Gail and Molly and inserted herself into their lives under the guise of helping them with their respective emotional and mental problems -- Gail had been hospitalized for depression, while Molly has both a history of eating disorders and a long-term abusive boyfriend, Lyle (Joshua Leonard).

Jane keeps Molly chained up in a house for several days, all in the name of administering some tough-love treatment for her problems. When Molly tries to escape, Jane smashes one of her knees with a hammer. To prove to Molly that Lyle is no good for her, Jane lures Lyle to her house and seduces him, then shows Molly their sex tape. She also then keeps Lyle captive as well; when Molly and Lyle try to overpower her, Jane beats Lyle to death. Jane tries to drown Molly in a lake, but the BAU team members, who uncovered Jane’s identity by combing through security camera footage of the hospital where both Molly and Gail received treatment, arrive in time to arrest Jane and save Molly.

…Wow, that was a tedious and no-fun recap. Very sorry about that. I will only offer the following excuse: It was a tedious and no-fun episode, and as a result, I’m in a tedious and no-fun frame of mind.

In the ongoing Prentiss-related subplot, Prentiss talks to an old friend/former coworker named Tsia (Siena Goines), who currently lives in France, and passes along Sean McAllister’s warning about the mysterious Ian Doyle’s escape from prison. Tsia seems unconcerned at first -- she reassures Prentiss that “Lauren Reynolds,” which appears to be an alias that Prentiss used at Interpol, is presumed by everyone, Doyle included, to have been killed in a car accident. Later, though, Tsia freaks out when another mutual friend/former coworker named Jeremy dies under suspicious circumstances. In a panic, she calls Prentiss, who advises her to leave France immediately. Meanwhile, Doyle (Timothy V. Murphy) arrives by private plane in the United States and is whisked off in a town car.

It’s a lazy episode, so I’m going to follow its example by finishing up my analysis by using the classic crutch of the lazy writer: bullet points.

·Jane makes for a good unsub -- she’s somehow cheerful and menacing and clingy all at once, cast from the same mold as Kathy Bates in Misery. Molly does a nice job as well; neither Fields nor Miner has anything to be embarrassed about here. But there’s too much time spent on Jane and Molly, and their scenes are repetitive and dull. Their screentime also comes at the expense of the regular cast members, who once again are all given little of substance to do and are relegated to standing around spouting clunky bits of exposition. Criminal Minds has one of the strongest ensemble casts on television, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at recent episodes.

·This episode squanders an appearance by the always-great Corbin Bernsen, who has a small, cliché-riddled role as Molly’s father (he begins the episode in denial about his daughter’s eating disorder, and, after Rossi chews him out a bit, ends it by tearfully assuring her that he loves her and is going to work at being a better father). As with Deirdre Lovejoy’s appearance in “The Thirteenth Step,” as with Kyle Secor in “25 to Life,” we’ve seen too many very good actors spinning their wheels in underwritten roles this season.

·Rachel Nichols has now been added to the opening credits as rookie agent Ashley Seaver. Seaver does contribute some valuable information to the investigation -- she uncovers Molly’s eating disorder, with the strong implication that she might have had her own past personal battle in that area -- but the show still doesn’t seem to know how to incorporate her naturally into the team. Apropos to my comments at the start: No matter what the circumstances of Nichols joining the cast might be, now that she’s officially part of it, it reflects poorly on the show if she’s not used to her best capability.

·Hey, is Hotch even on this show any more? He’s been sort of lurking in the shadows for the past several episodes, contributing very little of relevance. Criminal Minds: Underestimate Hotch at your own peril. The entire cast is great, but he’s your MVP. This is the guy who can elevate a subpar episode with a single snarky line delivery (“Paradise,” for example, is a pretty miserable excuse for an episode, but darned if I don’t think fondly of it just for Hotch’s deadpan comment about having Garcia drug-tested). Use him.

I’m tired of being crabby and curmudgeonly about the show. I’d much rather be able to sit here and make good-natured wisecracks about the team. I want it to get back on its feet, and even with all the backstage turmoil, I don’t think it’s too late for it to recover -- if they just start putting more time and care into the scripts, they can get back on course by the end of the season. But it’s getting close to the point of no return. Much too close.
Read more!

The Devil Wears Mom Jeans

First off, a tip of the hat to Kelly, who, after reading my essay, “The Strange, Sick, Sad Career of Thomas Gibson,” clued me in to this little gem lurking in the murky lower depths of Gibson’s vast and oft-disturbing IMDB page. The Devil’s Child is a 1997 made-for-television movie, featuring Gibson as an unusually lackadaisical Devil who schemes to impregnate NYPD Blue’s Kim Delaney. It’s Rosemary’s Baby made fast and cheap, and it’s terrible. Hilariously, delightfully, endearingly terrible.

As The Devil’s Child has never been released on DVD in the United States (fancy that), I ordered my copy from overseas. For reasons that shall probably remain a mystery for the ages, the DVD box for the official UK release gives first billing not to Delaney or to Gibson, but to… Scooby-Doo’s Matthew Lillard, who has a supporting role as Delaney’s love-struck assistant, Tim.

Delaney plays Nikki DiMarco, a Los Angeles photographer who, due to a severe childhood accident, is unable to bear children. When her batty mother (Twin Peaks’ Grace Zabriskie) dies unexpectedly, Nikki inherits a windfall of cash and, at the urging of her best friend Ruby (Colleen Flynn), moves into an apartment in Ruby’s creepy old building. After a series of bizarre incidents, lapsed-Catholic Nikki begins to suspect Satanic forces were behind her mother’s death. Ruby mocks her for her religious paranoia, though in truth, Nikki’s status as the local Bible nut has been greatly exaggerated. When Ruby quotes lyrics from The Byrds’ “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” Nikki chimes in with, “That’s from Revelations.” Well, no, it’s not -- Nikki has somehow confused the fire-and-brimstone bombast of Revelations with the mellow, hippie-friendly vibe of Ecclesiastes.

Nikki soon becomes intrigued by her handsome and enigmatic neighbor, Alex (Gibson), who lives in the apartment across the hall and who has an outstanding secret identity: He’s the Devil, who made an unholy pact with Nikki’s mom twenty years ago to bring Nikki back to life following her accident, with the understanding that she would later bear his child.

Unaware of Alex’s sinister designs on her uterus, Nikki drops by his apartment one evening and finds him hanging out by himself, listening to music while wearing shapeless, unflattering, high-waisted jeans. An incisive commentary on the banality of evil, or just a bad call by someone in the wardrobe department? Alex and Nikki bop around his apartment together for a while (I’d make snotty comments about how their dancing is unhampered by either rhythm or soul, but he is the Devil, after all, so “soulless” is entirely appropriate), then head out for a romantic dinner, where Alex grouses in thinly-veiled terms about how it was totally bogus that God booted him out of Heaven. He also hand-feeds Nikki from his own plate, and while Nikki seems sort of charmed by this, as a general first-date rule, it’s probably best not to spontaneously reach across the table to cram chunks of your food into your date’s mouth.

Before long, Nikki and Alex tumble into bed together. Because even the Devil needs to pay the rent, Alex heads off to his day job as a Theology professor at a local university. A smitten Nikki secretly crashes his lecture and, for the first time, observes him doing something genuinely Devil-ish: using his omniscient knowledge of his students’ sex lives to slut-shame them in front of their classmates.

This, by the way, is the most diabolical thing he’ll do in public in the entire damn movie. All the rest of Alex’s dastardly deeds -- mowing down Nikki’s obnoxious coworker to snag her a plum promotion, chucking a Devil-loathing dog through a window, chucking a Devil-loathing Catholic priest through a window, sending a sexy emissary to murder Tim (ostensibly because Tim was snooping into Alex’s background, though “because Tim is a monstrously irritating twit” is also a satisfactory explanation) -- either happen demurely off-screen, or his involvement is only vaguely implied. Fine, though it’s a little disconcerting to realize Gibson brings more slinky malevolence and unfettered evil to his role in The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas than he does to his role as, y’know, Lucifer.

Nikki is horrified by this glimpse into Alex’s dark side, though maybe she should’ve caught on to his dickish nature a bit earlier when, during their post-coital embrace, she confided in him about her inability to have kids and he responded with, “I bet you’d be a great mother!” Never one to do things partway, Nikki cruises straight past “the hot guy I just slept with turned out to be sort of nasty and sleazy” and lands on “the hot guy I just slept with is an inhuman Hell-demon.”

Nikki, it is established, doesn’t date much. You can kind of see why.

Despite her damaged reproductive system, Nikki becomes pregnant as a result of her tryst with Alex. She decides to cut all ties with him, which is tricky, since: a) he still lives across the hall, and b) he’s an omniscient force of all-powerful evil. She heads to an abortion clinic, which blows up just as she arrives, then visits a psychiatrist to sort out her feelings about her erstwhile suitor. “Isn’t it possible that Alex is the Devil?” she asks. Wisely, the psychiatrist refrains from weighing in on that topic.

Nikki’s worst fears are confirmed when she develops some photos of Alex and finds the Mark of the Beast – 666 – scrawled in Sharpie across his forehead. Her due date sort of sneaks up on her, and she ends up giving birth to a baby boy in Ruby’s apartment (there’s no time for her to get to the hospital, though there’s enough time for her obstetrician to hoof it to Ruby’s place to help with the delivery). When Alex shows up to claim his son, Nikki hightails it to the church for an emergency baptism to give the kid a little divine protection against his dad’s influence.

Alex dons his best cloak -- you know, the one he wore when he dressed up as a Nazgul for Comic Con -- and loiters around outside the church, extending himself so far as to kick up an ineffectual little windstorm in the chapel. When Nikki emerges triumphant with her freshly-baptized son, Alex unleashes the full brunt of his unholy might against her for thwarting his (unspecified) evil plans for their offspring…

Ha ha, no, of course he doesn’t. In keeping with his overall low-fuss (dare I say… devil-may-care?) attitude, he shrugs and slouches off, presumably to con more grieving mothers into letting him sleep with their daughters. In spite of all his painstaking and far-reaching plans -- in addition to Nikki’s mother, it turns out that Ruby, the psychiatrist, and the obstetrician were all in on his diabolical scheme -- the Devil is, at heart, a bit of a quitter. Humanity can breathe easy.
Read more!

Criminal Minds: Sense Memory

After that last wretched episode, and after the lengthy string of mediocre episodes preceding it, Criminal Minds is on double-super-duper-extreme probation with me. It was pretty much a coin toss as to whether I even watched last night’s episode, and I really had no intention of recapping it.

Glad I bothered. Best episode of the season, by a comfortable margin. The show made up a little of the respect it’s lost from me over the past few months. It’s still on very thin ice, but this was a sure-footed move in the direction of solid ground.

Let’s get to the Prentiss stuff first, because it’s the most interesting: Prentiss comes home to her DC-area apartment (she’s no longer living in that fabulous two-story condo we saw in the third season) and leafs through the contents of a large envelope in her safe -- several passports, redacted records, photos -- all of which hint at a past history as a secret agent (it also seems to hint that her nationality is… Belgian. Go figure). Sure, that sort of comes out of nowhere, but it’s not a bad fit with what we know of Prentiss: her globe-trotting childhood, her fluency in multiple languages, her super-cool competence. We also discover that Prentiss has an adorable black kitty named Sergio, and hey, already we’re in a much better place than we’ve been for most of this season. We’re focusing on the team members! We’re learning stuff about them! They’re not just standing around robotically spouting exposition to move the plot along!

When Prentiss discovers that one of her windows is open, she grows alarmed. She whips out her gun, barricades her door, pulls up a chair, and sits in the dark facing the doorway all night long.

After all this excitement, she arrives late the next morning to the BAU briefing about their new case. In Los Angeles, the corpses of three abducted women have been found: all naked, all drowned, and all wrapped in plastic. The women were each held for a day before being dumped on dry land in public places around the city. Methanol was found in their lungs; a square of skin was removed from their feet. On their snazzy little jet en route to Los Angeles, Reid yammers on at hilariously tedious length about the various uses for methanol, and by this point, I’m almost sobbing in relief that all these great characters are once again being allowed to show a little of their personalities.

Hotch and Rossi head to the morgue to examine the most recent victim, who also has traces of chloroform in her nasal passages. Since there was no chemical burn from the chloroform around her nostrils or mouth, they figure the unsub aerosolized it to knock her unconscious. Due to the completely random, city-wide nature of the abduction and dump sites, the team theorizes the unsub is a taxi driver. Which turns out to be exactly right: the unsub (Brad William Henke) has been picking up women around town in his gypsy cab and knocking them out by flooding the backseat with aerosolized chloroform.

(If the unsub is given a name, I missed it. He’s largely an anonymous presence in this episode -- we don’t find out what drives him, or what childhood trauma warped him into a murderer -- and that’s fine with me. After the nauseating, adoring tongue-bath given to the despicable pair of unsubs in the previous episode, the emotional distance this week is most welcome.)

It’s something of an odd choice to set this in Los Angeles, since, as this episode takes pains to point out, you can’t hail a taxi on the street here, like you could in, say, New York or Chicago -- you have to call a cab company to schedule a pickup, or wait at a designated taxi stop, like at an airport or a hotel. They get around this problem by making the unsub an unlicensed cabbie who drives around searching for prospective fares, which is fair enough. Still, the string of female passengers who hop randomly into the unsub’s backseat throughout this episode seems a little improbable. In Los Angeles, it’s just not the way things are usually done.

From the patch of skin missing from each victim’s foot, Reid suspects the unsub might have a scientific background: He’s keeping the skin as a sample.

After another body is found, Rossi and Hotch head out to the latest dump site. Hey, is that Runyon Canyon? Awesome. It’s my favorite local hiking spot, mostly because it’s heavily populated by: a) adorable dogs, and b) adorable celebrities. A friend of mine ran into Criminal Minds’ Matthew Gray Gubler hiking there. Just saying.

Meanwhile, Morgan holds a press conference to ask the public for help finding the unsub. I like how, in J.J.’s absence, the team now seems to be dividing up press-conference duties. It certainly makes more sense than just foisting them off on poor Garcia, who was spectacularly ill-suited to the task.

Reid and Garcia try to track down the unsub through his purchases of equipment and large amounts of methanol and chloroform. Prentiss and Morgan talk to a woman who saw the press conference, who was kicked out of the unsub’s cab because he grew irrationally upset at the way she smelled. From this, Reid figures out that the unsub has hyperosmia -- a super-charged ability to smell. As soaking objects in methanol will draw out the natural oils in them, Reid finally puts it together what the unsub is doing with the abducted women: He’s making perfume out of their natural body scent.

Oh, ew.

Also? Not an original idea. Still, it’s pretty effectively done. More to the point, the strength of any given Criminal Minds can rarely be judged by the originality of the plot (in many ways, it’s a spectacularly derivative show), but rather by how well the characters are handled. Character-wise, this episode is fairly strong.

We see some footage of the unsub inhaling from a little vial of his homemade woman-oil and smiling as he imagines wheat fields and clean laundry drying on a clothesline. Sir, maybe you should invest in some good laundry detergent, or maybe pick up a good clean-smelling perfume -- I’d recommend Demeter Laundromat -- and knock it off with this whole murdering-women-for-their-spring-fresh-scent nonsense?

Prentiss and Morgan borrow a random cab and brainstorm possible ways the unsub is incapacitating his victims. While they’re alone, Morgan tries to grill Prentiss about why she’s been acting jumpy lately, but she asks him, nicely, to drop the subject.

Meanwhile, the team learns of the abduction of another woman, Anisa Gold (Stacey Oristano), who is currently in the clutches of the unsub. He keeps sniffing her and showing her the scented candles he’s made from the bodily oils of the other murdered women, which, understandably, is enough to send her into hysterics. Just as he’s preparing to submerge her in the vat of methanol, the BAU roars up and surrounds his house -- Garcia managed to track down his address from the deliveries of methanol and supplies.

He takes off in his cab. While Reid and Prentiss rescue Anisa, Hotch and Rossi and Morgan head after the unsub. A too-long car chase through the streets of Los Angeles then ensues (there is no such thing as an interesting car chase), which ends abruptly when the unsub crashes his taxi and kills himself.

When Prentiss returns to her apartment, she finds a gift-boxed single iris left outside her door, which unsettles her. After turning down a last-minute request from Reid to go see a special five-hour screening of Solaris in the original Russian (heh), she sniffs the flower and has an odd flashback: She’s puttering around in the iris garden on the grounds of a mansion somewhere in Europe, sporting a cool wavy hairstyle and speaking in French to a vaguely sinister middle-aged man, when a dark sedan pulls up, and she’s apprehended by men in suits and dark shades. As they bustle her into the car, she tells them she wants to speak to Sean -- presumably Sean McAllister, the man who gave her the ominous warning about the mysterious Ian Doyle’s escape from prison last episode.

Back in the present, Prentiss grabs the envelope filled with the passports and papers out of her safe, scoops Sergio under one arm, and flees from her apartment.

I have no idea what any of this means, but it’s definitely intriguing, no?
Read more!

Fun With Keywords: Mohinder Doesn’t Give Up Edition

Keywords! Another month is done, so it’s time for more keywords! These are a few of the Google search terms visitors have used to find this site over the past month:

mohinder doesn't give up
As much as I adore Heroes’ beautiful Mohinder, I sort of think “giving up” is one of his core character traits, right up there with his disastrous fashion sense and his ability to turn my knees to jelly with his smile. I mean, he does flounce back to India in a huff when things go wrong for him more than once over the course of the series…

delta ceramcoat varnish dangerous
Well, yeah, if you huff it or drink it. And I wouldn’t eat off of anything you’ve glazed with it, because I doubt it’s food-safe. If it’s dangerous above and that, I’d like to remain blissfully ignorant, because I go through it in great quantities. It’s cheap, it spreads evenly, it dries fast, and it doesn’t stink up the place whenever I use it.

how sure is the apocalypse
the apocalypse is not close
Asked and answered.

sick sad twisted thomas gibson
Close.

criminal minds thomas gibson eyeliner
Could be, though I’m inclined to think it just looks that way because of his dark eyelashes. You want Gibson in noticeable eye makeup? Check out Love and Human Remains, in which he spends the whole film rocking the sexy panda look.

covert affairs joan jai affair
I like the way your mind works. Joan and Jai would be magical together.

6 key words on space
Final. Frontier. These. Voyages. Starship. Enterprise.

a list of all the two part episodes of criminal minds
The clear-cut two-parters are “The Fisher King Part 1” and “The Fisher King Part 2”; “The Big Game” and “Revelations”; “Lo-Fi” and “Mayhem”; “To Hell…” and “…And Back”; and “Our Darkest Hour” and “The Longest Night.” Then there are some closely linked episodes, where a plotline from one episode spills over into another: “Lucky” and “Penelope,” and “Instincts” and “Memoriam.” There are also episodes linked together by recurring unsubs: “The Fox” and “Outfoxed,” “No Way Out” and (the ridiculously-titled) “No Way Out 2: The Evil-ution of Frank,” and, perhaps most significantly, the entire multi-part Reaper arc: “Omnivore,” “…And Back,” “Faceless, Nameless,” “Outfoxed,” and “100.”

who shot mr. gibson on criminal minds
Firstly, I love the use of “Mr. Gibson,” which is so very polite; it’s like this search came straight from the copy desk at the New York Times. I’m presuming this refers to the genuinely startling ending of the season four finale, in which Thomas Gibson’s Hotch returns home and finds his mask-wearing, gun-toting, knife-happy, serial-killing nemesis George Foyet (C. Thomas Howell), who first appeared in the episode “Omnivore,” waiting for him.

criminal minds - morgan is only a temporary head of the bay right
Where “bay” is a typo for “BAU”, I’m assuming? Yeah, he only took over from Hotch as Unit Chief for a handful of episodes toward the beginning of Season Five, after meddling bureaucrat Chief Strauss demoted Hotch for, uh, getting stabbed by Foyet a bunch of times. Hotch took the reins back from Morgan after the events of “The Slave of Duty,” and order was restored to the universe.

skulky the turtle wonder criminal minds guest star?
Chilling. The way he disemboweled that entire family in rural Iowa? Gritty stuff. Another tour-de-force performance from this talented reptile.

skulky the turtle wonder is from a parallel earth
I hadn’t known that, but it does explain an awful lot.

how many times are the hardy boys knocked out?
Are we talking about the 1970s television series? They did seem to get bonked over their pretty little feathered heads a lot, didn’t they? I couldn’t give you an exact count, but it’s probably in the double digits.

shameless bud light promotion covert affairs
I have no idea why you’d say that.


salmon colored spiritual ray
By far the best kind of spiritual ray.

criminal minds best reid episodes
“The Uncanny Valley” and “Sex, Birth, Death” both show Reid at his best and brightest. You want Reid at his worst? “Elephant’s Memory,” “Distress,” and “Jones.”

what criminal minds episodes deal with reid's drug addiction
Once again, that’d be “Elephant’s Memory,” “Distress,” and “Jones.” Smart, competent, thoroughly awesome Reid becomes a snippy little bitch with a piss-poor work ethic when he’s jonesing.

criminal minds episode where killer messes with the team
Both “Fisher King” and “Masterpiece” fit this description, along with probably a few others.

episode of criminal minds where a guy acts as a tech support
You’re probably looking for “The Big Game” and “Revelations,” though “The Internet is Forever” sort of fits the bill as well.

criminal minds episode with the psycho guy who stabs a bunch of people
Lordy. Too many to count. Three in particular stand out: George Foyet was awfully stab-happy in “Omnivore,” Sean Patrick Flanery’s mentally-disturbed character in “Haunted” took down more than a few people with a knife, and the unsub in “Public Enemy” stabbed several people in public locations.

criminals minds repetitive
Oh, yeah. As the above searches show, the show definitely falls back on some familiar patterns. Thanks to that, there’s probably a stellar Criminal Minds drinking game or two out there: Drink whenever Garcia describes an unsub as living “off the grid”! Drink whenever Morgan prefaces a totally disrespectful observation with “No disrespect intended, but…”! Drink whenever Hotch eviscerates someone with little more than a few soft-spoken words and a well-timed glower!

episodes hotch interrogates
Yeah, Hotch gives good interrogation, doesn’t he? Try “Damaged,” “Seven Seconds,” “Riding the Lightning,” and “Natural Born Killer” for some standout Hotch moments.

did susan st. james play the part of yin in psych?
Somewhere out there, Ally Sheedy (b. 1962) is having a good cry about being mistaken for Susan St. James (b. 1946).

fake jj ruining criminal minds
Naah. The poor writing is ruining Criminal Minds. The fake J.J. -- i.e. rookie agent Ashley Seaver, played by Rachel Nichols, who bears more than a faint resemblance to the unceremoniously fired and much-missed A.J. Cook -- hasn’t yet made an impact on the show one way or another, since she’s had so very little to do thus far. I hate the whole idea of placing an inexperienced agent on the BAU, but she’s fine. She’s a good actress, and she seems likeable. The show has much greater problems right now than the addition of Seaver.

fake nudes of criminal minds cast
the a team fake nude
gina gershon fake nude photos
peter petrelli fake nude
I am mystified -- yet entertained! -- by all the “fake nude” searches.

judd nelson drops from the ceiling and strangles a woman
I’m going to say… Relentless? Judd Nelson fans (you know who you are), chime in here if you know otherwise.

nude + andrew + shoes
If you do a Google image search for “Nude Andrew Shoes,” this site comes up in three of the top ten search results, which is not helpful. Sorry about that. The ways of Google are mysterious.

psych "totally silence of the lambs" "that makes you"
…Frankie Faison.

what year was matthew gray gubler ranked a top 50 model?
I’m not entirely sure. At one point, he was ranked #46 on the ever-changing list at Models.com, but they don’t seem to archive their past rankings. In any case, even though he’s more focused on that whole acting/directing thing (which seems to be working out pretty well for him), he’s still repped by DNA Model Management; his portfolio is well worth a gander.

tracy gold dress dance till dawn
It was black, slinky, and fabulous. She looked great. Wish I had a better picture.

tighe's charges undeniably just went up at lava
This confused me greatly, and then I Googled it. It’s all clear now. “Tighe’s Charges Undeniably Just Went Up At Lava” is a big name for a cute little dog. He also goes by “Denny.”

rhys-myers, gruffudd, roomates
Wrong Rhys. Ioan Gruffudd used to share a flat with Matthew Rhys, not with Jonathan Rhys-Myers.

when was morganrichter born
Granted, there are other Morgan Richters out there, but since “morganrichter” is my Twitter handle, I’ll go ahead and assume this means me. It’s probably easy enough to arrive at a ballpark figure for my age, given my propensity for quoting Duran Duran lyrics and my fierce and unironic love of Miami Vice, but I’ll narrow it down even more: I was born on the same day and year as my separated-at-birth twin sister, Kate Moss.
Read more!