Criminal Minds: Birthright
By fred | December 13, 2007
(S03E11) Gideon is far gone now, and the show has definitely found its new tone. I’m not saying everything is perfect, but not everything was perfect either was the original boss was around. People are human, things are never perfect. But it’s close enough. The tone is different, of course, but overall I fell like for a few episodes now we’ve had a very strong show back on tracks.
With that said, and while I mostly enjoyed the episode, I did feel that a few things were off. Like, some were easy to figure out. Not that it was too obvious, nor was it possible to figure it all out from the first minutes, but it remained predictable.
For example, at some point I felt that it was somewhat obvious it was the original killer’s son who had take over, and yes that was also considered by the team. But for a while it seemed they were more confident with the first victim’s son, and without any good reasons. I mean sure, Garcia found out why the mother was lying, and it opened up some new possibilities. But the cat killer looked still much more like a probable match to me, and it almost felt like following the other road first was - besides a way to later get the mother to help finding where the victims were being held - a way to fill time.
I don’t really want to say “filler” because it was nicely done and still had a point, but I’m just saying it looked like they rushed way more rapidly into the innocent kid than they tried to find where the original killer’s son was. Also, I’m glad I don’t look up episode’s title before I watch them, because that was one big giveaway (which is why I try to stay away from them as much as I can, even title can contain spoiler nowadays).
But the most obvious thing came by the end. Very early on I started to suspect that, despite her attitude, the wife had killed him. I started to think that it was part of the whole “family tradition” we were uncovering, and that because she was pregnant she probably did exactly what the mother of her husband had done before her, and kill her killer of husband before their son was born.
To tell you the truth, I even went as far as to thin they should make a note to check back on that son, who might start abducting girls to torture, rape and cut them into pieces in about 20 or 30 years.
It all seemed pretty obvious to me, especially because when the original victim asked all those questions such as “why didn’t you do nothing”, “didn’t you ever wonder what was going on there” or “didn’t you hear me scream”, well, those were all more than legitimate questions; so much that they had her to come clean about the murder.
But those same questions could be turned over to the new wife, which also lived right there. Has she not never heard anything ? Did she kissed him once he was done with the girls he was raping and slicing up ? I mean she too had to suspect her husband, she too had to be willing to do anything to protect her child, and so I assumed she had done it as well, and that it was the reason the guy didn’t show up at work and was nowhere to be found : she had killed him.
But no, she had not. Not only that, but she went to see him, and looked like completely shocked and naive about the whole thing ! Looking at the guy, and how he talked to her, knowing how she knew the father was an important issue, knowing for how long this had been going on, I really feel like this didn’t made sense, it didn’t really fit. I think this is far from being as bad as episodes earlier this season, but once again that ending let me down, especially when you add that discussion at the end.
Yes, because after last week’s very special episode, things were “back to normal” this time. Which, on this show, means that a savage killer was kidnapping, torturing and raping girls before cutting them in pieces. It’s not hard to see why JJ would be affected by this, especially as we were reminded by Hotch, she gets to see all the cases, including those that the team never investigate.
Still, that whole thing felt quite odd to me. Like, way too forced. It’s not just that this was pretty much the same thing that had Gideon to leave not so long ago, but in the beginning she also seemed to be really affected, like she had some kind of relation with the case, or a similar case in her past. Then what? She breathed deeply and got stronger, and stopped to be on the verge on fainting, only to have that whole discussion by the end with Hotch, a discussion that, again, sounded quite forced to me.
Then came the very last scene, and while it may have been necessary, I wonder. I mean I already assumed she had filled for divorced and that the procedure had been initiated, so maybe we needed to hear about it more, maybe they all needed to learn about it, it only added my was dislike towards that whole ending.
All in all I still liked most of the episode, but I wish the ending would have had the same quality than the rest of it. Speaking of “the rest”, I don’t think I can leave without mentioning the reference we got regarding Rosi’s case, the one that still haunts him at night. We also found out why he got back on the job, and why he did so when he did it. It was nicely done, but I really hope we will not heard about that case before a long, long time. If ever.
Posted in Reviews
Shows: Criminal Minds
