CRIMINAL MINDS Season 1 - 1119. Tribute - Review

Criminal Minds latest episode ‘Tribute’ was written by Virgil Williams and (guest) starred Paget Brewster. We catch up with former BAU agent Emily Prentiss who left the BAU and went over the ocean and accepted to work with Interpol.

THE CASE

In a botched undercover job, a police officer is killed, one whom Prentiss recommended take the assignment to help further her career. Prentiss learns the killer is now in the USA, so she calls her former boss, the unit chief of the BAU, and convinces a reluctant Hotchner to work this case.

This case reminded me a bit of a prior episode ‘Zoe’s Reprise’ in which a young serial killer is killing people the way other famous serials killers did in prior cases. While in 'Zoe’s Reprise’ the Unsub is trying to learn his way, this killer is doing it for the thrill kill. He is a pretty much a copycat killer.

The case itself was OK. I got enough to understand what his motivations were (killing to get famous by copycating what famous serial killers did).

But this isn’t why I was interested in this episode, after all the Unsub was just a means to get Emily back into the BAU, if only for one case, and interact with her former team.

CATCHING UP

Loved that we got to catch up to what’s been going on in Prentiss professional and personal life. We get to see she finally has someone in her life. First scene sees her waking up in bed with a boyfriend. Go girl! (This is from a Hotch and Prentiss shipper!). On the professional side, she is still at Interpol and is involved in a case that cost an officer her life.

Once she flies to the USA to meet with the team to work the case, we get great scenes between her and JJ. Lovely scene when she ask Garcia about Sergio, her cat who is now living with Penelope. She meets with Agent Lewis, who just joined the team this year. I like the interaction between the two, seems very easy going. The meeting with the guys on the team is equally friendly and they all seems happy to be together again. We get a rare thing in the meeting scene, Hotch hugging Emily!





The best scene was without a doubt Emily doing her imitation of Morgan to Garcia! One of my all-time favorite scenes. I don’t know if this was in the script or something Paget did on her own but it was awesome!


THE GOOD:

• The Unsub remained a mystery until the end.
• The nightmare scene where instead of the officer dying in a pool of blood, Emily dreamed it was her friend JJ. Pretty gory scene with blood coming out of poor JJ’s mouth!
• I like the idea that Emily is in London but, while being pretty much a workaholic, she did find time to get a boyfriend.
• Emily being back at the BAU, even if only for one case.
• The last scene with everyone relaxing while having a meal. I love scenes like this where they all enjoy each other’s company.
• Hotch FINALLY off the police station and working in the field!

THE BAD:

• Prentiss is the one that decides they can give the profile? Isn’t that supposed to be Hotch’s job to decide when they have enough information to do so? Not the first time the writers have done this, twice they did with JJ deciding it was the time for the profile!
• The girls give the profile together to a bunch of cops at the scene and the guys gives also the profile to a bunch of cops back at the police station. WHY, would they split the team according to gender? Was not necessary and made no sense at all.
• It did seem that it took JJ, Rossi and Prentiss forever to get to the dorm room where the Unsub was holed up with the two girls.

THE OBVIOUS:

• Really when an episode focus on character, in this case Prentiss, anyone not with said character when they are about to take down the Unsub, you know they will NOT be part of the action. In this case the moment I saw that Hotch, Lewis and Reid were together, I knew they would not be the one on the action and worse, once they got on the scene and Hotch said they would take the back, they simply disappeared.

CONCLUSION

As an Emily Prentiss fan, to me, she is second only to Hotch, I was happy to have her back. The case, while not the most exciting, the interaction between Emily and her former team and friends was well written and was entertaining enough that I did like the episode a lot. Yes, there was a lot of Prentiss but I knew this would be the case and still I didn’t mind. It was a solid episode despite some minor quibbles I had which I highlighted in the ‘the bad’ section I still enjoyed it, way more than the horrible ‘200’ in which Prentiss made a comeback. So I will give this one a 8/10.


~~~~Merlin