Summary: When a college campus is terrorized by a serial arsonist, the team attempts to identify the fire starter before he strikes again. For a detailed summary, see the "Read More" section at the bottom of the page. Acting: 17/20 I know y'all heard Maddie's opinions on Jason Gideon last episode, but I absolutely love his character, and I love the way Mandy Patinkin plays him. This is a man whose hobbies include cooking spaghetti and bird watching. This is a man who just wants to live in his cabin in the woods while romancing middle aged divorces who can't help but fall for his charm. People go on and on about David Rossi (particularly my grandmother) but I am a Gideon Girl to the core. "Compulsion" is a very Gideon-heavy episode, and I do love his acting throughout all of it, as I do the acting of the other characters. While the initial two episodes of the series do focus on Gideon, the other cast members get some good scenes, particularly Sexy Boy Reid. My favorite thing about crime procedural dramas (Criminal Minds, Law and Order, etc) is that every single actor acts their hearts out in every scene, regardless of how incidental their character is. The minor characters in Criminal Minds go hard, even in these early episodes. For my minor character analysis, I'd like to focus on Dean Ellen Turner, Fire Inspector Zhang, and Jeremy. Firstly, I ship Dean Turner and Fire Inspector Zhang. Clearly they like each other, they're sharing a pizza together in an office late at night. It is a cheese pizza, which is the least adventurous pizza out there, but I'd like to think that Ellen and Zhang will eventually spread their wings. Tell me I'm wrong. Jeremy, on the other hand, is a whole nother level. His character is perpetually smug, think male love interest in a teen fantasy novel smug. This smugness makes him seem guilty, which (spoilers) he's actually not. I like a little intrigue! I also like that he seems to prefer the company of females? Or maybe Bradshaw College has an almost exclusively female STEM department? Either way, it was a choice honey! Criminal Character(s): 10/20 This is my forth rewatching of Criminal Minds in its entirety, and normally I watch every single episode, regardless of whether it's a favorite or not. However, there are two types of Criminal Minds episodes that don't interest me, ones that I usually skip right past. These episodes are the ones following serial bombers (I want Bundy not Kaczynski) and episodes following serial arsonists. They just don't interest me. When Maddie and I sat down and discussed how we wanted to rate each episode, we decided to give special consideration to the criminals. Sure, we follow the show because we love Reid and everything, but we also love solving the puzzle that is the serial killer. Criminal Minds has always been a superior show, because you (that is to say, the viewer) gets a chance to see how the BAU agents put the pieces together and find the killer. There's a science behind it! And the show creators really take time to show the audience what this process is. It's that whole Sherlock Is Garbage And Here's Why debacle all over again. Obviously we're not trained FBI agents and we can't solve crimes. But we keep watching because we enjoy watching the BAU solve the crimes, and through their actions, we realize that they're just noticing and analyzing things that we too notice. This is the premise of every episode of this show, but it doesn't always follow through. Especially when the writers focus whole-heartedly on plot developments, and then throw us a bit of proverbial curst at the end, saying we should've known who the killer was all along! In this particular episode, the agent who really cracks the case is Aaron Hotchner, who has about as much personality as a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Thirty five minutes into the episode, with not leads or suspects in custody, Supervisory Special Agent Hotchner suddenly remembers that a specific Chemistry student repeated a word multiple times and played with her jewelry hours ago. AHA! She must be the killer! Sure enough, Elle and Morgan go to her apartment and there's crazy writing all over the walls and it's dimly lit, so you know she must be the killer. Throughout this investigation, the agents refer again and again to a mysterious recording that the arsonist left on their tip line stating: "I do this for Kharon". The FBI has a hard time figuring out who Kharon is (they spend half the show thinking it's "Karen") and by the time they solve the riddle, it's seemingly meaningless. Kharon is the ferryman of Hades, who carries souls on his boat to the underworld. Clara is giving her victims a trial by fire, but if she was really invested in Kharon like the show portrays her to be, then why didn't she put her victims on a boat and drown them? Altogether her character is hackneyed, stereotypical, and the writer's attempts to make her seem deep are a dirt path that goes nowhere. Dialogue: 10/20 Criminal Minds is a complicated show that takes itself and its dialogue very seriously. In this sense, most lines have some sort of dramatic weight to them, or at the very least are spoken over swelling somber background music. I love hearing the characters give long impassioned speeches about whichever subject is relevant to the crime, and it's normal to get one or two speeches throughout the course of an episode. The dialogue in this episode is incredibly fast-paced and packs a lot of detail into a commercial time frame, and because it's spending so much time throttling us with information, it doesn't spend a lot of time really developing the language or conversation between the characters themselves. They in effect walk around, shouting at each other with dramatic backing tracks, being flustered. Now I'm not going to stand here and try to tell you that episodes need good dialogue to make for good television, there are lots of different aspects that make for a good show. But, in accordance with the reviewing of this blog, I can't find any dialogue in "Compulsion" that really blows my mind or leaves a lasting impact. Main Character Development: 10/20 As this is the first season of Criminal Minds we, the audience, are still spending a lot of time getting to know each character and their temperament. I can't really talk so much about in-depth character development, because I don't know any of the characters well enough, not even Gideon who we spend the most time following. While this development is limited in these first few episodes, we do learn about the characters based off of their interactions with other characters. We get lovely flares of the Garcia/Morgan relationship (love love LOVE), we see that Morgan really only smiles after talking to Garcia, which is a really cute touch. We also see the Gideon and Reid relationship, particularly in the first episode when they kept going on and on about chess. WE GET IT, it's a metaphor! But in terms of character arc? The show's main characters are all static as of now. Yes, Gideon was clearly traumatized by an event, but we never get to see him pre-PTSD, so he too is static. That's not a bad thing, each and every character goes through some sort of transformation over the course of this show, some even go through too many (ahem REID). As of yet, it's too early to really know anything about anyone, and the show is focusing on the plot and drawing viewers in, so it does leave the characters a little high and dry. Plot: 12/20 Now it's time to talk about something I've otherwise completely neglected to talk about thus far- the Footpath Killer. My favorite aspect of this episode is how the story of Gideon taking down the Footpath Killer is woven in to the overarching episode plot. We begin the episode with Gideon held hostage by the killer, which transitions to present-day Gideon recounting the story of his encounter with the Footpath Killer to eager FBI recruits. We keep circling back to the Footpath Killer during the episode, as Elle asks several different people why they think the killer stutters. At the end she confronts Gideon with her hunch (which we learn was correct, although Gideon's such a dick he doesn't admit it) which then transitions to a flashback of Gideon with the Killer. This works really well both as a visual effect and as a plot tool. In terms of the serial arsonist plot, it's definitely not my favorite. Again, I'm into the plain old serial killers being creepy, that's really what gets my pot boiling. Conclusion and overall total: 59/100 You're probably thinking- if you really like Criminal Minds as a show, then why are both you and Maddie dishing out these low ratings? Well my fair-weathered friend, I can't speak for Maddie, but here's my thought process. Most of this show, a large chunk of it, is plain ole good television. It's fun to watch, has addictive and relatable characters, and its formulaic pattern never fails to reward my serotonin levels after forty-five minutes. But some episode of this show are RIDICULOUSLY good. Like, so fucking good I can't even explain adequately in writing how good they are. These are the episodes that stay with you a week after you've watched them; they're suspenseful, thrilling and furthermore straight up haunting! I'm holding out for these episodes, and I'm trying to be fair. I love this show, and I think I've seen enough of it to be able to give a fair and considerate rating. I'm sad that I skipped this episode in the past, because it definitely has merit and is a fun watch. Watching it with a keener eye has made me appreciate it's nuances (like the Dean Ellen x Inspector Zhang secret love affair), and I'm thankful for that. But this is not the best the show has to offer, but it's definitely a good place to start. Episode Two begins where Episode One left off, with Jason Gideon (Ex Senior Supervisory Special Agent, although we don't yet know the details of his dismissal) being taken hostage by The Footpath Killer in the gas station where the killer works. After finding out that Gideon is an FBI agent, the killer demands that Gideon tell him everything he knows. Gideon tells him that the FBI knows many things about the killings and the killer himself. He also claims to know something that no one has ever been able to tell the Footpath killer before- why the killer stutters.
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