Criminal Minds: Masterpiece
By fred | November 20, 2008
(S04E08) We all know Reid is special, he is not like the rest of us, he is a little genius living in his own world. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, it really isn’t. It has served him well over the years, and surely did too for the show. But there’s no question that his mind is of superior intelligence, he does think like every body else, and that’s why he can think of things and see things where we can’t.
That’s why he’s so good at playing chess, because he’s able to see what his opponent will do before he even knows it, because he can always be a couple of moves (if not more) ahead of everyone. That’s the thing with brilliant minds, whether they’re good or evil.
This week we met another brilliant mind, an evil one, Paul Rothschild – portrayed by George Costanza Jason Alexander, as brilliant here as he was then. And at first this episode looked like a very good one to me. We started with a little “joke” only Reid could understand, then met with this guy, this guy who claimed to have killed 7 person and be about to kill 5 more.
He was a genius of his own, and had been working on his “masterpiece” for years now. For a good part of the episode it was pretty good, but then it failed back into the good old cliché and ended up in the most disappointing way possible.
Because as soon as Reid pointed out to Chester, VA my first thought was that this was not where the victims were kept, but were the trap was set. Because it had to be that way, it was obvious, it had been way too easy. I mean think about it, the guy is this highly intelligent mind who’s managed to kill 7 women. He did not just kill them, because no one knew they were dead and no one could ever proved it, much less find a connection to him.
Seven times in the past, he accomplished the perfect crime. And now it was his masterpiece, the one he’d been working on for years, so he couldn’t have been repeatedly pushing them into that direction - his pendent, his references to da Vinci, the numbers he counted with his fingers… - if he did not intend them to get there, if that was not part of his masterpiece.
I knew this was a trap, and as soon as we saw the team heading there, all those shots in black & white (or with some kind of filter) were, to me, only what he thought was happening. Because they were playing him, this time, and that’s the only reason Garcia would come in and let him know they were at the house, so that he could think he won and do what he shouldn’t be doing : confess.
And that was such a disappointment, that they resorted to this fat cliché, and that he really didn’t see how they were obviously playing him. I waited for him to tell Rossi he knew they knew, he knew they weren’t really in that house, but that never came unfortunately. And in the end I felt this episode almost served only one purpose : to show the world that Rossi really is good at his job, that he was smarter that the little genius there, because - of course - it was him so figured it all out (though I’d like to think that might have been a lie for him to hear, to show how he failed even more).
Other little things to mention :
* Loved to see Kevin back with Garcia ! “Thank you for the help with the stuff thing.”
* Didn’t care much about the whole thing with Morgan and Todd, but it was the obligatory introduction as part of the team I guess.
* I loved to see Rothschild go from quite over-confident with Rossi, pretending to leave, to a scarred little thing when he saw Prentiss standing right there behind the door, crawling back against the wall.
* Poor Reid… “I never have any normal fans.”
* I really didn’t get why they seemed not to understand why the mother exchange place with her kid ?? Are they kidding !? Obviously one kid was missing already, they knew that, just like they figured out that they’d been put apart from each other and the masks were used to keep them in specific places, and quite obviously, the last one to go will be the one right in front of the camera, so how could they not understand she was making sure that if someone else had to go, it’d be her and not one of her children ??
In the end what looked like a very promising story turned into nothing more than a predictable clichéd one, and I really expected better, especially from this show. I wouldn’t say it was a bad episode per-se, but it was quite a disappointing one for sure.
What did you think of it ? Did you enjoy the episode despite its predictable ending ? Which “couple” sounds better, Jordan & Dereck or Spencer & Emily ? How fun was it to see Jason Alexander again ?
Posted in Reviews
Shows: Criminal Minds
