Criminal Minds 3.08 | Lucky

Criminal Minds 3.08 | Lucky

maybe controversial opinion? whiie the directing of true night is fantastic and different and jonny is tragic and sympathetic, i really dislike this episode. this is probably my most critical cm post so far, so if you love this episode and don't want to read about someone hating it, maybe scroll away. if not, my complaining is under the cut:

post 3x01 there's this really frustrating trend of the show revealing who the unsub is and how they act early on, rather than showing them only when the team learns who they are. i want to guess at what the unsub is like. i want to guess at who they are. i want to guess when the team is wrong, i hate that they start handing that information to the audience so instead of learning things with the team, they're waiting for them to catch up.

and i think this episode is one of the worst offenders. it feels like the team gets hardly any screentime, which is a shame, because when they are onscreen, there are some great character moments! but they don't do anything, we barely see any profiling in the profiling show because the episode is too dedicated to showing us jonny. they're completely useless; they find out that jonny is the unsub because his agent calls the tipline.

and it's not a situation where the team being useless is intentional and tragic, like in north mammon (a, from what i've seen, deservedly beloved episode where the team also doesn't get a lot of screentime and the case also ends because of the actions of a non-team member). in this episode, the team is useless because everything useful they do is offscreen, which, to the audience, is the same as them doing nothing at all.

one of the most frustrating moments to me is the reveal that jonny's girlfriend is dead, he watched her be murdered, and is going after her killers. when do we find this out? not slowly. not alongside the team. we find out when they confront jonny with the information. why is the team figuring things out off-screen on the show about a team of people figuring things out? it's possible to guess that jonny's girlfriend is dead from the (imo, largely unnecessary) scenes we get with him, but the details are a surprise. at least to me—i'll admit i spent the bulk of the jonny scenes waiting for the team to show back up, so maybe i missed foreshadowing there.

i really think that had the episode not devoted so much time to showing us exactly how the unsub acted and more time to showing us the team figuring that out, i would have loved this episode. could even have been one of my favourites. i want to watch the version of true night where the team actually profiles, finds jonny...and then reads his medical records and realises what's happening. i dont want to watch the team explain what they found out after they already have, i want to watch them find it out! that's the point!

a "pretty boy" has been found sniffling and whimpering in the wilderness

If you stop caring, you’re jaded. But if you care too much, it’ll ruin you.

rb to relieve the back pain of the person u reblogged this from

Just leave it alone till I get there.