Criminal Minds 1601 - Just Getting Started

 Okay, haven't been here in a while? Do I even remember how to do this? The last time I wrote any Criminal Minds blog-style reviews was when I did an insane sprint of writing 1-2 a day as I was trying to get the whole backlog done before the last season started. So that's three years ago.

What have I been up to since then? Thanks for asking! The Profiling Criminal Minds podcast, which I co-host, has also covered the entire show, including the spin-offs I didn't write about here, like Criminal Minds Beyond Borders (hated it) and Criminal Minds Korea (loved it). I've had a couple of movies come out since then – any Come True or Butchers fans out there? And obviously TheAvod has been chugging along apace, making it the longest continually-running Canadian horror podcast in existence! Is that a factual statement? I don't know – I didn't do the research!

I'm a little annoyed that in Canada I can't watch the new episodes until Friday – but on the upside, I'm working a regular job now, and if I could watch these on Thursday I'd be up until the wee hours of the morning writing reviews, and be a complete mess on Friday, so what I'm losing in timeliness, I'm making up for in mental health.

Here's I know about Criminal Minds: Evolution – it's on cable now, so it will probably be more brutal and disgusting – Joe might even swear once or twice! Based on the trailer the serial killers have teamed up online to coordinate more effective murdering – is that a ludicrous premise, that sounds a lot like the original script for Suspect Zero? Absolutely! Am I here for it? Well, my favorite serial killer show of all time is Hannibal, which is about a man who may or may not be the literal devil falling obsessively in love with an FBI profiler, so it's safe to say that no matter how crazy the Criminal Minds team wants to get, I'm here for the ride.

Oh, and reportedly Matt Gubler and Daniel Henney will not be in the season, because of a fatigue with playing Reid and a commitment to the Wheel of Time, respectively. They don't need to explain Reid's absence – he ended the last seasons leaving to focus more on teaching, so why would he be there? I just hope Matt Simmons has a respectful off-ramp. Is he writing full-time? That would be nice.

Do I have any predictions for the season? Nope. Do I have any requests? Absolutely: if there's a bunch of serial killers teaming up, I would like one of them to be the skull-handed child killer from the insomnia episode, which may have been called 'Sleepless'. I'm still pissed that the show never got around to arresting that guy.

It's become apparent that I'm drawing this out because I'm so nervous about pressing play on the episode, so let's just jump in with both feet and get started! Without any further ado, let's Criminal Minds!

The episode begins with a helicopter – or these days, drone – shot of a truck driving through the woods – is this meant to rhyme with the first ever shot of the first ever episode of Criminal Minds, which was a helicopter shot looking down at a city? Probably! The title card announces that this is Yakima county, Washington, and it's 2005, the year Criminal Minds started – is the guy assembling the cross-country fraternity of serial killers going to have a backstory that ties in with the history of the team? If so, that would be very intriguing, if only because it necessitates people talking about Mandy and Hotch, of which I am very much in favor.

The truck driver stops his car in a field, opens up the back, and goes through his murder kit. Is it fair to call it a murder kit? Well, the contents are duct tape, night vision goggles, and a couple of hammers, so you tell me. It turns out he was looking for keys to a shipping container – um... you can just keep those in your pocket, guy, they're not inherently suspicious the way everything else in there is.

Inside the container is a mini office, with corpse trays, various gauges of wire, hanging photographs, and a security camera monitoring station. Given that he's out in the middle of nowhere, what are those monitors for? Security cameras around the container? People buried alive?

The killer drags a young – still-living man out of the trunk of his car and duct tapes him to a wheelchair. You spent all of this money on a killer's lair but couldn't be bothered to install shackles on a wheelchair? Weak, dude. As the killer sharpens his knife on a grinding wheel, the victim looks around, terrified – but doesn't scream or beg for his life. Some impressive self-control, there. It turns out he's got suicide scars on his wrists, which the killer taunts him about, asking how much blood came out before he decided to change his mind. That's inelegant – decided and change in the same sentence, but the point is clear enough that the victim is able to respond with 'I don't know.' The killer's rejoinder: “Well, let's find out!” And then slices the guy's wrist back open.

How are you going to find out? Is your plan to let the guy bleed until he tells you that he remembers that this is how woozy he felt when he tried to get help? Or is this just something you're saying because you think it sounds threatening and it doesn't actually make a lot of sense.

We don't find out, because instead we immediately cut to 2022, in Bethesda, Maryland – hey, that's where FBI agents regularly live! Looks like the first victim (second, really) will be right in the BSU's backyard! We see a killer in night vision goggles sneaking into the backyard of someone's house while a dog barks in the distance. He's obviously younger than the original killer, but the goggles draw a connection between them, even if they're not the same goggles from the trunk. Is this the killer's son? Did he train an apprentice?

The killer uses a wireless device to shut down the house's security camera – that's why you get a big dog, people, they don't need wifi to operate. Although, seriously, if your house's cameras are based on wifi you might as well tape a brick to the wall. Copper wire for life, yo. We get a moment of the killer menacing a baby – but is the show going to go that hard, that fast? The killer then heads into the bedroom, where he uses his handy wireless devide to shut off the baby monitor, which is clearly branded as VTECH, in what seems like baffling bit of product placement-

Buy VTECH – the baby monitor that can be remotely disabled by a murderer after he breaks into your house!

Anyway, the sound of the parents getting off-camera murdered wakes up a teen girl, who looks outside to see what the sound was, only for the killer to sneak up on her and grab her in the scene we saw in the trailer! Then we get-

TITLES

But no opening credits montage or theme song, because it's 2022, and this is a SERIOUS SHOW.

Now we're back to Yakima county in the present day, but instead of introducing the authorities via a bunch of cars driving down the exact same road from the exact same angle to create a parallel between them, we get a swooping drone shot on a different road. Weird choice.

Hey, does the Washington State police drive awesome muscle cars? If so, neat! If not, this is not subtle product placement.

It's Tara! She's here! Yay! If you'd ask me who the first character we were going to check in on was going to be, I'd have guessed Joe, and obviously I was completely wrong. That said, with JJ moving to Louisiana, Emily chasing a relationship out west, and Joe Mantegna probably not wanting to tromp around a field in the middle of the night because he's too old for that kind of nonsense, logically it was going to be Tara or Luke out here.

Tara looks over the trailer – there are bodies stacked on the corpse trays, as well as a medical textbook opened to a page on the human arm. So that really is the killer's thing. Weird! The sheriff keeps talking about serial killers, wanting Tara to weigh in on how weird this is, and I'm hoping she'll point out that this isn't even top twenty of the craziest things she's seen.

The titles just told me Josh Stewart's in this episode! He's my favorite actor, so obviously this makes me happy.

Weird bit of dialogue – Tara asks who owns the property, and the sheriff responds that it's Old Man Jarvis' – but they don't know if it's his, or if someone 'buried' it. Which is a weird turn of phrase to use, since this container was profoundly not buried. Is that something you say? Why not say somebody dumped it here, or hid it here?

There are dried out corpses, a chest full of bones featuring four skulls – it's fair to say that they're looking at over a dozen victims in this trailer alone. All men as far as I can tell, just FYI. Was the guy hunting for a disciple by looking for people who'd previous tried to kill themselves, thereby hopefully finding someone disconnected enough from life to join his murder cult?

We hear that there was a couple of years worth of overgrowth in front of the container, so the killer hasn't been here for a while – I feel like Tara should ask exactly when 'Old Man Jarvis' died...

Tara decides she needs help, so she calls Emily...'s office, which is now where Luke keeps his treadmill? It's been two years and no one took over the office? Luke's too good to use the building's gym? Is there a shower nearby? I'd say it's unbelievable that there's just a bunch of empty offices to be repurposed in Quantico, but the previous president kind of hated the FBI, so there could have easily been a bunch of retirements with no one brought in to replace them.

Will the show mention that their job was made harder by the fact that the president was an open criminal who insulted the FBI whenever he could? I'm guessing no.

Tara needs him out there because there's 16 bodies, and it's definitely a serial killer. She predicts the DEA will blame drug cartels, which would be weird, because this is Washington State. That's not to say Washington doesn't have it's fair share of murderous drug growers who'd need to dispose of bodies from time to time, it's just that the government doesn't call drug gangs 'cartels' when they're made up of mostly white people.

It seems the Luke can't go because he's holding down the fort for Joe, who's off somewhere. Also they mention that their plane has been 'benched'. So maybe budget cuts will come up in the plot! It seems that Joe is busy in Virginia with a 'Family Annihilator' – I'm guessing they're using that term wrong, as usual – but is that going to be the same killer as the Maryland case from the teaser? Tara suggests they ask Emily for approval for him to travel, but Luke thinks that she's too busy with her duties since her promotion.

Emily's been promoted? After getting all of those agents killed two years ago? Wow, I guess a LOT of people have resigned.

It's over to Emily, who is managing assignments of agents throughout the East Coast! A deputy director shows up and they talk about why the team was split up – turns out they solve more cases that way! Which isn't a surprise – spoiler alert, having six profilers working on a case doesn't give you a lot more insight than having one profiler on the case. Emily still misses her team, though. Oh, and Reid and Matt are working on 'Undisclosed Assignments', which I guess is all we'll be hearing about that for a while. With Reid, that's nonsense, dude basically retired in the last episode, remember? But Matt has a history of working... Beyond Borders... so him being off doing something secrete makes total sense.

The assistant director is also concerned that Joe isn't coming into the office, but Emily says that he can't be bothered with things like 'running the BSU', which is his actual job, because he's so busy trying to catch this guy who kills entire families. Apparently it's happened a BUNCH. So they're going with Manhunter, basically. Too bad there's no one living in jail he can check in with about that... except for the Fox, obviously, but is anyone going to remember him?

We check in on Joe, who has a conspiracy board on the wall, hasn't shaved, and is obsessively watching crime scene videos. Not a good look.

Then it's over to JJ and Jr., who didn't move to Louisianna, after all! They talk about how fast the kids are growing up – presumably they are still played by AJ Cook's actual sons – and then we learn that she's looking into a murderer in Silver Springs – which I just learned is a suburb of Maryland, because it's featured prominently in the game The Devil In Me – weird coincidence!

Jr – being the best husband ever, brings JJ some tea while she looks over the crime scene photos for Joe while he talks about being sure the guy is going to kill again. Then we get a hilarious cut, because the editor decided to put in a sound effect of the call being disconnected even though everything about the scene clearly suggests that they're going to keep talking about this case.

Now it looks like JJ got bored of listening to Joe rambling and hung up the phone.

The next scene is very cute, as Joe wakes up to a call about the new murdered family, and is in such a rush to get to Maryland that he forgets his badge and gun. Also, why isn't he living at home? How did he screw things up with Crystal, exactly?

Don't worry, the baby's fine. Luke thinks he's being merciful, Joe's not so sure, especially given how brutal the deaths inside were. Then we get a slightly confusing scene as Joe and Luke are confused about why search and rescue are there – it turns out the daughter was kidnapped! Uh... how did Joe not know this already? He just said that he was inside the house and saw the brutality within. So he would have noticed the daughter's bedroom, since it was one door away from the site of the murders, and likely asked where her body was. This is information Joe should already have.

Then Joe goes to confront the grandmother who's looking after the baby. And instead of her being freaked out or overwhelmed with worry about her missing granddaughter, she gets a soliloquy about love and loss that's... well, I don't want to say contrived and artificial, but it seems like the kind of thinking you'd be doing weeks after a tragedy, not while the only thing you can think about is WHERE YOUR OTHER GRANDCHILD IS.

Then it's over to Quantico, via an establishing shot of the actual building, rather than the Capitol Dome, so at least that's been fixed! The Deputy wants the whole team on the kidnapping family slayer, but Emily thinks that the 16 bodies – which she calls a 'mass grave' even thought it's obviously the killer's lair – is the higher priority. The Deputy says they're going to kick it over to the DEA because it looks like a Cartel thing, unless, of course, Emily deals with the kidnapping effectively – in that case he can pull some strings.

Emily calls Tara to get her back to the East Coast, and they talk about the absurdity that this is Cartels – there's an elderly couple in there, so it's obviously ridiculous. Unless, you know, they were hikers to stumbled on a drug farm or something. They talk about body preservation, and the killer's records – we get another line about the killer keeping his victims 'underground' for privacy. Again, they are NOT underground. The moment she says this we're looking at a profoundly not underground shipping container. It's just sitting against the side of a hill with some bushes around it. Did the script call for a bunker lair, and they didn't have the time to build that set, but then they didn't change the script?

See – I'm not crazy. This is weird. Also, what's going on with that interlocking eye symbol on the top-left of the container. Is that the logo of the serial killer frat, or am I reading way too much into tiny details? Tara says she'd be he's revisiting the site – but isn't it worth mentioning that it's pretty clear based on the brush and state of the lock that no one has been there in years? They literally just told us that a couple of scenes ago. We also get a look at the killer's surveillance photos of the first victim –

-note the 'we didn't have time to go to a location, so these were shot in the alley behind the studio' vibe. Also that the first victim was likely homeless.

JJ and Luke look over some photos in the house and decide that the MO is obvious – he's selecting families with teenage daughters. But why did one get killed and the other get taken? Also that's a bit of a leap, both of the families also had sons – and in the first case both children were killed, and in the second both lived. Yes, you can say that the daughter is important because she was kidnapped, but the living baby son is just as important a change in the MO as far as you know.

While talking about the case, they literally crib dialogue from Manhunter, talking about the father's throat being slit and him rushing to protect his family as he was bleeding to death and the killer taking out the biggest threat first. I'm not going to be too hard on them for this, though – Manhunter's great. Joe yells at the team for not getting the Amber Alert going fast enough – Luke points out that you can't do that until you know what car is being driven, but Joe doesn't want to hear it! Obviously this case is taking a lot out of him – but why is it such a priority?

Back from commercial we see the killer texting with someone about selling the teenage girl for ten thousand dollars. OMG, we're doing the season 10 victim brokering thing again! When I first hear about this season's premise I talked about how this was the third time they'd attempted a 'network of serial killers' thing, so I'm super excited to see if they pull it off this time!

Is the new boss at the FBI in on the murder ring? Or would that be too obvious. The last time they did complicit higher-ups was the season 11 assassins storyline, which was... well, I'm sure you remember.

Back at the office JJ and Luke talk about how Joe is lashing out and it's making their jobs that much harder. Also Luke swears, offering the first profanity in the history of the show! It seems that Joe's processing grief, and taking it out on everyone around him – so I guess Crystal died last year?

Alright, the stupidest thing ever happens. They get the security footage from a neighbour across the street, and it shows the killer walking down the street towards the house, then driving away in the family car with the teen tied up in the back. You're telling me that no one noticed that the family car was missing? The whole family was dead, and the garage was empty, and not one cop or FBI agent picked up on that until this moment?!?

Also, these are the AMERICAN SUBURBS – no one walks anywhere. Entire towns are built without sidewalks to specifically discourage people walking places. This guy walking down the street in a hoodie is basically the most suspicious thing in the world, and it's crazy no one called the cops. Basically, if you're out at night in the suburbs, and you're not either walking a dog or jogging, you're going to get the cops called on you.

And where did he come from? Did someone drop him off, or did he walk all the way from his place miles away? That would be even more suspicious.

Back to Tara and the local Sheriff – he suggests the killer died of COVID, since he stopped bringing new victims in 2020. That's actually a really solid theory. Tara thinks that it's more likely that it became too risky to grab new victims since everything was locked down. I'm not going to make a big deal about this here, since I'm sure it will come up later – but let's just get it out of the way – this is a guy dragging homeless people off the street and killing them. What paltry, minor lockdowns the Pacific Northwest had would have done nothing to slow his ability to find victims. The takeaway is – Tara wants the team to take over the case – so they'd better find that girl alive!

Gosh, I wonder if it's going to turn out that the two cases are connected.

Back at Quantico, the Deputy director says that they don't want to pay to move the trailer because it's probably a cartel thing. Um... there's stalker photos of a homeless guy that he killed, and boxes of jewelry as souvenirs. I know the guy's supposed to be an idiot, but there's literally no evidence of organized crime here.

Now things get weird – it turns out the ten thousand dollars actually was about the car – some schlub bought it from the teen in a Walmart parking lot that afternoon! Apparently she just walked off into the parking lot after getting the money? So how is the killer controlling her? Does she think he has the baby brother stashed away somewhere? Also, where is the killer's car? Did he walk from the Walmart? Oh, and the car sale was planned two days earlier, so the killer is mapping things out fairly long-term.

It's a maybe not on the threatening about the baby brother – we see the teen in the car with the killer, who announces that she did what he wanted and now just wants to go home. The killer gets a call from an encrypted number, and then destroys his phone. It's visually implied that this is Joe using the schlub's phone to call the killer's number – although if that's the case, why would it show up as encrypted? That can't be what's happening – Joe wouldn't be dumb enough to just call the phone, he'd go get the number traced.

At Quantico the team wonders how the killer is controlling the teen – they assume it's a threat against the family and she doesn't know they're dead, although pretending to have kidnapped the brother is the better play. It turns out both teen girls were on SOAR – a new social media site just for teens who don't want to deal with creeps, stalkers, and ads. Could the killer have stalked them there? They'll need Garcia to figure that out! But they promised not to call her...

Luke goes to see Garcia, who's in the middle of a great british bake-off themed party. Time to backfill some exposition – Luke and Garcia went on one date three years ago, so they're not a couple. Sad. And they're going to her because she built the security system for SOAR, so it should be unbreakable. Unless, of course, the guy who owns SOAR is the one running the serial killer fraternity, and he used Garcia's unbreakable security format to generate a way for serial killers to talk to one another without being observed by anyone? Maybe he started SOAR just so he could non-suspiciously hire the best internet security people in the world to build him a serial killer social media site without them realizing what they were doing?

And that's why the killer was getting an encrypted call and he destroyed the phone – the guy who owns SOAR and KILL.NET is pissed at him for using SOAR to find victims, because it risks exposing KILL.NET!

Okay, now I'm just writing my own season of Criminal Minds. Let's keep going. Luke emotionally blackmails Garcia into helping by saying that the girls were definitely targeted on SOAR – which he 100% does not know.

It's a very cute scene, because the two performers have great chemistry, but we learn something interesting apparently the killer couldn't be older and experienced the way Joe thinks, because you have to be under 22 to use the site. Unless... maybe the killer is faking an identity to get on SOAR? How hard would that actually be?

They quickly Skype with Joe, who's sure the killer is older based on the sophistication and nothing else. He yells at Garcia, and she understandably hangs up the call. She says that no one but her has access to SOAR – so did she just build it on her own? She and Luke start looking for teenage guys who have problems with their family – because they're extrapolating that he's killing his own family over and over again based on an abusive childhood. Which, you know, fair.

The killer brings the teen to a trailer and, after leaving her in the car just long enough to watch a section of the video in which her parents are about to be killed, he grabs her and drags her inside.

There's a scene of Joe and Emily where she reaches out about Crystal's death, but we still don't know how it happened, and he's not super-receptive. That said, he's willing to admit that he's not doing his job, which is good!

Now we get a bunch of profiling stuff in a hurry – it turns out the first victims were all killed in and around the daughter's bedroom, and the murder weapon was a baseball bat that the father kept beside the bed. Um... how was this so hard to profile? You were thinking it was your idea of what a family annihilator is, but the guy didn't even bring a weapon with him to the first murder? That should have been at the core of how you were looking at this case!

Turns out both teen girls talked to the killer on SOAR, and he's a guy who claimed to be abandoned and was was looking for his birth family. They've got his picture and everything! So is SOAR'S thing that you have to use a video camera to confirm your identity all the time so people will know you're actually a teen?

The guy's name is RJ2003 or 2003RJ, so that's initials and birth year, obviously. He mentioned in his texts that he was from Maryland's eastern shore, so Garcia goes looking for his family. She immediately finds land that was seized by the government in 2007 when the parents died of Oxy overdoses, and the state took their son RJ into custody. So now they've got a name, face, and probable location for the killer! And all it took was Garcia breaking a bunch of privacy laws!

The killer confesses that he's in love with the teen, and that he killed her parents because they wouldn't let her go to university in California – now they can go together! Yikes. The team shows up with lots of guns, but before they get there the teen hits RJ with a hammer, and his so disappointed to discover that she doesn't love him that he shoots himself in the head.

THE END

Except the teen gets the gun and threatens so shoot herself because she's full of guilt over getting her family killed. Joe talks her down, and we get a happy ending! Honestly, the whole thing seems super-contrived as a way to get Joe to talk about his own emotional issues. There's no reason to think that the teen would take the killer's word for it that her family was dead and just kill herself in a fit of pique. Now, if he'd showed her the video to prove that not all they had was each other, that would be one thing, but no, nothing like that actually happened.

Still no info on how Crystal died. COVID? Wildebeast stampede? Inquiring Minds want to know.

Turns out I was wrong – they were the same goggles from the case at the beginning – turns out that RJ was using the same murder kit as the killer from the container! There's your connection, people! Then it's over to Tara, where we learn that no, it's not the exact same kit – it's a standardized 'serial killer starter kit' that someone is making and distributing! But where did RJ find his buried? In an amazing coincidence, Tara manages to see the matching kit on a news broadcast about the abduction – which was apparently national news? So now they have to bring the container back to Maryland!

Then we cut over to the Mastermind (hereafter MM, since we'll be seeing a LOT of him I'm guessing – he even gets the end of episode quote), who's burying a case so another one of his disciples can pick it up. Interestingly he doesn't look old enough to have inspired the 2005 killer – was that guy the original, and this guy franchised the idea after meeting him?

In 'the news only talks about the BAU' news, the radio that's playing while he's burying the box mentions that the shipping container was found in Washington state, and gives the name of the killer they caught – which he's shocked to hear. I guess this was the guy who phoned Rory earlier, although him being pissed about the use of SOAR doesn't appear to have been the motive.

Also, the radio refers to the team 'unearthing' a 'burial site' – one more time for the cheap seats -

Sorry for the Scare!

The Count here to let you know that I'm fine, and toiling away on things - the 'disaster post' was something I generally set back six months at a time, but this time I forgot to move it due to being distracted with other things!

Sorry again, I'm fine and toiling away!

Go watch Our House, the movie I wrote!

Criminal Minds 1510: And In The End...

Things start weird as we see the first team scene from the last episode of season one, where everyone was going to take a long weekend to themselves before the Fisher King showed up! Then it's back to the present, where comatose Reid runs around, trying to talk to people! This leads to Garcia turning into Erin! Nice to see her again, huh?

But will Thomas Gibson be back? Probably not.

Erin announces that he's on a psychic journey of self-discovery, and tells him not to be afraid! Then Reaper shows up to taunt him about all the people he got killed! Seriously? Reaper is here? The lack of Thomas Gibson is going to be inexcusable if he doesn't show up.

Personally I'd like to see Frank one more time, but I know that's a stretch. What other cameos will we be getting, I wonder? Ian Doyle, please? I guess we'll find out after the credits!

Criminal Minds 1509: Face Off

Well, this is it! Second-last episode of Criminal Minds ever! This should be a blast, right? Before I get started, though, can we take a second to mention how ridiculous the last scene of last week's episode was? They had Faceoff talking about how beautiful the woman's bone structure was, and wanting to preserve her face forever! Except bone structure is what's behind the face. Once the face is off, it's just a flat mass, as we've seen time and again. Shouldn't he have been complimenting something about her skin? Unless he's collecting heads from now on?

I guess my point is that the writing on this show has sunken to the point where they can't even make killers be creepy in a believable fashion.

Now, on to the episode!

We open on Joe's basement, where he's built an obsession wall to Faceoff! Apparently the guy has killed again? Maybe the woman from last week? This should be bigger news, given all those FBI agents he murdered that time. Joe also seems to dump a package of diamonds on his desk, and I have no idea what that's about. Maybe they're intercutting between the two of them to show us that obsession is similar no matter what it's chasing?

For some reason Joe has put a sketch of the guy up on the wall, even though they have pictures of what he really looks like. It's like that scene in H20 where there's a sketch of the Michael Myers mask on the wall, because the filmmakers have forgotten that A: You can get a photo of it, it's a regular mask you can buy in a store, and 2: they have actual photos of what Michael Myers actually looks like - he was in a state institution for years.

More craziness between Emily and JJ - it seems that JJ was offered a job as head of the New Orleans FBI, which is just a bad call on the FBI's part - neither of these women have any leadership skills to speak of, and putting them in charge of things - be it the FBI, BAU, or a field office - would lead to disaster. So of course that's what's going to happen.

Over at Reid's house the rest of the team is hanging out - apparently Luke and his doctor girlfriend broke up because of that time a sniper murdered his friend (her patient). Yeah, that's going to be a drag on the romance, I'm guessing. So what's the endgame here? Are they pairing him up with Garcia? That would come out of nowhere, but the show is ending, and anything is possible!

Garcia actually has a job offer! A silicon valley firm working on climate change! This would be a terrible job to take - I won't get into it here, since there's plenty of show to discuss without this nonsense, but suffice to say that joining a firm trying to profit off averting global disaster isn't going to be a good fit for her, morally speaking. Unless she's lying and the job is with a group of hackers working to bankrupt and destroy oil companies, in which case more power to you, Garcia.

Okay, things just got really depressing. Joe starts talking to Mandy to go over what he knows about serial killing in the hopes that they can track down faceoff, but it's not Mandy he thinks about, it's young Mandy, played by Ben Savage. I was hoping against hope that they would manage to convince Mandy Patinkin to actually come back for a cameo in a flashback, but I guess he really, really, really doesn't want to. Or it was a contractual thing with his show.

They decide the key element to catching Faceoff is 'why didn't he kill Joe when he had the chance'? Obviously because that would have taken time to do, and the team was on top of him. The show thinks there's more to it, though, and announces that the real reason is that Faceoff thought Joe reminded him of his father, a man that Sharon slept with as part of a con who later died! But what if she lied about who the father was, and Faceoff wants to track him down?

That's kind of a stretch, but this is the second-last episode, so why not.

Now it's over to Faceoff, who hands a guy a briefcase of money to find his father! This sleaze must be the most trustworthy sleaze on earth, because no matter how much money is in that briefcase, it pales in comparison to the amount he'll get from the government for telling them where Faceoff is.

Then Faceoff gets a call from his latest girlfriend, who wants to move in with him! Is he staying in the same mansion from the season opener? I'd have to check - it might be that all mansions look the same to me.

Just in case it wasn't clear, this seems like it's the girlfriend's mansion from last week, and he's already killed her - he invites the new lady to move in once he's had a day to clear up all evidence of the crime.

Oh, and the way he's killing without anyone noticing is that now he incinerates bodies in a basement crematorium, rather than burning down their houses. So maybe this is actually his place? I can't imagine his girlfriend would have had one of those. Or been okay with her boyfriend installing a cremation oven in her basement, which she would have had to have been, since that takes a while to do, and only killed her just now.

But how would the most wanted man in America get a house? This is very puzzling.

Maybe we'll get an explanation of the housing situation after the opening credits?

Criminal Minds 1508: Family Tree

The episode begins on a sidestreet as a man in a sports car negotiates with a sex worker. What kind of sports car? I don't know! The logo on the front is vaguely shield-shaped, is that Porsche? Just checked - Porsche does, in fact, have a shield-shaped emblem, but so do Ferarri and Lambourghini, so I've got nothing. I'll lock in my guess as Porsche, but it's 1/3 and I'm only sticking with it because it was my first thought.

I would do terribly on The Price is Right.

The woman shoos the john away - apparently he tried to pay for sex with stamps! Now, depending on the size, a roll of stamps can easily be worth 50$, but I agree with her - this isn't a barter system we're living in. A creepy guy watches her from across the street in a pickup. Does he have evil intentions? Have you ever seen an episode of Criminal Minds?

He walks over to the second sex worker and asks her if she'd like someone to help her escape her life of depravity, which is a deeply condescending question to pose. He imagines her saying yes, but of course she doesn't, which presumably has marked her for death! Oh, and the killer has a gimpy leg, and the first sex worker full-on saw him and his car. So they've got leads!

We cut to the killer dragging the sex worker's body through the woods to a cabin, where he prepares it somehow with a knife, then buries it in a shallow grave. All the while he rambles in voice over about how he's really a good person, and he's only doing this because he has to. But who cares? He's a murderer.

Then it's over to Quantico, which is introduced with an establishing shot of DC! They've got just three more chances to get this wrong, are they going to take every one of them? On one level, I hope that they do! On another, it would be nice to finally see a part of Quantico that isn't the Marine base!

Turns out I was wrong, and for the first time in ages, they're in DC! Emily is meeting with someone about possibly becoming the director of the FBI! Yes, the woman who used to murder people for Interpol and faked her own death. That's exactly who you want in charge of the famously scandal-averse FBI.

The crazy part is, if they'd offered it to Hotch, this would have made total sense, but Emily? Not at all! Wow, is this going to screw up her relationship if she takes the job! At actual Quantico, a way more important job opportunity has sprung up! JJ might be moving to New Orleans for a field office job! It's a huge step down in her career trajectory, of course, but it would doubtless be way better for her marriage. Garcia and Reid are both upset by the news, obvs.

Time for a rundown of the case! The killer has the MO of murdering a 'respectable' man, then killing a sex worker soon after! Also he disfigures the corpses. It's not important how.

Then things get super disgusting, as the killer records a 'please catch me' message onto a tape and prepares to mail it - then starts making an ear necklace! Is he going to send that along with the tape? Maybe! Am I sad that I had to tell you a detail about the mutilation? Definintely!

Got to say, when I heard the title of the episode I thought it was going to be about the Face/Off killer - what with his whole psychosis being about his relationship with his mother. But no, I guess they're going to wrap that up in one episode next week?

Guess we'll find out after the opening credits!

Criminal Minds 1507: Rusty

The episode opens with an establishing shot of Washington DC in the midst of the flowering of the cherry trees! Which puts this episode's setting somewhere in the neighbourhood of mid-March, 2020! This means we're about two months after last episode, and a full seven months since the season started, as the first episode was set in September 2019! I'll say this for the show - they're committed to showing us a full year in these characters' lives even if they just have ten episodes to do it in!

Of course, this does create the impression that the world of Criminal Minds is a place where a known serial killer can walk into a Federal building, murder four agents, and then drive out and go uncaught for more than half a year. Seriously, how is the face/off killer not a priority here?

For some reason Emily is picking Garcia up in DC because her car is in the shop. Which is weird, because Garcia definitely doesn't live in DC. We're pretty sure that Emily does, because of all of that talk about her buying a condo downtown, but there's no reason that Garcia would elect to live a 45 minute drive from work when she didn't have to. Maybe her garage is in DC for some reason?

We then cut to an hour later, as they enter the office, and Garcia is still chatting about a show they both like! Oh, that hyper Garcia, we love you. Emily finds a bouquet of flowers in her office, and for once it's not sinister - they're from her boyfriend Andrew, the FBI guy from that crazy stabber episode! She's not happy to see them, though, and hangs up on him when he calls! Which is kind of cold, since that means he knows he was sent to voicemail, rather than being able to think she was just away from her phone. Cold, Emily.

JJ enters the office to remind Emily about a budget meeting she has that morning, and also ask about the flowers, which Emily is nervous about! I'm more concerned that anyone is hassling them about their budget. These people catch between 10 and 26 serial killers every year - I know that the private jet isn't cheap, but how could the cost not be worth it in PR value the team offers alone?

After the meeting she considers calling Andrew back, giving us time to wonder who this 'Steve' character is who calls her more frequently than her boyfriend but she never answers the phone:

Before she can decide an agent shows up to summon her to a meeting with the director of the FBI! The weird part is that he asks her if she's 'got a second' to go over her numbers. Except the director works 40 minutes away in DC, so a lunch meeting with him is going to take up most of the rest of the day.

Then again, the people making on this show have no idea where the characters work, so this isn't a huge surprise.

Then it's over to a breakfast meeting where a guy is having a meal with Mary-Lynn Rajskub of 24 fame! It seems that she's walking him through the process of adopting his niece, who currently lives with foster parents! I guess the kid's parents are dead? Anyhoo, Mary is attracted to the guy, but he's having none of it! In fact, he seems filled with disgust at the very thought of spending a moment longer with her than necessary! Is this guy a killer? Weird way to introduce him if he is.

Then we see a creepy weirdo watching the guy from a car across the street, and following him down the road in a 50-year-old station wagon! Wow, that is not a good vehicle to tail people in, buddy. It's as close to unforgettable as you can get.

We immediately cut to a dingy room somewhere - the weirdo has killed the guy and cut off his head! That was abrupt! He shows off the head to a camera, and then we pull out to reveal that the team has been watching the footage in the briefing room! Not the kind of stylish transition the show used to be known for, but not terrible, either!

We get some random nonsense from the team trying to establish that they can be sure that he's an organized offender with a specific goal to his killings. Reid also feels that he can detect a 'lack of empathy' in the man's voice. This is preposterous, of course - the entirety of the video message is a guy holding up a severed head and saying 'everything you know is wrong - this proves it'. That's not a message I'd associate with a planner, show. That's more the kind of thing a schizophrenic on a spree might have said.

On the way out of the office, we learn what the stress is with Emily! Andrew has been transferred to Denver, and she's not down with a long-distance relationship! What an amazing coincidence that this new case is taking them to his neck of the woods!

Then we get a look at the mine where the killer is hiding - he enters, carrying the severed head and an axe, and we discover that he's killing people because Baphomet tells him to!

Yup. Just the prototypical organized killer all right.

Seriously, how are you all this bad at your job? Maybe we'll find out after the opening credits?

Criminal Minds 1506: Date Night

Just five episodes left! And this one starts with people coming out of a movie theatre that seems to be showing Ben-Hur! Like... maybe the silent one? It's a really, really, retro poster is what I'm saying.

Turns out it was – a father and daughter walk out of the theatre, talking about whether or not the black and white film was boring! She proves to be a philistine, while he appreciates long takes et al! Suddenly a creepy woman walks up to them and asks if they know what happened to Susan! Who she is seeking. Desperately, presumably.

Then things get creepy when the father finds a flyer on his windshield – it's a missing persons notice... for him! Hey, just like way back in season... I want to say 3? I'll check later. The flyer accuses him of being the murderer of the aforementioned 'Susan'! So that's what that whole thing was about! Neat.

He suddenly notices that there are flyers taped to posts all around his car! While he's distracted the lady returns and holds a gun on his daughter, demanding that they all get into the car! Hey, remember when the show did that whole thing about how you couldn't control two people getting into a car with a gun, and it didn't make any sense? I wonder if this episode will reference that?

We don't find out, instead cutting directly to Reid's apartment (somehow he's seems to be still living in the same place despite getting a nurse murdered down the hall. You'd think that would be the kind of thing to get him to move), where he's tidying the place up before Rachel arrives! I don't know how offended I should be by the fact that the establishing shot shows the Washington monument. There's just a handful of episodes left – it's a little late for the show to realize that these people don't live in DC.

Rachel has arrived to get coffee, and we get a funny joke about what the two of them consider fast vs slow in a relationship, but then he gets the call to go to work! Also, Emily tells him there's something significant about the case – but we don't hear that part of the conversation!

So, what's the twist? The lady wants Aubrey Plaza released from prison in the next 24 hours, or he kills the father and daughter! Hey, does that mean the father is Aubrey's long-lost dad, and Susan is her mother, who he killed? Probably not, but it would be nice to get some resolution on that story, huh? I guess it's back to scenes with the two of them baiting one another, huh?

As Aubrey's led into the building we get a recap on her character, in which they conveniently omit the fact that she was a professional murderer who was part of a cabal of elite assassins. Seems like that would be worth bringing up. Instead they announce that she was a black widow who seduced and murdered men – possibly in the hundreds! Of course, they have no reason to think that, since she killed people in untraceable ways and kept no records. Also, she was only killing people for a maximum of like eight or nine years, and that would mean killing like 25 people a year to hit a number that could be considered 'hundreds'.

What I'm saying is, they've used up all of their interesting killers, so now they're pretending she's the most dangerous killer they've ever faced. Which is just patently false.

Reid asks her how she arranged the kidnapping with her outside partner, but Aubrey feigns innocence. She claims that she's given up on life, has pled guilty to 73 murders, and is awaiting the death penalty! How does that work, exactly? If she was arrested for murder in either Maryland or DC, there's no death penalty. Did she kill anyone in Virginia? Also where are they getting this number from? The league of assassins weren't keeping a record of all of their murders, were they? What kind of sense would that make?

Wow, this episode just got so dumb! Aubrey complains that they never had sex, and Reid retorts that she violated him in Mexico. Aubrey responds that the hallucination drugs make it impossible for someone to get an erection, just like when they're on MDMA. Which is just... crazy wrong. People have sex on Ecstacy all of the time. Also, it's an incredibly limited definition of sex that requires Reid to have an erection.

More importantly, though, and I can't believe I have to say this... AUBREY WASN'T IN MEXICO. All of that was done by Joe Mantegna's daughter, acting as Aubrey's catspaw. She was in jail the whole time. Does the show not remember that? If not, how?

Aubrey demands a date, and tells him that she does, in fact, know about the kidnapping. Reid says he won't play her game, then immediately goes back to an office and freaks out, because he's still not over the whole 'drugged and raped and sent to jail' thing. Really, who could blame him?

So, will he play along with Aubrey Plaza's sick game? I mean, obviously yes or there's no episode, but let's find out after the opening credits!

Criminal Minds 1505: Ghost

The episode opens with some one-on-one basketball. They toss some rocks and talk some trash, then one is shot by a sniper! The second guy only has a moment to be puzzled be fore he, too, is felled by a bullet!

A bloody bouncing basketball transitions to a normal basketball in a gym somewhere, where Muscles and Brown Eyes are having a roundball duel of their own! Matt wins, but Eric's good about it! At the office some amount of time later - maybe they were playing before work - the team gets word about the sniper in Illinois!

They start talking about Tim Omundsen back in season 1 - could this sniper be a copycat? Um... no? Like, there have been a couple of snipers since then. Luke Cage, the kid from Suspect Behaviour - since this guy isn't trying to wound people, there's no reason to bring up the sniper from season 1. Of course, this is taking place in the same city as his rampage, so there could be a connection.

The team rushes to the plane, then we cut back to Des Plaines, where I guess word hasn't gotten out about the sniping, because three more people get shot while hanging out in a park! Maybe it's time to shut down the whole city, like they did with DC back in 2002. Or was it 2003?

My question - why are people so comfortable hanging around in public places when they know there's a sniper on the loose? Snipers are pretty famously one of the most alarming types of killers there are for the public. If the first victim in the parking lot two days earlier had been shot in a drive-by, or the cops were simply treating it as a standard murder, that would be one thing - but this is someone killed with a rifle from far away, and nobody heard a shot, suggesting a silencer of some kind was being used. That's the kind of crime that makes everyone ultra-careful until they know that it's been resolved in some meaningful way.

This is something that the show forgets every time - but when compared to real life, the absurdity becomes obvious. Try to imagine a situation where someone is sniping people in a city and the cops do literally anything else but chase that person until they're caught? It basically has never happened. Especially in a city that's already been through this exact thing. Imagine how fast DC would be put on lockdown if another sniper showed up.

So, will Des Plaines be shut down when the team gets there? Let's find out after the credits?

Criminal Minds 1504: Saturday

The episode opens in the Quantico office, where a klaxon is blaring and red lights are shining. Is this a biological attack on the FBI? That would be a twist! Especially since the FBI has been attacked a whole bunch on this show. Like, special forces guys, evil cults, rogue cops, hackers - the FBI building of Criminal Minds is not as secure as one wants it to be.

The camera pans down from the red light to the floor - passing a photograph of a bald man along the way. I'm not watching this in HD, so I have no idea who it might be. It's not the president or the attorney general, so maybe this is a cameo by one of the producers? Could it be what Jim Clemente actually looks like?

We pan across the room - turns out it's the main work area where most people's desks are! And it's full of bodies, and people have guns lying next to them. Is this some kind of a drill? I feel like a full-on assault on the FBI is a weird way to start an episode. It would be quite a drill if it was, though, since a bunch of people are covered in blood!

Reid enters the room, his gun drawn as he looks for his target. Maybe this is a dream? Of course, that's happened already, while a drill would be fresh, if kind of preposterous. Okay, it's a dream, or maybe a book someone is writing - out in the hallway Reid find a guy in a butcher's apron with a bloody axe.

God, how great would it be - since they're leaning on slasher imagery anyhow - if they'd used the Jason from that Gubler episode in season 10? You know, the one they never bothered to try and catch?

The Jason attacks Reid, but then it turns out he was just telling his therapist about a dream he'd had! That's right, after getting definitively dumped by JJ, Reid is finally seeking help for his issues! Good for him! Seriously, I am proud of the guy.

The therapist gives him the hardest assignment of his life - go for one day without thinking about his job, and try to actually speak to a human being. She even gets him to admit that he has no friends or life outside of work! I cannot express how happy I am that the show is finally realizing just how screwed up Reid has always been, and is working to set him on a good path before things wrap up. Better late than never, right?

His new project leads to awkwardness when he thinks a woman in the elevator is talking to him, but no, it's just a phone call on her headphones.

Joe drops by Matt's house to help him prep for the new baby! Which leads to some wackiness with him trying to assemble a crib! You'd think he'd have this down by baby #5, but apparently not. Also, he's annoyed at himself for having accidentally ordered the crib in red, so he's pretending that's what he meant to do! I don't know why he's so hard on it, though, the red crib looks awesome. What was he going to have, white? Bare wood? Live on the edge, dude.

Emily is also there to help! If by help, you mean 'drink wine and eat donuts'. Then she gets a phone call - is it a case? No, it seems that Garcia is hosting a hacking workshop in the office! That's right, she invited a bunch of hackers into FBI headquarters, and they're working inside the FBI with only her supervision. This breaks basically every kind of security protocol there is, right?

One of her students asks her for help on dealing with a cyberstalker! Wait... is there not going to be a murder this week? Are they doing another episode about stalking? It's been what... 11 years or something like that?

Let's find out after the opening credits!