Goddddd Motel Scene Time. I Have A Lot Of Thoughts On It And Hopefully I'll Be Able To Put Them Into

goddddd motel scene time. i have a lot of thoughts on it and hopefully i'll be able to put them into some kind of order.

ELLE: After he shot me, he reached into my wound so he could write on the wall in my blood. I was barely conscious, but I...I could feel his hand in there. And sometimes it's like I can still feel it. REID: Elle, he's dead. You're...You're right here. You won.

obviously this is an unhelpful thing to say. i dont think that makes reid evil, or a bad friend, i think it makes him a twenty-four-year-old who's struggling to understand a situation he's never been in.

i dont think elle resents him for it. im sure there's frustration, deservedly so, but i dont think it's targeted at reid, more at the general sense of Nobody Is Getting Me. especially this expression here:

in the moment, this doesnt read to me as anger. it's certainly not a happy smile; she's not comforted by what reid says because it's not a comforting thing to say, and i think it sort of develops into anger later, but in the moment, she doesn't resent him for not being able to say the right thing. again, there's frustration, because he doesn't get it. he can't (not yet, anyway). a part of her wishes he did, a part of her wishes somebody did, and yet a different part of her hopes none of them ever do, because it's an awful, awful thing to understand.

i headcanon that reid and elle stay in contact after elle leaves, but i dont think its immediate. i flipflop between two reasons

reid doesnt reach out because he feels guilty, like if he had just said the right words in the right order in that motel room, she would have stayed. i think this is generally how reid responds to abandonment (and sometimes just conflict in general). if i had just said the right thing, done that differently, been better, i could have fixed it. boy is...a little emotionally stunted. if he was a stage of grief he would be bargaining. do you get me.

reid does reach out, but elle doesn't respond. maybe she's still angry about him not being able to Get It, maybe she wants to distance herself from the bau in general, maybe him not Getting It hurts in particular because they were quite close, etc.

either way, they get back in contact post s02e15, when reid texts her a barely coherent rambling apology for that night, how it was an unsympathetic and unhelpful thing to say, and he does get it now, and he's sorry, there is no winning—

she calls him.

where is that gif where spencer pushes that lady out of her chair from LOL

s01e21/secrets and lies! about 33 minutes and 30 seconds in

(same person who asked abt the spence gif) omg sorry i didn’t know you tagged the season! i saw the post from a reblog too & aren’t really familiar with your account so that’s why i asked 🥹 thank you for answering so nicely though!

oh no need to apologise! i figured that was what happened, i dont mind at all =]

so. potentially slightly controversial opinion amongst elle fans: i really like her departure.

i think it's very thoughtfully written. the fatal flaw that contributes to her departure (her impulsivity) is shown and named in the very first episode. the trauma she suffers in the season one finale also contributes significantly, and i believe the implications i and others picked up on that there was something related to SA in her background were intentional, and even though we never got confirmation on that, elle does still express a specific hatred of sex offenders and briefly relates to the vigilante unsub in a real rain.

it makes sense. it's tragic, but it makes sense. elle has a special hatred for sex offenders. at the time of the episode, she's recently suffered a trauma wherein her home was invaded and she was, in a way, violated. (although no sexual assault happens, a man shooting a woman and then reaching into her wound, coupled with her later feeling that she can sometimes still feel his hand there, does have heavy and likely intentional imagery paralleling sexual assault). it's entirely plausible that a case concerning a man who is both a home invader and a rapist would push her to the edge.

i don't know how soon the writers knew lola glaudini would be leaving the show, but whether they knew late in season one and set up foreshadowing, or they knew later and referred to elle's previous statements, implied backstory, and canonical trauma in writing her departure, i think they did a really good job. a long-running show like criminal minds is pretty much guaranteed to have a lot of cast turnover and i wish it was this well-written more often.

if i could change one thing about the way elle's departure was written, i could have used a little more nuance, maybe changed the way some of the characters spoke about her, and referenced her more often later on. (when i say "the way some of the other characters spoke about her" i am not saying that i wish all the characters had gone "what elle did was fine. that rapist deserved to die." i wish we had gotten to see varied opinions amongst the team (without any of them being treated as having The Wrong Opinion) and that she had been discussed with more sympathy given the lead-up to her choices). referencing departed characters more often is something i wish was done in general. i wouldnt want it to be every episode, because that would be obnoxious, or even that often at all, but sometimes it feels like when the characters remember someone who left the team, it's because the writers remembered, if that makes sense?)

hey simon mirren? what the fuck was this:

(it's a little hard to tell from the image, but elle's "it's totally you" reads to me as earnest, if slightly teasing)

am i supposed to think elle is being sarcastic? because it's not coming off that way to me—although caveat that i am autistic and bad at reading tone. is it platonic? it doesn't read platonic to me. and not because "oh my god a man and a woman complimented eachother. they must be in love" but. im sorry im legitimately trying to read this scene from any angle other than "there is mutual attraction" and i am not finding it! am i biased because i ship them or is this scene legitimately just Like That.

EDIT: forgot that this happens like a minute later. what the fuck!!! you cant do this to me!!!

i couldnt get good screencaps of it, largely because there are quite a lot of these moments and theyre often very short and rely on the physicality/movement of the characters but. godddd p911 hurts in hindsight with the way morgan is acting the whole time (particularly with principal rawlings, a man who holds a position of power and trust over the children he wants to hurt).

screaming crying eating my laptop. holds him gentle. i dont care that at this point in the series he is a solid fourteen years older than me. i am holding him gentle he needs it