MORGAN: Why The Woods, JJ?JJ: Hmm?MORGAN: Your Fear. You Said It Was Of The Woods.JJ: (ominous Music)

MORGAN: Why the woods, JJ? JJ: Hmm? MORGAN: Your fear. You said it was of the woods. JJ: (ominous music) Uh, I used to be a camp counsellor when I was a teenager in the woods up in Vermont. I had the night shift. Tuck the girls in and turn off the lights. You know, the typical drill. Everything seemed fine, all the kids were asleep. You know, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, until I noticed that there was some blood on the hallway floor. (reid and morgan make eye contact) So, I followed the blood trail out to the camp director's cabin. Walked up to his bed and he was just lying there underneath his covers, dead. (morgan raises his brows and reid looks at him again) Someone stabbed him. I ran out of there so fast. Out the door, down the hall. I just...I remember it being really dark. Once I got to the door, there was another counsellor there. I guess she heard me scream. They caught the caretaker on his way out of town. I guess he still had the knife on him. Anyway, I guess that's probably when I decided I didn't like the woods. MORGAN: You're serious? JJ: REID: JJ: No. (ominous music stops, jj scoffs) No. I can't...you fell for that? Come on. I don't know why I'm afraid of the woods. I just...I am. (gesturing at Reid) Why is he still afraid of the dark?

jennifer jareau how does it feel to be the funniest person in the world. is it funnier if this is a story she regularly tells to fuck with people or if she came up with it on the spot? i cant decide

bonus:

MORGAN: Yeah, Reid, why are you still afraid of the dark? REID: Because of the inherent absence of light! JJ: (disbelieving, hitting his arm) Oh! MORGAN: JJ, that was pretty good. Just know that paybacks are a bitch. JJ: (sarcastic) I'm shaking.

JJ: It's something we call the buddy system. That means, you always go everywhere with a friend. MORGAN: That's right, because bad men and women are more likely to talk to us only when we're by ourselves

this is likely unintentional, but i like to read into things, so.

for context, they're speaking to a room full of children in a town with a serial child murderer, and are giving them some precautions to follow to stay safe (on a lighter note: the scene is intercut with a scene of gideon doing the same to a room of adults, which i really like)

jj addresses the children as "you" while morgan addresses them as "we". i dont like the term "freudian slip" because i hate freud, but thats the shortest way to describe what i think/headcanon is happening here. im sure they had a script, and i think morgan's part was "bad men and women are more likely to talk to you only when you're by yourself" and the "us/we" came out accidentally. or i could believe that morgan wrote his part of the script and wrote "we" because he sees himself in the victims.

obviously the way morgan was victimized during his childhood was very different to what's happening here (there is no sexual assault and we later learn that the violence was done by a peer, not an adult) but it's made clear several times that morgan takes any case where children are harmed very personally. they all do, because that's just how people are, but again, morgan specifically sees himself in the child victims they encounter. he was victimized differently, yes, but he knows what its like to face violence as a child, he knows the fear they felt, and, considering in this case they profile that the children know their attacker, he knows the feeling of betrayal

GARCIA: Dayon, Ohio, you're on the air. MORGAN: I'd like to make a request. GARCIA: With that sultry voice? You name it. MORGAN: (laughs) Alright, listen. It's a marketing firm by the name of First Hand Media. I want you to see if they have any connection to the colleges from the first set of victims. (computer magic ensues) GARCIA: Behold. First Hand Media processes all the freshman orientation questionnaires. MORGAN: That's a beautiful thing. Oh, one last favour. Look up the words "sexy" and "brilliant" in that computer of yours (all the women in the waiting room turn to look at him, confused) and tell me what you come up with. GARCIA: Look at that. It's me. MORGAN: You are a goddess, woman. Good job. (hangs up)

i love morgan and garcia's relationship i look forward to their nonsense every episode

Everyone always talks about how much Spencer loves his mother, Diana, but the relationship just hurts when you think about it.

Here Spencer is after having an incredibly long day. He flew from Las Vegas back to Quantico, figured out an extremely hard puzzle, found out his mother was in danger - then had to admit his mom is mentally ill and that he could be too one day. His mom is rude to him about his body, letters, and over the fact she was flown there to save her life. He then failed a negotiation and a man killed himself in front of him. He was hurt by a bomb, caught on fire, and helped rescue a victim while escaping a burning house.

And then after all that, he stands in front of his mom - exhausted, charred, vulnerable - and he doesn't tell her how he was hurt or about what he did. He says how she helped save Rebecca's life and Diana doesn't even look up.

Diana doesn't give any indication that she even knows who Spencer is and she doesn't ask about the ash all over him. It's clearly nighttime and she asks if it's lunchtime. She doesn't remember that she read the books she asked him about to him.

Then Spencer, even though he is so tired, has to help his mom on the flight back across the United States, while reading to her and taking care of her while Spencer has no one taking care of him.

And this is medicated, well taken care of, Diana. If this is Diana on an alright day, on medicine - what was she like when Spencer was a child.

ELLE: Key? MORGAN: No, I got one.

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?)