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Criminal Minds: Lo-Fi

By fred | May 22, 2008

(S03E20) So it wasn’t the best of start for this season, loosing Gideon and all, but the show eventually managed to get back on tracks, and though it got hurt again when the strike kicked in, in the end we had an overall good season. I mean some episodes really sucked, let’s face it, but others were simply of the best we ever got from the show so far, no less.

And what’s more important is the final impression we’re left with, as the season ends. Because doing a good season and ending with a shitty finale is a way to ruin the entire season, if not series. Really, just see the first season of Heroes. Luckily, this wasn’t the case here as everyone in Criminal Minds did what they do best for the last time this season, delivering a great episode and leaving us hanging and wanting more, now!

When the episode started, I think what many people will have thought as well, for a moment at least, what crossed my mind, was that the guy we were following in the subway might be a terrorist, ready to blow himself up. I soon realized it probably wasn’t the case, if only because it looked like something they were trying to hint at us, so it had to be to fool us.

And it was, it was just a regular guy, new victim of the actual unsub(s) we’d have to deal with this week. But looking back, it was also a great thing what they did here : they planted in our mind the idea of terrorism right from the start, only to deny it. So then, later on as the BAU was working the case, the idea of terrorism probably didn’t came up because we had already put that away.

This was a terrific episode, great story, great mystery over the unsubs, who they are and what is their motivations, it all played nicely, almost. Yes, a few things I didn’t really liked. For one, the way Derek behaved seemed very odd to me, really out of character to go after someone like that. I get it that the British version of Hotch’s wife did had a thing against him from the start, but he was himself acting differently that he usually does, without having been pushed that much, and I was really glad to see this addressed as Rossi came to talk to him in the bar; which was also a nice way to mention Gideon, to really end things there.

I also was surprised that they never seemed to consider the option that some of those killings might have been done by someone else than their unsubs completely. I didn’t had the whole terrorist group in mind, but why not just the idea that someone else completely and unrelated might have done of of those killed, a copycat who just used the “opportunity” to kill someone, trying to pass his crime as one of the unsub’s. That was one of my ideas, and it seemed to made sense to me, especially when one was extremely calm while another run away, while some were done ion the subway without message, and one the opposite, or when two murders came in two days : what if one of them wasn’t done by the actual unsubs ?

Anyways, those were just minor details really, but I couldn’t help but thinking, when the episode started and Garcia was invited on the place, that this was only to make this a big thing, special, because it was the season finale, while had this been just another episode she’d have stayed at her desk, from where she can do everything, anything, anyways.

Of course, let’s dive into it since this is what we’ll all be talking about when it comes to this (great) episode : they needed her, because everyone from the team needed to be at risk, a potential victim. This episode ended with the perfect cliffhanger for the season : everyone of the team gets into his black SUV, and then we see one of them blow up !!

Posted in Reviews
Shows: Criminal Minds