Criminal MindsThe Angel Maker
Original Air Date: October 1st, 2008
JD - TwoCents Reviewer
JD@thetwocentscorp.com
All is right in the world again. My one disappointment from last week's premiere is resolved--the BAU team is back to their profiling and getting in the killer's heads again. No one is getting blown up, and it's a return to the standard format for us. We can all unwind, relax, and sit back to watch some good old fashioned serial murder the way serial murder is supposed to be done. Of course, with every change for the good, there is always change for the bad. Reid has started combing his hair again, sadly, and gone back to the (almost) Boy's Regular, pre-drugged-out cut. It makes this reviewer a mite sad, but I suppose I can't have everything, can I? And as that goes, it's a change I can learn to live with.
Continue Reading...
[photo: Eric McCandless/ABC Studios]
Posts
Criminal Minds
ReplyDeleteThe Angel Maker
Original Air Date: October 1st, 2008
JD - TwoCents Reviewer
JD@thetwocentscorp.com
All is right in the world again. My one disappointment from last week's premiere is resolved--the BAU team is back to their profiling and getting in the killer's heads again. No one is getting blown up, and it's a return to the standard format for us. We can all unwind, relax, and sit back to watch some good old fashioned serial murder the way serial murder is supposed to be done. Of course, with every change for the good, there is always change for the bad. Reid has started combing his hair again, sadly, and gone back to the (almost) Boy's Regular, pre-drugged-out cut. It makes this reviewer a mite sad, but I suppose I can't have everything, can I? And as that goes, it's a change I can learn to live with.
So, last week's episode, in a nutshell: Hotch goes kaboom, screwing up his ears, then drives a truly massive bomb to its destination himself without realizing it. He figures it out after effectively releasing himself from the ER. Morgan drives off with said bomb without telling anyone; Hotch loses a friend he spent most of the episode trying to save; and then he tears Morgan a new one for his trust issues. Got it? Good.
Hotch is back to the BAU this week already. The man can't just learn to take a break, can he? Even when he's advised to take one, told he could go deaf if he's around loud noises (hello, guns!), he still insists on being released to go back to work. Bad decision, Hotch, and honestly, what kind of doctor is this that just lets him go back to work in his condition? One that should be fired, right? Right. I'm pretty sure we all expected this plot thread in this episode would end the way it did--I predicted it exactly, as a matter of fact--but it doesn't make it any less hard to watch Hotch struggle.
So, cue JJ with a new case. The team's been called in to Lower Canaan, Ohio, where a woman was bludgeoned to death and sexually assaulted in her home. It's the first victim in the case... sort of. The signature matches a series of murders by a killer known as the Angel Maker ten years ago. The new murder has taken place on the one year anniversary of the Angel Maker's execution, and the team suspects it's just a copy cat commemorating their hero's death. The catch? The DNA evidence (I'm trying to be delicate here) recovered at the scene has been processed already, and it matches none other than the original Angel Maker himself, Cortland Ryan. Yikes.
Cue Reid trying to float the idea of there being a set of "evil and eviler" twins committing the murders. Cue the team staring at him blankly. Oh, I love my show!
Meanwhile, all of Lower Canaan is in a panic. Cue the cheesy, ten cent Halloween music. Has Ryan risen from his grave? Has he come back on the anniversary of his execution to wreak havoc upon the town? Is everyone in Lower Canaan seriously this stupid? Maybe Ryan and Elvis are in on the ruse together. Okay, yes, we do find out that Ryan didn't exactly die easily, and there were rumors that maybe he didn't die at all, but come on people. Cue law enforcement exhuming Ryan's grave anyway. Cue this reviewer sighing and shaking my head.
I really enjoyed the twist on the killer in this episode. I'm going to keep from giving it away, but let's just say the team was looking at the case from the wrong angle at the start. Those of you who've already watched will note we discover this twist right after we discover what pills the only male victim of the episode took before he was killed. Anyone who's ever done research on serial killers and/or profiling will know that who it turns out to be is little known territory. This type of serial killer doesn't happen a lot in reality, but it does happen, and I think this was really a great case for the writers to explore it.
This episode was also actually laced liberally with humor, with a lot of laugh out loud funny moments, much of the jokes centered around Reid. Maybe they were making up for the hair. (If you can't tell, I was quite the fan of the crazy homeless guy look--or as I've heard some fans call it, "the Jesus hair".) I really enjoyed it--the humor, and the episode on whole. It seems in the last season, possibly before that, the show was losing a lot of the lighter elements it had in season one. Overall, this episode was a lot more casual, a lot slower paced, and a lot lighter in tone than they have been lately. Of course, it's entirely possible that it only felt that way after the adrenaline rush that Mayhem left us with.
So what did you all think? Was it a much needed breath of fresh air, or would you rather have more episodes Mayhem all the time? Did you like the humor, or do you wish they'd go back to the constant creep out factor? Did anyone hate Reid's hair as much as I did? Okay, I'm going to shut up about that now, I promise. Give me your two cents!
prentiss poking reid in the face saying 'he's so life like' after reid mentions that it was quicker for him to solve the becon cipher longhand instead of using a compuer--priceless
ReplyDelete'he's so lifelike' was priceless, i cannot agree with you more. it's one of those youtube clips i cannot get tired of.
ReplyDeleteand Reid driving home! well, the airtport, but still, good enough.