CRIMINAL MINDS Season 11 - 1114. Hostage - Review

Apologies for the massive delay in posting the latest reviews. ~~ Happens that The Bug of Doom (yep, it is its medical name, we are sure) decided to assault Camelot, and after a bloody, huge, long battle, we are happy to report that the Knights and Ladies of the Criminal Minds Round Table have surfaced victorious and are, from now on, in disposition to full fill all the "obligations" we gave ourselves in favor of our show and our fellow fans. ~~ Thank you for your patience, and please, have fun commenting away!

Wow! Did I get a great episode or what? I’m not sure how I got so lucky! I’m going to be honest with you guys. I travel and am not normally able to watch Criminal Minds as it airs. By the time I get to watch it on the DVR, I can’t usually stay awake for the episode. This season has been a real struggle for me to keep up with. This had to be the best episode of the season. Not only did it hold my interest from beginning to end, I was willing to watch it more than once. Thank you Virgil!

This episode is about a male Unsub who has been kidnapping girls at a young age, holding them captive and raping and torturing them. He renames them after flowers. His name is Tom - or so he tells the girls. As a handyman in the Saint Louis area, he has access to some of his elderly customer’s homes. When one of them dies, he buries her in the back yard, keeps up with her bills and uses the home to stash the girls. Gina, one of the girls, escapes. She brings police back to the house where they find another of the girls, Sheila, who is very ill. Before she brings the police back there however, Tom escapes with his oldest hostage, Violet.

Gina is able to remember enough to give the team clues as to Tom’s real identity, with Garcia’s help, of course. They are able to track him down by his van and arrest him and recover Violet. While in the hospital, Violet keeps asking for her “daddy” and saying they need to go. JJ realizes that Violet might possibly want to leave because there are more children in a different location. The team wonders if Violet has possibly had a child by Tom. As it turns out, she has had 2 “sisters”. These girls were kidnapped around the age of 8 and are all so innocent in the ways if the world. They aren’t familiar with remote controls, computers, tablets, etc. Violet has been held so long, she doesn’t remember her own parents when introduced to them.

Sheila ends up dying after the doctors performed an emergency hysterectomy due to complications and infection from a miscarriage. Her mother is there with her at the hospital. Gina was a foster child at the time she was kidnapped and has no one except for Violet and Sheila. Between talking to Violet and piecing things together, the team is able to find a home where they believe Violet’s children are being held. They are able to rescue them and reunite the “family”. As the Unsub is being led from the hospital, Sheila’s other shoots and kills him. It was an easier death than he deserved.

This episode had a good balance of Unsub, victims and team. The same with background and profiling. I hope that the episode this week is just as good. The previews looked promising. After this episode, my faith in Criminal Minds has been restored. I hope we can finish the second half of the season with some strong episodes. It’s been awhile since we’ve had more than just a few during a season. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, it is definitely worth a watch. And, if you have seen it, it’s worth a second viewing. Great writing, great directing and great acting - especially by the guest stars. Again, thank you Virgil.


~~~~ Guinevere