Here's The Jordan Analysis I Promised. It Got Really Long So It's Under A Cut

here's the jordan analysis i promised. it got really long so it's under a cut </3 also to any jordan fans jsyk this is more a meta analysis of the role she serves rather than an in-universe analysis of her character, so. no major character insights if that's what you're hoping for.

as i've said before, i also don't understand the vitriol i've seen directed towards her when she was in eight episodes and occasionally mildly annoying at worst. i think most of the people who hate her do because she was a. being shipteased with morgan b. (temporarily) replacing jj and c. a woman of colour who breathed. i don't love her, although i do think her and emily should have fu— uh. who said that? anyway:

what i do really like is the narrative role she serves during her episodes, and especially during this one. with any long-running show with dark themes, there's always a risk of the audience becoming desensitized—a guarantee, even, if it goes on long enough. i think a lot of these shows (including cm, on occasion) fall into this trap where they think the solution to that is to constantly escalate, which i think is a huge mistake. you'll desensitize the audience faster when you're just showing them increasingly awful things; at a certain point you'll even bore them. also, it will inevitably become extremely unrealistic, and you'll start to sensationalize if you aren't already.

i think jordan's introduction was a really fantastic early effort to prevent the audience from becoming desensitized. we're following a cast of characters who have all been embroiled in awful things for years or decades. it's their job and it has been for a long time. the characters are already varying degrees of desensitized and they're the ones we're identifying with as the protagonists.

and then jordan. right away she's out of her depth and overwhelmed, and in this episode, she says outright that she can't do the job. i think it was also a great choice that the case in the episode isn't a particularly horrifying one (obviously they all are and the revelation at the end of this episode is really tragic, but jordan saying "im out" after this case reads very different than if it had been after something like no way out where it's clearly among their worst cases).

she's a reminder to the audience that the people we're watching are not normal. no normal person could do the job they do. the vast majority of the audience, if transplanted into the show, wouldn't be reid or emily or morgan or hotch—they would be jordan.

spencer | luke | emily | jj | derek | penelope

spencer | luke | emily | jj | derek | hotch

edit: i forgot pink on all of these polls. everyone shame me

so im writing an au of this now. haha

god the "reid goes to check on gideon at his cabin" scene still makes me feel so nauseous even though i know he doesn't actually find gideon's body like the viewer is made to expect.* but like. watch this clip. it really looks like he's just found his body until it cuts to show what he's really looking at. even now it makes me nervous

anyway. call me fucked up but i wish there were more fics that looked at what would have happened if that really was the situation. i like to put my blorbos in blenders and turn them on, okay? sorry. sorry. my demons

*i think this fakeout is missed by some people simply because gideon leaving the team is spoiled a lot—which is fair, because the episode where it happens aired sixteen years ago. but the clip above, the letter reading like a suicide note, the last episode ending with gideon holding his gun...they really want you to think he's killed himself. and reid is probably worried about that the whole drive, too.

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