Jordan Todd - Tumblr Posts

I’m watching 4x13 “bloodline” of criminal minds and I love the way Rossi comforts agent Todd 😭

JORDAN TODD and EMILY PRENTISS EMBARRASSING VIPER | 4.09 “52 PICKUP”

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.

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.

I genuinely don’t get the hate around jordan todd because she was a realistic depiction of what a semi-normal** person be like in the bau. @/frankiebirds made a really good post about it here, which you should absolutely go read.

(this got kind long, the rest is under the cut)

in addition to that post, I want to add the jordan had very little training. she shadowed jj for a bit (but didn’t actually shadow her during a case). that’s it. she was thrown in the deep end with no real knowledge of what she was getting into.

and she was put in the media liaison position. over the course of the series, we’re shown just how hard that job is and the toll it takes on jj, who’s been at it for years.

in addition (and as frankiebirds points out in the post it made) the other members of the bau are varying levels of desensitized to the horror they witness. jordan isn’t. she’s completely new to this world and these horrors.

and she’s honest about it. and I feel like people see her as weak for this honesty. when, in reality, most people would be in jordan’s position—scared, unsure, and traumatized.

rossi, one of the team’s most seasoned, tells her that it’s okay to not be able to do the job. and I think she finds deep relief in that. enough relief to not feel like a coward for leaving.

criminal minds is gray area central and people just Can’t Handle It for some reason. why jordan catches all the flack is beyond me (besides the fact that she’s a woman of color who breathed).

anyway. rant over. thank you for coming to me TEDtalk.

(**she did work in counterterrorism, so she likely had some interactions with the dark & disturbing, but not like this)

cm ladies + bde (big dick energy)

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