Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Criminal Minds: comments Thread for 'Foundation'



Here you can post your comments about the Criminal Minds episode 'Foundation' written by Jim Clemente.

26 comments:

  1. One of, if not the best ep of the season! Thank God!

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  2. This had to be one of the finest CM ep's I've seen since "100". And I loved "It Takes a Village". This was powerful, haunting, touching and the team work was at the best.

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  3. BY FAR THE BEST EPISODE YET!! My favorite parts have to be when JJ broke through to Angel, when Angel first spoke, and the last scene with JJ and Morgan. SO SWEET!! I love JJ and Morgan! Hope to see more JJ/Morgan scenes in the near future!! I loved this episode! I nearly cried! It was just so heart warming when Morgan got Angel to talk!! Loved it, loved it, loved it!!<3 Ahh!! Words cannot describe how much I seriously LOVED this episode!! Great job guys!! Cast and crew, you both did AWESOME! Can't wait to talk to Jim tomorrow night!

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  4. Powerful on several levels.

    Great guest casting, and wonderfully "Morgancentric" without being obvious about it.

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  5. Excellent episode. Powerful and very emotional. Excellent work by Shemar Moore. Morgan scenes with Angel were very touching. The boy playing angel was very good too!

    Loved all the team work and how Emily work with the unsub daughter. Loved that we knew as much as the team did and didn't find out about the unsub from the get go!

    Great writing from Jim Clemente! Without a doubt one of my favorite episode of the season with 'Unknown Subject' and 'Foundation will make my top ten of my all time favorite CM episode!

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  6. Great episode a topic not spoken about, but the more it is more will come forward. Child abuse is hard....thanks for taking it on.

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  7. A really good episode : an excellent case and a good amount of suspense and guessing. I expected nothing less from Jim Clemente to be honest, he's one of my favorite writers.

    I suppose MGG was busy working on the episode he directed when they filmed 'Foundations'.
    I still sorely missed Reid, that's the only negative point for me (even if I realize it's no one's fault).
    Though, I certainly enjoyed the little Hotch/Reid scenes we had, thank you Mr Jim Clemente for that. :)
    I just hope to see Reid more in the future episodes.

    So, all in all, a wonderful episode, I loved it.

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  8. AH! So good! I just wanted to cry when Angle hugged his mom at the end :') it was so beautiful! And Morgan and JJ? Well done! This helped me regain faith for season seven. Honestly, one of my new favorites.

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  9. This is the best episode probably of the past two seasons. They had actual profiling and we got to see them really thinking about things. We got to see the perspectives of the team members that made sense for their characters. Rossi was dubious about the repressed memories because of his experiences back during the craze where therapists unintentionally (I hope) brainwashed patients into thinking they had been abused (causing them to actually remember things that never happened).

    I was a bit surprised that JJ suddenly knows Spanish. I wasn't too crazy about the thing with the one mother not reporting her son missing because she was in the country illegally-- although that further supports that one of the problems with illegal aliens is that they are more likely to be victims of crimes and less likely to report crimes- which is very problematic for the police. There are many legal ways for them to enter and stay in the country.

    I liked how Morgan got through to the boy who had escaped.

    I wondered why Hotch wasn't wearing a tie, but then I think they said something about being called out in the middle of the night? I'm not sure.

    I do wish there had been a bit more of Reid and that he hadn't disappeared when they were all raiding the house. I loved that police were along for the raid as well. But Reid didn't have any lines that made him sound like an idiot as he tends to in Erica Messer's and Kim Harrison's writings, so it was a plus.

    I loved the little twist that the object the woman thought of to retrieve as an excuse to go to the basement was something that had been taken as a trophy from one of the kidnapped boys.

    We got hints of what happened to the victims without actual gory detail. We didn't have to see the boy being bitten and assaulted. They didn't even overtly say that the guy had been building new houses to buy his victims, but it was implied and that was very creepy.

    There was a lot of subtlety, great team interaction, good emotion from all involved, great investigative techniques. They really were using their minds and it wasn't showcasing the shocking unsub of the week.

    I wish we got more episodes like this one.

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    1. Totally agree...but I'm wondering if you could give me an example of when EM or KH gave Reid dumb dialogue? I can't really remember when that happened...though that may be because Reid isn't my favorite (I do love him though)

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  10. Other CM writers...take notes!! THIS is what we've been waiting for! The Unsub remained a mystery for more than 5 minutes, we were kept guessing through most of the episode, we had character development that made sense! Now, there maybe could've been a bit more profiling...but we learned everything about the unsub from the team/victims. Garcia did not give us all the details. Although Reid didn't have a major role, I didn't feel like we were missing out on anything. The episode was moving and intriguing. Jim Clemente, you should write more often. I love all your episodes.
    I'm not dissing the other writers....I'm just asking them to listen to the positive feedback from the ep (so far I have seen very few negative comments) and realize that THESE episodes are what most viewers prefer: more team, little unsub. Of course, not ALL episodes have to be like that...but generally, hidden-unsub eps do much better.
    This is probably one of the top 3 episodes of the season, hands down. I LOVE CM!!

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  11. I know that Jim Clemente was in BAU 3 team (Crimes Against Children Unit) so I think he was really drawing upon his experience. I wonder if he, or a fellow agent used something similar to the coin thing to get through to a victim. I loved that we got that interaction. I really felt like this story could be real whereas so many episodes of late did not feel very real and it felt like just any random group of law enforcement agents could replace the team. But in this episode we got a glimpse of why this team is special and so good at their jobs.

    The parents of the most recently kidnapped boy really were sympathetic-- especially when they realized what could be happening to their child.

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  12. Erica often writes Reid as being somewhat clueless and she gave him lines such as "But we buried her!" His general word choice when speaking in her episodes does not match up to the verbiage he used in the first four seasons. She doesn't have his "voice" down. Another example would be about the ghost. In "JJ" Reid was surprised about the unsub passing the polygraph-- Reid of all people would know how flawed polygraphs are and that many people have passed polygraphs while lying. The suspect (who turned out to be the real kidnapper/killer) in the Suzie Yaeger case not only passed a polygraph but was given sodium pentathol (aka "truth serum") and still lied to the authorities. Although polygraphs are biased against the innocent and people who are suspects are more likely to be deemed lying even when they are telling the truth-- hence the reason for the test to not be admissible in court (and also why Reagan passed a law that employers could not compel employees to take polygraphs; sadly they don't seem to remember that ruling and federal employees are now required to take polygraphs-- several FBI agents have been fired for supposedly failing). Also in "JJ", Reid and Prentiss seemed impressed/surprised that the "dumb" suspect used the word "metaphor". I learned that in second grade. It's not a big word and does not denote high intelligence. Also in "JJ" she had Reid say "maybe she asked for a raise", which is absolutely retarded because FBI agents don't get raises-- they get step increases. For the first four steps they have to wait 52 weeks (they can get a quality step increase but that has a 52 week wait as well). After step 4 there is a 104 week (2 year) wait in between steps (but they can get a QSI every year). After step 7 there is a 156 week (3 year) wait in between step increases. When the time requirement was met, unless the agent really messed up, they naturally get a step increase. The QSI is done either just before or after the natural step increase. So unless it was close to the time for her step increase, JJ wouldn't need to be asking for one (Hotch would likely recommend her for a QSI already-- if he felt her performance warranted it). With Erica's writing it's not even necessarily specific lines so much as how in general he seems to be dumbed down and lacks perception.

    Then we have Kim who gave Reid a line about the x chromosome (which was retarded-- especially since the line she gave Prentiss right before it sounded more intelligent and more like a Reid line). Then there was the Mr. Belvedere line and "What could possibly happen?" Add to that her excuse in the chat was that she wanted to show Reid being

    It shows that she underestimates his maturity and intelligence. Having JJ and Prentiss question whether or not he could take care of a toddler when he took care of his mother from the time he was 10 years old was just insulting. People trust their kids with inexperienced teenage girls. Why would they think that Reid would be less reliable? He's not an idiot.

    I've found that with many of the other writers, the profiling just isn't as good as in this episode-- naturally it helps that Jim was in the BAU so he really knows his stuff; but sometimes it seems like the others aren't even trying and their fallback is to just show the unsubs instead of having the team investigate. They also rely far too much on Garcia-- something that did not happen in this episode.

    I think Jim should always be involved when they are writing the profiling because he made the characters seem much more intelligent and competent.

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    1. Thank you for answering (I'm the anon poster from above...too lazy to slap a name on). Since I didn't know all that stuff you cited..that was interesting to learn. Pretty much agree about what the writers are doing. We know they can write profiling, because there is some in every episode (though not like in s1-4/5). I mean, if they don't know how to write a certain scene because they don't know all that stuff (which is understandable given the nature of profiling) then they should ask Jim. Maybe some of the newer writers should co-write episodes with him (like EM & Debra Fisher used to...though DF wasn't a profiler). I'm not trying to bash the writers, but a lot of episodes this season have lacked the great profiling we used to see, in my opinion. Still love the show, though, because the cast is so amazing:)
      Anyway. Thanks for answering:)



      Anyway.

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    2. JJ has always been cautious with Henry and it's not like Reidis the biggest people person not to mention he generally avoids kids so I'd be a little worried that my kids needs wouldn't be met.

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  13. That was an amazing episode!!! Extremely well written!!
    I'm so glad we didn't get yet another unsub-driven episode, that was just perfect!
    I loved how Morgan and JJ got through to Angel, and Shemar's acting was excellent (well, they all did a terrific job actually!).
    We didn't see enough of Reid (in my opinion), but I understand that he's been busy working on Heathridge Manor.
    I really wish all future episode could be that good; this is exactly what we expect from CM!!
    Fantastic job Mr Clemente, I wish you could write more often!!

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  14. Everyone's acting in this episode was superb! Of course it always is, but what made the difference was the WRITING! OMG Mr. Clemente PLEASE write more episodes!!!! CM writers definitley take a page out of his notebook :) It felt like good ol' Criminal Minds at it's best. PERIOD.

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  15. For some reason part of my post got cut out in the middle. I was saying Kim Harrison had Reid volunteer to babysit because she wanted to show him being responsible for a change.

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  16. BEST episode of the season by a mile.

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  17. THE best episode this season by far!!! Took me back to good old season4-5 CM! Each character was acted superbly by each actor, more profiling, less on unsub...but most of all, fantastically written!!! So intense and had a lot of depth and dimensions. Thank you, thank you, thank you Mr Clemente!!! Please write more episodes in the future!!

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  18. This was the BEST episode, so far, this season! It reminded me why I fell in love with CM in the first place. The scenes with Morgan and Angel were painful and beautiful and heartbreaking, without being heavy handed. The re-visiting of Morgan's past was handled with the respect that it deserved. Mr. Clemente managed to write a Morgan centered episode, without sacrificing the rest of the team. Very reminiscent of s4/5.
    (And, I DID cry. More than once.....) Thank you, thank you, thank you!

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  19. So glad to see that everyone agrees that this was a great episode and much like the CM of the old days. Exceptional writing, Mr. Clemente. Thank you!!!! I wish the other writers would watch this ep and learn from it. We don't need to see the unsub right away. We don't need name guest stars. The actors in this episode were wonderful. The focus was on the team profiling and solving the case rather than the actual committing of the crimes. The lines were intelligent and sounded like the old team rather than just having the team spit out their lines as quickly as possible in order to give more time to the unsub. Episodes like this one could keep Criminal Minds going for a few more years unlike the majority of this season's episodes that have long time fans ready to call it quits. I hope all the writers, producers, etc. take notice of the responses here and on other forums and blogs and take steps to ensure future episodes are up to this standard not only for our enjoyment but because our wonderful cast deserves scripts like this one.

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  20. I heartily approve of this episode and Mr. Clemente's acute observations regarding how the team should interact not only with victims and UnSubs, but with each other as well.

    I loved Morgan's sensitivity with Angel, but was a bit put-off by JJ's sudden knowledge of Spanish. I loved Morgan's coin prop, and hope the writers can refer back to this in future eps.

    I missed Reid. There, I said it. Of course not every ep can be Reid-centric, and yes, MGG was busy with "his" ep, but still, I do love Reid's character. I also have to say that I like when the writers showcase his lack of social skills as that makes him, the genius, a bit more personable.

    And...yes...I LOVED Morgan's beating the snot out of the bad guy at the end. LOVED it.

    I'm impressed with how Mr. Clemente showed Garcia's character in a more believable light. She's NOT a profiler and therefore shouldn't be shown to ACT like one. Her character generally has good instincts on which information leads to redefine and narrow down, but in the end, a profiler she is not.

    I give the other writers kudos - they are ALL excellent at what they do, but I'm in love with Mr. Clemente, lol, and not JUST for not shoving the UnSub down our throats or blasting the screen with gratuitous and disgusting blood and violence. Sometimes violence is "worse" when left to the imagination.

    Great guest cast, too, by the way.

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  21. I actually wasn't bothered by the fact that JJ knew Spanish - because 'what is your name?' is pretty simple. I mean, I know that and I'm not a Spanish speaker. I thought it was realistic that she would've picked up a few words. :)

    That being said, the episode was lovely!

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  22. Best episode of the season!!! Perfect writing!! Finally we get to see Emily act like Emily and we got to see some real profiling from everyone!! Also, loved that we didn't know who the unsub was till later. It did feel like we were back in season 3, 4 or 5!! AWESOME!!

    I am new to this blog! Thanks for putting this up! Great job!

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