Criminal MindsThe Instincts
Original Air Date: November 5th, 2008
JD - TwoCents Reviewer
JD@thetwocentscorp.com
In the wake of historic election highs, at least Criminal Minds was there to kill children and bring us back down again. We wouldn't want to start believing the United States has changed that much and become all rainbows, butterflies, and brotherly love, would we? Now, while I try to avoid spoilers like the plague, I had heard already that we were getting yet another 'let's torture Reid' episode this season. A two parter, actually, and here it finally was.
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[photo: Vivian Zink/ABC Studios]
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Criminal Minds
ReplyDeleteThe Instincts
Original Air Date: November 5th, 2008
JD - TwoCents Reviewer
JD@thetwocentscorp.com
In the wake of historic election highs, at least Criminal Minds was there to kill children and bring us back down again. We wouldn't want to start believing the United States has changed that much and become all rainbows, butterflies, and brotherly love, would we? Now, while I try to avoid spoilers like the plague, I had heard already that we were getting yet another 'let's torture Reid' episode this season. A two parter, actually, and here it finally was.
I'm not entirely certain I'm liking where this one is going yet, but I am trying to have faith in the writers at Criminal Minds not to take this over the top, as it could easily go. This episode did have a resolution to the case, however, rather than leaving us on a total cliff-hanger, so I am already pleased with that. We also saw the return of Jane Lynch as Reid's mother in this episode, which was an absolute joy.
We start this episode off in Reid's head. This isn't the first time we've heard about Reid's nightmares, and this one featured Hotch and Prentiss going with Reid into a crime scene where they come upon a six year old boy, dead and dumped behind a dryer. Suddenly, JJ's baby, which isn't born yet in reality, crawls onto the scene, and then Reid is being called awake by Rossi and Morgan. He's fallen asleep in the jet. How he managed to do this before anyone noticed he was nodding off, I'm not sure--I have a sneaking suspicion it was simply the most seamless way for the writers to transition from the dream to the case.
Once they finally start talking about the case, we find out that someone has been killing boys in Las Vegas. The last victim was five years old, and abducted right out of his front yard. The police found the body one week later in the desert, his clothes changed, his nails clipped, and his hair combed. A new boy has gone missing now, and the only thing tying the cases together so far is that the unsub is calling the parents and taunting them after he takes the kids.
When the team gets to Vegas, and Morgan and Reid go to check out what happened to the last boy, they find that the boy had been starved. Strangely enough, though, he showed no signs of malnutrition, even if there was no sign that he had been fed over the week he'd spent with the unsub. There was no sign of an IV injection to give him the nutrients he needed, either. At this point, I've got my money on photosynthesis, even if nary a sign of a ficus in his family history seems likely. Hey, can any of you say you had any better ideas?
As the team continues to build the profile, Reid continues to freak out, as Reid is wont to do at least once every season. He has another nightmare, this time waking the parents of the missing boy in their home as he wakes screaming for Morgan to help him. Nice going, genius.
And speaking of the parents, they are not taking things well, and the case is tearing them apart. Hotch has, however, already convinced the mother of the child to speak with the unsub over the phone, and later convinces her to attend the funeral of the last boy killed in an effort to draw the unsub out. They attend the funeral, and the mother just senses someone watching her. And then we get another phone call once the family gets home. Was anyone else expecting the twist on the unsub? I was, but I was thinking I must be wrong, considering how rare this type of killer actually is. We've had two of them this season in just six episodes, which is... odd. But I digress.
This twist leads Reid to visit his mother, Diana, at Bennington Sanitarium, which has to be the high point of the episode for me. I cannot sing Jane Lynch's praises enough. I adored her in The Fisher King episodes, and I'm so glad to see her back, and in a bigger role than last time, with decidedly less angst. She simply steals every scene she's in, and provides some of the most memorable lines of the episode, from telling Reid he's too skinny (as she did in The Fisher King), to the laugh out loud way she shares her son's concerns regarding inheriting her disease.
The theme of instincts was very prevalent in this episode (hello, highly original episode title!), particularly a mother's instincts. From a very pregnant JJ's intuition that the mother of the boy who was taken would pull through it, to the way the mother sensed the unsub at the funeral, to Diana's repeated declarations to Reid that mothers just feel things, and so on. I wonder how much of this will play over into the next episode that will resolve the plot thread about Reid's nightmares. What do you think? Diana said that their family moved around a lot because she just sensed Reid was in danger, which plays directly into what we discover about Reid's nightmares: Reid has been having those nightmares for years. Morgan does some digging, and it turns out they're about a real boy who was murdered when Reid was young (a boy sharing the same name as Reid's childhood imaginary friend). I'm not going to go into that plot thread too much here, as I'm running out of space, and because I have a feeling that I'll have a lot more to say about it next week when we see the resolution to the gasp-inducing ending of Reid's final nightmare of the show.
The closing montage was wonderful. I need to say a little something serious about Hotch here before I tie this review off. I feel like I'm watching a transformation. I was very hard on Hotch earlier this season, and I'm not about to retract anything I said. He was stupid for returning to work in The Angel Maker, and he did make seriously bad calls in Minimal Loss. In Paradise, he got distracted enough to walk away from the unsub before he'd even really started talking to him. But then Rossi told him to wake up, and last week, Hotch was Hotchly again. This week, I almost feel like we're returning to the old Hotch--not the Hotch of seasons two and three, either, but old old Hotch. In three seasons, we've watched Hotch go from a man who, while a serious control freak and perfectionist, was capable of joking and smiling, to a man who was wounded and alone and full of self-doubt. He's struggled a lot this season, but I feel Mayhem was a wake up call for Hotch. He almost died, he lost an old friend, and now after struggling with his perceived failures in New York and the subsequent cases, we're seeing a Hotch that smiles more often and jokes more often again. The closing montage of The Instincts, with the team sitting around the table eating, was so reminiscent of the Chinese restaurant scene in A Real Rain (season one), that I just can't believe it wasn't intentional. It just warmed me to see Hotch laughing and happy.
There. I'm done being serious now. And if I ever start comparing Hotch to a butterfly, or Reid to a delicate snowflake, someone call the authorities.
Overall, I'm pleased with the episode, even if I'm dubious about the Reid subplot. The case definitely hooked me from the moment we found that the boy was starved but not malnourished, the dream sequences were beautiful, and the acting was phenomenal. I supposed I can't blame the writers for wanting to write Reid suffering. With an actor as expressive as Matthew Gray Gubler, you can't help but want to use him as much as possible. And honestly, after last night, I'm almost--almost--willing to say, 'do whatever you want to Reid if, it means we get to see Jane Lynch more often!'
So what did you all think? Give me your two cents!