Fuck This Line. Fuck This Line So Hard. I Have To Brace Myself For It Every Single Time I Watch This

fuck this line. fuck this line so hard. i have to brace myself for it every single time i watch this episode. this is my "he was was alive yesterday"*

*i have not gotten to that episode and anticipate it will also destroy me

okay. i love this scene. BUT. headcanon. this is not going to be angsty by the way. it's going to sound like it's going to be angsty at first but it's not i promise.

reid is a very insecure person, especially in the early seasons, and, given his past, has a tendency to take even very lighthearted teasing quite personally. so i have a headcanon that he went home genuinely embarrassed that he didn't know how to use chopsticks and resolved to learn. i could go either way on if it's out of "spite" (not nearly so strong, but i cant think of a better word) or self-consciousness.

anyway, sometime later, on a particularly bad case, they find themselves in a restaurant with chopsticks as the default utensil, and everyone starts (affectionately) ribbing reid before anyone's even started eating. at first, he defaults to offense/hurt/embarrassment, then puts two and two together. it's a really bad case. everyone is on edge...and they've chosen this restaurant specifically because reid not knowing how to use chopsticks provides levity they desperately need. if reid knows how to use chopsticks at this point? well. they don't need to know that. if he hasn't figured it out yet, he stops trying to.

(i have another, sillier version of this headcanon where morgan walks in on reid eating doritos with chopsticks so he doesn't get the flavouring on his fingers and gets through several minutes of affectionate bullying before going Hey. Wait a Fucking Minute.)

ANYWAY. this is longer than i wanted it to be and it might be better in my head but bottomline. idk. reid does sleight of hand im sure he could figure out chopsticks. but i think he knows the team needs some easy comic relief sometime. do you get me. do you see the vision.

will move over im kissing your wife On The Mouth.

the only amount of comfort i get from the ending of this episode is the knowledge that jacob dies knowing his son is alive, that his perfect victim of a wife defied him. hell, it occured to me this watch-through that he probably also dies believing that this evidence will exonerate sarah jean and set her free. as hotch says, he dies knowing he lost. it's so satisfying to see the mini hissy fit he pitches at the reveal

morgan's reaction to reid revealing he's never been to new york is so funny to me. maybe it's that he says his first line:

jj speaks:

(two sidenotes: one: jj is very cute here. two: why is she sitting like that)

and then morgan keeps going:

i think it would be less funny to me if there wasn't a beat between his two lines because it gives the impression that he's just Stuck on this train of thought. if hotch hadn't stopped their silliness to remind them that they're in a crime show would he have kept going. "it's four hours in your gay little car! it's a 24 hour 34 minute bike ride! it's a 112 hour walk! what is wrong with you!"

so. i love this line.

but i want to talk about her expressions after gideon asks if she's alright:

i dont know. throughout the first season, elle expresses the strongest negative feelings towards sex offenders (reasonable!) and sure, she came from a unit dealing specifically with that and that's her specialty (remember when all the characters had specific skill sets and specialties?) but especially this reaction here seems very personal. and this is pre-randall garner, so she doesn't yet have that connection to being attacked in her own home.

also. the team knows sexual offense crimes are elle's specialty. they know that's where she came from. but her response to gideon when he asks if she's okay after she goes off on scott isn't "i've seen a lot of this and it gets me riled up" it's to get defensive and evasive. if it was anger born of something the team is aware of, why hide it? her response to gideon and her expression afterwards very much read to me as someone hiding something.