Hope you've enjoyed today's episode [the 250th!], and remember that next week we'll have a brand new one!
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
CRIMINAL MINDS Season 11 - 1117. The Sandman - Comments Thread
Hope you've enjoyed today's episode [the 250th!], and remember that next week we'll have a brand new one!
It was a great episode but next week looks good please don't let anything happen to the newly weds my nerves are on edge until next week. Thanks for the cliff hanger love the show.
ReplyDeleteI feel Morgan is much too important part of the team to be killed off especially after what he went through with the kidnapping! I've been a faithful fan enter time it has been on the air and have seen a lot of mistakes in the writing along the way but this is just to important and I simply will have to give up watching the program if Morgan and/or his wife and child are killed!
DeleteIt was a great episode but next week looks good please don't let anything happen to the newly weds my nerves are on edge until next week. Thanks for the cliff hanger love the show.
ReplyDeleteSo who all was sitting around the poker table? I got joe Walsh but who were the others?
ReplyDeletethree letters........... O...........M.............G...
ReplyDeleteWill reply more when breathing commences!
Great episode!
ReplyDeleteVery creepy unsub who whose story was told by the team which makes this episode so enjoyable because we got lots of team and profiling.
Loved JJ doing the tv interview with the mom, she was so like the JJ from earlier season, which is a win for me.
We had decent amount of Reid, great scene of him doing the speed reading of a mountain of paper.
Finally Hotch went out of a police station and went to a crime scene, how about that!
The Morgan storyline was pretty good. Nice touch showing the picture of Erin Strauss gone but not forgotten wall. I liked that this was 6 months later because if rumors are true and Shemar is leaving then we get to see Morgan to move on with his life, settle down and even get to be a dad soon....untill....we see that last scene! Yes it reminded me of the one with Hotch and the reaper as we hear the gun shot and on the screen we have the dreaded 'to be continued...' still I did scream when I hear the shot and Savanah screaming 'Derek!' next week cannot come soon enough!
Excellent job from Joe Mantegna especially with the shot from the first woman point of view after her eyes were was great, we could feel her confusion and desperation at trying to get to her child who was calling for her.
great writing from Mr. Zimmerman. No complain whatsoever, loved every minute of it.
This one gets a 9.0/10!
Please don't kill off derek. Him and Garcia make this show what it is. Love the whole cast but there friendship is amazing. Losing a big fan is derek dies
ReplyDeleteWe've known since S9 that Shemar Moore wanted to leave CM after Season 10...He stayed for part of this season to give Derek the exit such a long time character deserves.
DeleteAs this is his wish.. I'm glad they're going to send him off with a powerful exit...
This was outstanding! What a whirlwind episode, by far Joe Mantegna's best directing effort, and the best episode Bruce has written since "A Place at the Table" LONG LIVE CM!! and BB!
ReplyDeleteSorry, guys, I guess we weren't watching the same episode. Joe's directing was not stellar but rather amateur. I liked the good use of Reid's intelligence and insights. I liked that they finally made Lewis look like a woman. JJ's interaction with the surviving mom was okay. The female cop could not act, she was expressionless, robotic. The script wasn't great and apparently Joe couldn't get a better performance out of her.
ReplyDeleteI am just tired of these convoluted cases. Can we please return to good old serial killers and give our team the proper smarts to discern what and why the unsubs are doing what they're doing? As for Morgan being targeted on a weekly basis now, I'm not interested. One good case would have been okay. This is over kill and I'm not trying to be funny here. At this point I'm ready for them just to kill him off, rather than almost killing him 3 weeks in a row. This was not outstanding for me. This was Criminal Minds trying once again to be something it was not intended to be.
For me, this was a good and enjoyable episode undone by an eye rolling (but that not surprising) ending. Seriously show, you shoot a freaking pregnant woman? That is freaking low, and deeply manipulative to score maximum impact and presumably social media traffic. I am confident they won't kill Savannah, but come the freak on! So what, the next episode is Morgan on a vigilante attack to find her shooter? And I'm guessing he will either pull an Elle and have to resign from the FBI to prevent criminal prosecution, or he will retire to keep his family safe. Why not, a nice normal exit, where he wants something different in his life. I know I am prejudging the next episode (which is giving off "Lauren" vibes- again, never a good thing), but I hate these outlandish arcs like this.
ReplyDeleteBut up until THAT "killer twist" everyone involved with the show kept hyping, I thought this was a very good episode and worthy of a 250th episode (but I also loved the 150th episode, "Unknown Subject", and I know a lot of people didn't). I was rather surprised to see a six months time jump, but I guess that makes sense, because it both allowed Morgan to physically recover and for Savannah to be far along in her pregnancy. Overall it felt more like a classic episode, with only tiny hints of the unsub, but the focus squarely on the team as they worked through the case. It was nice to see the team work different aspects of the case and they all contributed to catching the unsub in their own ways that played to their strengths. It was nice to see Hotch propose the idea that the unsub didn't intend to kill the first mother, so there must be some other behavioral reason for his actions.
I did like Reid determining who the likely unsub was, though I had to give the writers a side eye, because even though Reid isn't a fan of technology, it would have made much more sense and been more practical (and cheaper) to just send those files soft copy rather than Reid printing out all those hard copies that he didn't even need. That is an example of taking a character quirk too far, well out of the realm of practicality, because I don't see anyone allowing him to do that. Not when he could have just skimmed through .pdf files. But that is overall a minor quirk, because for the most part, I think Bruce writes better Reid than most of the current writers. It was nice to see Reid using his brain to determine what was going on. And it was also nice to see the empathetic side of Reid during his talk with Morgan. Usually it is Reid confiding in Morgan, so it was nice to see Morgan confiding in Reid and Reid providing some advice.
JJ was good in both her interviews with the surviving mother and with coordinating the media response to the abduction. It was a good example of knowing how to use an unsub's profile to effectively manipulate the unsub via the media. We haven't seen that too often these days (because even now, over five years after the position was vacated), the team still doesn't have an official media liaison. But it was a nice return to form, like the rest of this episode. jIn that same vein, this is the latest in a refreshing line of episodes that reined in Penelope back to the quirky, but professional tech analyst from earlier seasons.
So overall, I give this episode high marks, for both an interesting case that effectively used the team well and emphasized the profiling. But also, this was a good example of incorporating personal things (what was going on in Morgan's life) through work conversations and not weird bookends (I'm ignoring that ending again that was obviously there to set up the next one).
I going to try to keep this simple. A classic episode where the team tells the story and not the UnSub. I enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteOnly complaint. Rolled my eyes when the gunshot rang out. Really? First we torture him and then shoot his wife? That was overkill. Can't we just let the guy walk away happy with his family? I'm guessing the baby will be born premature so we can see it. Derek, after running around the episode half cocked and taking it personal like he was in 'The Company', will decide that his family is more important and the job isn't. He walks away into the sunset.
Loved seeing Joe Walsh and Bilk Withers at the poker table and using the Life's Been Good lyrics as the end quote. The female police officer was played by Joe Walsh's daughter so I cut her some slack. I believe the opening scene with Derek's image in the reflection of Strauss's memorial photo may have been foreshadowing of his own picture there. Don't forget, episode 19 is titled Tribute. I really hope they don't kill him off but it's seeming to be headed more and more in that direction. Not sure I can watch CM with Garcia but no Derek. I'm very sad but will definitely watch the next episodes and hope they are misleading us.
ReplyDeleteI liked it as a good, solid episode. Not a fan of JM's directing, it is rather distracting in many ways.
ReplyDeleteSomeone please tell me why though, why would a seasoned profiler, who had had an attempt on his life 6 months previous, who had not figured out the who and the why of that attempt, stand with his extremely pregnant wife in a darkened parking lot and present themselves as perfect targets? I would have figured the characters to both be hyper-vigilant at the very least.
I took the female officer to be a newbie who was in a perpetual state of shocked overwhelmed-ness.
The case was quite good and I enjoyed it despite the clunky and frankly amateur direction - they really should not let Joe Mantegna direct.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised but relieved that Erica Messer passed over the chance to show another sappy, sparkly wedding.
The Morgan exit arc - I'm so over it now and it just feels like it is being dragged out. Just let the man go for goodness sake! And what was the point of having a shock surprise ending when they blow out the surprise over who was shot immediately in the promo for next week? CBS should send people back to school on how to do and promote suspense in TV drama. This one is a solid B-.
In regards of the exit arch; I'm not complaining. Yes it drags but they made a point early on that Morgan is incapable of walking away from this job (as a profiler, as a survivor, team-leader) and the team (and yes it gets old but in that case so is DM as a character, he's old and deeply rooted so it's going to take some time to uproot him.
DeleteJM's directing isn't bad when he has a good script, well at the very least not a bad one, like say that one he directed at the beginning of the season because that episode was a disaster from start to finish (at least for me).
* Wish they would resurrect Erin from the dead.
ReplyDelete* Would prefer to finish Morgan's storyline rather than insert a case.
* Liked the beginning hazy shots seen through mostly blinded eyes, but they were just a touch too blurry and fast moving.
* SM looks thin and AJ looks beautiful.
* Scene with Morgan and Rossi going into surprise party was very natural.
* Eyes gouged out, eyes with needles and eyes glued shut. There's a pattern here. Oh, and Eyes Wide Shut.
* Aisha went from too little wig to too much wig.
* Casting does so very well with the medical examiner actors.
* Sgt. Whitfield most definitely needs to stick with singing and not acting. Please.
* Reid is comforting, wise and aware. Loved his hourglass analysis and document review.
* Guess every single unsub has had a bad childhood.
* Abducted little girl was bright and believable.
* Nice to see classic rock guys at the end.
* Shooting pregnant women is like shooting puppies – shouldn't be done on network.
* TG/Aaron – the team leader who has it all.
In regards of Aisha's wig, well, supposedly six months had passed, a woman can grow her hair.
DeleteTrue, but the wig became its own character for some viewers and I think they heard us. It's better, but needs to be tweaked ever so slightly.
DeleteThis episode wasn't the worst, but it didn't really do much for me. In my retirement, maybe I'll read an original BAU profiler's book that will prove me wrong, but I think they are way off base every time they come up with some convoluted back story to explain an even more convoluted MO for the unsub of the week. Childhood trauma can certainly breed psychopathy and sociopathy. But it's not that specific. It plays out as a lack of connection and valuing of human life, but they're not all out there replaying their own trauma. So every time I see that portrayed within an episode of CM, I see it as sensationalism and I'm turned off. I know it's a TV show, but it's a TV show that self-proclaims a grounding in reality.
ReplyDeleteI liked that Reid had a talk with Morgan, but I thought it was a wasted opportunity. It’s Morgan's first day back after six months off, his first time in the field after learning exactly how vulnerable he can be-----and Reid thinks his preoccupation is about becoming a father? Really? It was an amazing opportunity for Reid to turn the tables and give Morgan a pep talk about overcoming the insecurity of being vulnerable, of having to come to terms with a new image of yourself. And the writer didn't rise to the occasion.
I was fine with the timeline advancement. I think it took place mostly so Savannah could be 'that pregnant', so that the baby will be viable when 'things' unfold. And I don't think there's any chance that Morgan's abdominal scar will ever be invisible, or that his fully penetrated hand would have finished healing, even in six months. I think he'd still be in physical therapy.
But I'm not going to get on the writers about the timeline. They can't change what happened in the past, with the returns to work of Hotch, Reid and JJ. They can only write to the present. If they'd given Morgan a too-short time for healing, as happened with the others, I probably would complain 'why can't these writers ever learn'. But, what if they did learn, and so gave him six months? I'm not going to complain about that. If they can't win, why expect them to try?
I didn't know any of those guys around the poker table either, and found the entire scene self-indulgent and unnecessary. And I was more than a little turned off about how Morgan was talking about Garcia wanting to be a godmother again. It felt disrespectful of their friendship, somehow.
I did think the promo looked interesting, even if I think they should fire the person who created it. Why end an episode with a cliffhanger that's going to last under five minutes?
I also had a problem with Garcia lobbying for godmother. Morgan has two sisters who would make great god mothers. It basically sounded like she wanted him to pick her and snub his family. Glad Savannah didn't fall for it.
DeleteJMO, woman, once again, you are brilliant!
DeleteMorgan has more relation with the team specially with Garcia than with his family, it makes sense that he ask Garcia to be the Godmother
DeleteHe has a great relationship with his family. It was established in 'Profiler, Profiled' that he returns to Chicago every year for his mother's birthday and it showed them having a good time together. He rushed home when his sister was in the accident and believed her when she saw their cousin. After the case in 'Restoration' he visited his mother and took home her peach cobbler. That all speaks to me that his family is important to him.
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