Criminal Minds: Conflicted
By fred | April 9, 2009
(S04E20) Seems like the name of this episode ends up being a perfect fit. Conflicted, indeed, is how I feel about this episode. I’m not sure if I got what the writers were trying to do in this one right or not, I guess it’s possible I did not, which could explain why it didn’t work on me very well, but then I would have to say that things weren’t done all that well.
And if I actually got it right, then I fail to see how we were supposed to really/fully enjoy this episode. Not that the case sucked or that they didn’t do a solid work investigating and profiling our weekly unsub, and they even added an extra emotional component to it, remembering past episodes, which certainly had its effects, but that wasn’t enough to make up for it.
The way it was done, opening with Reid questioning a woman who stays in the dark as he’s looking for Adam, and then how we only got to see her from the back, it was all done – to me – to indicate that this Adam was actually the girl Reid was talking to. Maybe we weren’t supposed to get that from the start, but it seemed incredibly obvious to me that this is where they were going with this, and that they were clearly hinting at that.
So from very early on, I knew that Adam was our killer, that he had a split personality disorder, that he turned into a woman to commit his crimes, and that made for an episode that could feel slightly boring at times, because whether they thought it was the making of a male only, or a couple, all along I knew what they got right and what they got wrong.
They did try to throw in some red herring with Julie, but it just didn’t work, and I think it just made it for a merely okay episode in the end. Not that they could have figured this out faster than they did or that Reid was right to blame/guilt himself for not seeing it sooner, but the fact that they clearly told us what was going on form the start, which I feel they clearly did opening the episode the way they did, just kinda ruined it for me.
There wasn’t no real tension or excitement, there was no surprises and no mystery, I was just looking them go through the motion, fully aware of where/how it would end, and seeing all the little missteps they made along the way. And overall, it just didn’t made for a very exciting episode. Good one, but nothing more.
(Side note, I’m sure they all had a couple of drinks down already, but we saw them being lured in and they didn’t look really wasted yet — you’d think they’d still be able to see that despite the dress, that face wasn’t really female, not to mention the adam apple.
Considering how they were not completely wasted, how during spring break good looking girls aren’t hard to find, and how they weren’t the kind to settle for anything less than what they felt was the best looking girl around, it just seems a little odd the both run and fell for “her,” doesn’t it?
Also, I’m very curious whether or not those were actually his/her first and only killings, seemed to me she had been around Adam for years now, and I’m sure the occasion for a trigger were plenty over the years…)
What did everybody else think?
Posted in Reviews
Shows: Criminal Minds
