Criminal Minds: Review for 'A Family Affair'

Recap : A family with a wheel chair bound son helps him with his kills in the hopes that after each kill he will continue to progress physically. Meanwhile Hotch’s big day at the triathlon has come and the team and Beth come to cheer him up.
Creepy family and good team work makes for a good episode despite having, again the unsub shown in the first 5 minutes of the episode.

The good:

Hotch at the FBI Triathlon. Love to see the team there cheering him up. Funny to see JJ, Garcia and Prentiss so hung over after their ladies night. Loved to see little Jack cheering so much for his dad. Nice gesture from Hotch to give Jack his medal. Nice way to have Hotch introduce Beth to the team and Jack. I like how this relationship is been written, very realistically.

Nice scene between Hotch and Beth at the tea place. I am surprised that she is the one who takes the lead in their relationship. She approached him, she is the one who kissed him and now asking to be there when he does the race, reminds me of Haley but without the negative attitude.

Like all the theories we get from the team when they reviewed the case at the roundtable. Would have been much more interesting if we didn’t already know why the unsub didn’t have any sexual relationship with the victims prior to killing them.

Interesting family dynamic. The mother is clearly manipulating her husband who feels we will find out that he was responsible for putting his son in a wheel chair after he had a car accident while being drunk. The son is clearly not well and it was fascinating to see the parents excuse their son’s murders just because KILLING seems to make him ‘better’.

Very ironic that poor new victim Julie went to a nice home, in a nice neighborhood to the home of a client who was run by the parents. Who would think this was where she would meet her end? You cannot be safe anywhere!

Shallow moment; I love how JJ looks, great hair, her makeup was perfect and nice clothing in the scene at the police station.

It was creepy how the parents reacted to Julie’s pleas for help!

Nice observations from Morgan at the dump site for Julie. We learned something from his observations and not from being shown.

I like the profiling done by the team after Garcia told them about what Julie was. Just wished that since I had already seen the unsub that when Reid asked what if the unsub was in a wheel chair it didn’t feel like Reid and the team were just catching up with what us, the audience, have known since the first 5 minutes of the episode. But, that said, from what Reid said Hotch, Morgan, Prentiss and Rossi are able to deduct that the unsub got injured in an accident most likely and that the submissive unsub(the father) was probably the one who caused it and felt guilty. Nice. I like when the team works like that!

Very good scene between the mother and son in the kitchen when she is mixing his meds in his meal. No words are said but the looks between them, her getting caught, him showing her the knife and her getting scared. Then the son seeing that his dad is watching JJ talking to the press, asking the submissive partner to come forward, and the look the son gives sends his dad to get his gun! The dad sure knew the score with his son, unlike the mother who still believed her son is getting better.

The mother was one hell of a deranged person! Great acting by Kathy Baker!

Not surprising that the dad killed himself. The guilt over what happened to his son sent him over the edge. Not surprising either that he tried to take the fall for what his son did to all those women.

Love those plane scenes. Nice friendship between Hotch and Rossi. Dave is a good sport when it comes to Hotch and Jack. Funny that Reid offered to baby sit Henry. I am sure since he does magic tricks he would have no problem entertaining his godson.

Reid sure had fun screaming his cheering for Hotch while the girls were next to him suffering from their hang overs!

Great scene with Beth meeting Jack and then Hotch inviting her to get something to eat with them.

The bad:

I don’t know whose idea it was to have to re-show the kill from the opening scene, this was shown just before the credits, but that was unnecessary since nothing new was shown.

Conclusion: very good episode, with not too much unsub, nice change for once. The amount of time spent on the unsub’s family was necessary to explain the complex relationship in that family. We had very good profiling. Good team work, love those brainstorming sessions with the whole team when they work a case. This was not writer Kim Harrison’s best work, ‘Into the Woods’ was better but it was without a doubt one of the best episodes of this season 7. Would give this one a 8/10.