This week on Criminal Minds there was an opportunity to go a bit deeper on a case. Usually it’s all about tracking a current serial killer/murderer, but this time it was about testifying for a trial.
Morgan shows up at a mental institution in search of a woman named Daria. She had been the victim of a terrible kidnapping, and witnessed the murder of multiple people. The man who held them all captive was abusive and had the help of a partner. Continue reading
Criminal Minds writers probably love to write the most horrific stories ever. This week was a reminder that the bad and the ugly is always out there, and if the episode was all about anger, we certainly felt that anger too.
A crazy person is kidnapping people at random, transmitting rabies and then filming the whole thing! First the team assumes it’s someone with a sick dog who is biting all the victims, however, when the bites turn human it gave them more of a reason to search! Continue reading
Jumping on the back of renewing the Big Bang Theory for three seasons, CBS went ahead and announced the renewals of no less than 18 of their shows. Here’s a list of all the shows that they want to see more of.
-NCIS
-NCIS: LA
-PERSON OF INTEREST
-CSI (STILL!?)
-HAWAII FIVE-O
-BLUE BLOODS
-CRIMINAL MINDS
-ELEMENTARY
-THE GOOD WIFE
-2 BROKE GIRLS
-THE MILLERS
-TWO AND A HALF MEN
Still no word on The Crazy Ones, but don’t hold your breath on that just yet. No word either on Hostages, but I really don’t think that’ll get brought back. Could be wrong, though!
The Ninja
Notes
-Are you happy?
-Did you favourite show get renewed?
It’s always a good episode when the team heads to Las Vegas. The house of fun turns into the house of crime and the BAU is left to put the pieces together. Las Vegas is also Reed’s hometown, so it’s always a plus for the team to have a ‘local’ as one of them.
It was a trip to the dark side of Vegas. Dead bodies keep showing up and it’s up to the team to go searching on the underground tunnels. Unfortunately, the search is way too wide, so it takes a bit of digging to find out exactly what is going on. Continue reading
How twisted can people be?! This episode of Criminal Minds really hit the soft spot when a little girl called Gabby goes missing. The plot was so sinister it made you question if you can trust other people with your children. The team was on full force, considering there was a child involved and there are only 24hrs to find her alive. Continue reading
Struggling with your married life? Too many years of boredom? Just call Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, they will teach you all about the excitements of marriage! Murder included. Continue reading
The usual dynamic of Criminal Minds involves finding serial killers. The beauty of the show is that every now and then they like to give the viewer glimpses of a wider horizon. A horizon of murder, sadly, but nonetheless it’s great for TV.
This episode clarifies the fact that JJ and agent Cruz are not having an affair! Instead, they were part of a secret operation in Afghanistan back in 2010. It was a secret task and nobody could find out. Hence all the mystery meetings with Cruz and the weird texts she kept receiving.
This operation gave the two of them access codes to a database called Integrity. A secret file and server with secret information about undercover operatives throughout the world, obviously. This gets JJ kidnapped and the team is instantly working hard to get her and Cruz back safely.
It was a very refreshing episode, with an appearance by Emily Prentiss, who is now working at Interpol. With her help they discover some information that might lead them closer to this sadistic killer, who also has their friend. One clue leads to another, and with the team being shut down by the State Department they are running out of time.
Hastings, the man in charge of the operation also happened to be the same man that JJ had worked with in Afghanistan. He was presumed dead but clearly he was very alive.
The team rescues JJ and Hastings falls off a building. Funny how life works, you can escape an explosion but not a fall..
The show ended with all of them having drinks and looking happy, with Prentiss in tow.
The Ninja’s Assistant
Notes
This episode was great because we got to see the diversity of roles the BAU can do. It was a totally different dynamic and somehow it worked great.
JJ is so much more hardcore in my eyes now!
Seeing how JJ lost her baby was quite sad, but at least now we know 😦
Although Criminal Minds has been on the air for a long time, it’s still worth reviewing because it keeps us entertained. While shows like CSI are more procedural, this one involves a bit more thinking, solving mental puzzles in order to find the killer.
This episode has two stories, one about a spree killer who is just murdering everyone around, and the story of Rossi helping out his alcoholic friend.
The killer story is very interesting because we rarely see spree killers in the show. It was a breath of fresh air considering they have been drowning us with back stories for their characters. Thankfully, the Rossi story was left in the background and we could focus on the murders.
This man had lost his wife and son during a house robbery. The killer had gone to prison, and was killed the day before he was supposed to leave. Obviously, this was the trigger for the poor widower to go killing everyone related to this man. The drug dealers, those who testified in his favour, etc.
It was intense, yet very standard. We see them profiling and eventually finding the guy.
Hopefully they will go deeper and try to make more intricate cases, but at this rate it seems as if they’re just focusing on the main characters and giving them personalities. The problem is that after nine seasons, we are already attached to them, we like them and know them. Please more mystery and less emotion.
Notes
Matthew Gray-Gubler has to direct another episode! They’re always so creepy and intense!
The Ninja’s Assistant
The BAU team flashed back to 2004, where they arrested a guy called Sam Russell after confessing to a string of murders. They also recruited Garcia while they were in San Jose, and we got to see a little snapshot of who Garcia was before joining the FBI. She either went to jail, or took the job, and she wasn’t very happy about it.
We’ve seen a few other episodes that centered around other members of the team (BTK and Hotch, Morgan’s abuse case, Reed’s mother’s schizophrenia, Rossi’s ex-wife’s death, and Blake’s hometown killer), that have been hit and miss. While they have helped to give some back story to the characters we’ve grown to love, I don’t know if we necessarily need it. We’ve grown to love these characters through nine seasons of ups and downs, and at this stage the people they used to be aren’t all that relevant, what matters is who they are now.
They’re called back to San Jose to review Russell’s case as he’s soon to face the lethal injection, and claims to be innocent. A local group of hackers (that Garcia used to be a part of) called Starchamber are backing him, hacking into the Department of Justice website to flood it with innocent propaganda. It wouldn’t be an episode of Criminal Minds without a few murders, and when they come about the team decide Russell either had a partner or is innocent.
Garcia suits up and becomes The Black Queen once again, to infiltrate Starchamber who had stolen Russell’s file from the police. Her ex Shane (the head of Starchamber) is not only pissed that she left to work for the FBI, but tells her there’s been an inside man forever. It was strange to see Paulo Costanzo as a hacker badguy; he always plays the good guy (like in Royal Pains), so it was different to see him play Shane. We then learn that he’s a creeper, I mean, he’s big time weird, and has followed Garcia and Morgan’s movements obsessively because he’s worried that they’re together.
And decides to rub Shane up the wrong way…
Shane fills her in on the fact that Russell had a silent partner, another hacker, who duped him into confessing. The BAU goes up against Starchamber to find out who the killer is (which stressed me out because, AS IF!), and it wasn’t long before the killer revealed themself. Shane gets drugged by one of his colleagues, but don’t worry, the team is there and everyone’s alright after a little adrenaline injection to the heart.
I wasn’t quite sure what the point of the episode was, apart from showing us some more of who Garcia used to be. During the episode I found myself wondering what the show could do next. In the nine and a half seasons that we’ve seen they’ve covered pretty much everything. I’m still going to tune in every week, when you’ve stuck by something for so long there’s no point in giving up. A decent couple of creepy episodes is what the show needs, because at the moment, it’s just a bit burned out.
Have a good day,
The Ninja
Notes
– Russell playing with his rosary beads staring excitedly at JJ’s hair cracked me up.
– Do we need to see more back story episodes like this?
– Keep Shane around!
The TV Ninja 