Criminal Minds 2x5 - Tumblr Posts

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.

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

anyway: i think hotch lets elle blame him for her shooting, and more broadly considers being the de facto scapegoat as part of his job.

granted, there isn't much time for him to respond to this before gideon takes elle out of the room, but i dont get the sense that he was going to defend himself. he could, easily. he could say "the only reason randall garner knew where you lived is because garcia compromised our system by playing an online game on our wifi" or "the only reason randall garner went to shoot you is because gideon chose to hold a press conference and break the one rule he gave us" or "the only reason you got shot is because anderson left after taking you home." (please note: i am not saying "silly elle! blaming hotch when all these other people are at fault!" i am saying "hotch has several people he can deflect blame onto, but he doesn't)

i didnt think to get a sc of it, but after her shooting, he even says "i should have been clearer with anderson," pulling blame away from anderson and onto himself even though his immediate reaction to elle's shooting is to be angry with anderson.

i think that contrasts him pretty interestingly with gideon, whose reaction to elle's shooting is to reassure himself that the press conference was the right decision, and that "elle will understand."

(disclaimer: i'm going to rewatch s02e06 the boogeyman tomorrow, which i havent watched in a while. there might be stuff in that episode that adds to or detracts from this analysis. i'll update if that episode changes my feelings)

GODDDDD. can we talk about hotch cleaning elle's blood off the wall himself. he could so easily have had anyone else do it but he does it himself and he does it alone. because he feels singularly guilty. can we talk about it. godddd. im going to come back to this (to his guilt specifically) when it becomes relevant again but for now just lay on the floor with me

oh.

man criminal minds is just full of these lines that never ever come back. nothing in this scene causes me immense pain in hindsight.

(also: just because it's a little hard to tell from the screencaps and I'm unsure if this is information that's okay to include in Alt Text given that it's context not included in the screencaps—here is the conversation with who says what.

ELLE: You know how many rapists I saw walk during my Sex Crime days? [...] It was enough to make you explode.

JJ: Well, it's a long way from feeling like that and actually committing murder. Don't you think?

HOTCH: Oh, not really.

hey do you ever think that the reason reid knocks "shave and a haircut" on elle's door is because post-fisher king elle gets nervous when someone knocks on her door because she doesn't know who it is, so reid (or even the whole team) start knocking a pattern. do you ever think about elle checking the peephole anyway. i do.

hey do you ever think that the reason reid knocks "shave and a haircut" on elle's door is because post-fisher king elle gets nervous when someone knocks on her door because she doesn't know who it is, so reid (or even the whole team) start knocking a pattern. do you ever think about elle checking the peephole anyway. i do.

i miss elle © @hirohamada

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.

hey do you ever think that the reason reid knocks "shave and a haircut" on elle's door is because post-fisher king elle gets nervous when someone knocks on her door because she doesn't know who it is, so reid (or even the whole team) start knocking a pattern. do you ever think about elle checking the peephole anyway. i do.

Wait. Wait. Spoilers below about Elle’s exit and the Hotch/Foyet arc because I AM SO CONFUSED.

I’ve seen people say before how angry they are with how the Elle situation was handled because in later seasons, other characters do the exact same things and aren’t treated the same. I’ve always wondered what they were talking about, as I couldn’t figure out who they meant.

Just read a post that they mean Hotch killing Foyet???? (And then subsequently lost said post because I was so shocked)

IN WHAT WORLD IS THAT THE SAME THING????

Look, I LOVE Elle. I wish Lola had loved LA and stayed on the show forever.

But Elle tracked down a rapist, alone, without telling anyone, and murdered him. Then she lied about it, and claimed it was self defense. That means she also had to plant evidence on the man - to say he had a gun when it was never shown that he did (at that moment at least). IF he did have a gun on him, she had to physically move it from wherever it was and put it in his hand. She had never been physically harmed by this man. (We won’t get into the whole “he mentally harmed her by triggering her” debate). Was he an absolute scum bag? Without a doubt.

Aaron Hotchner elected to arrest George Foyet because that was his job. The man escaped, stabbed him repeatedly, and then as if that wasn’t enough, killed his (ex)wife. THEN, when fighting with Hotch, stated he was going to go kill his son. Hotch didn’t lie about anything during the investigation- he stated the truth - if Foyet managed to get up, he was going to find and kill Jack. Should Hotch have maybe just handcuffed him once he had the upper hand? Possibly. But the man had already escaped once - he memorized every prison in his state. Plus it was a literal dirty fist fight - Hotch had the upper hand at the moment, who knows if he would have if he stopped to get the cuffs out.

SOMEONE TELL ME HOW THESE SITUATIONS ARE EVEN REMOTELY SIMILAR. (Besides both killing someone. If that’s the similarity, every single member of the BAU has done that, excluding Penelope - although she does shoot someone so!!)