Criminal Minds: Tabula Rasa
By fred | May 15, 2008
(S03E19) After the strike, we’ve had to suffer through some pretty bad episodes, let’s face it. The past couple of weeks, things have gotten better and the latest episodes, while not great, weren’t bad either. There were good episodes, nothing extraordinary or really great, but at least it was good and after a few weeks in the dark that was a nice return to the usual standard for the show.
Still, as we’re now already approaching the end of the season, the finale being next week, it wouldn’t be too much to ask for more than that, for something better. I know I was hoping for such an improvement, and this is why I couldn’t have been happier watching this episode : finally an episode that wasn’t just good, but was actually really good.
This episode started in the middle on an investigation, one that, though we didn’t now at the time, took place in the past, a somewhat distant past. A past when Gideon wasn’t around, Garcia hadn’t really started yet, and believe or not, Morgan had hair !! Of course, at first they were judiciously hidden so that we didn’t know where this was from. When he had hair, Morgan was already going the extra mile, jumping from one building to another to try to save the unsub, unfortunately this time he was a bit too late.
And we are here with, I have to say, the thing I found a bit hard to believe. Maybe it can happen, but the guy fall from the roof of a building, right on his back banging his head on the floor, and somehow he didn’t die. Not only that, but a few years back he woke up, and he wasn’t missing any white matter, it was all fine. More than that, it didn’t take him long to be able to get up and walk perfectly fine ! Even John Locke wasn’t that lucky, and he’s got some kind of guardian angel watching over…
Anyways, the case was all the way back from 2004, and now that the guy woke up, without any memory of his past life, not even his name, they had to go over everything again – especially since the only witness had died on the meantime. The whole thing led to a lot less of Prentiss, JJ, Rossi, Garcia or even Morgan (though he was in the flashbacks). Still, we got to see that one of the first thing Morgan did say to Garcia was calling her “baby girl”, something that stuck around ever since.
But it was okay, they weren’t really absent, and moreover they weren’t really missed. This mainly because both Reid and Hotch were doing some pretty great work on their own. Hotch had a really cool moment on the stand, where after the attorney got over the many cases where they got things wrong, or simply had the right profile but didn’t go after the right person the first time, he simply started to profiling him right there, and – of course – was dead on. It was a really cool moment, one that everyone seemed to enjoy, including Reid, and it was pretty funny.
Side note though: I thought it was wrong of him, when asked if, after having been wrong on many other cases in the past, there could be a possibility that they were wrong on this one as well, he just firmly said “no”. It was very unlikely and improbable, but profiling isn’t an exact science, and their profiles are always based on common behaviors and assumptions, there always is a possibility – as small as it may be – that at any given time, for one person, a profile may be wrong. To refuse the possibility of inexactitude at that point just felt wrong to me, it was like saying they can never be wrong, it was like refusing the fact that profiling isn’t an exact science, because the same experiences do not always results in the same behaviors.
For Reid on the other hand, I have to say that for a moment I was really shocked, and not in a good way, because when the father told him that he realized he didn’t had any control over the court room and what was going on in there, it was more than obvious that the subtitle was not “I’m accepting that I have no control over things”, but really “I will just move to something else where I can have control over things”. Right from that point on I knew he was going to get a gun and try to shoot the guy, and I started to be disappointed that Reese didn’t seem to have seen that.
But of course he had, it was just fake drama because it’s a TV show. Reid eventually stopped him as he was walking with a gun in his hand, and – helped by the addition of new evidences – could talk him into going back to sit into the courtroom.
Bringing us to the case, and it was a pretty interesting one. Well, what was actually interesting was not so much the case in itself, but the fact that it had happened years ago, and the unsub didn’t remember any of it. Now that he had no recollection of any of his crimes, now that all his past experiences were missing, was he still the same person ?
The question not being should he not be trialed for his past actions since he doesn’t remember them, but more if he doesn’t have any memories of his past live, is he really the same person ? Is he still a danger for society, for others ? How much does your past influence who you are ? And if you “loose” your past, are you still the same person ? Tabula Rasa. I love it when they have those kind of discussion on the show, and this one was a particularly good one, IMO. I also loved how they showed that if at first he really didn’t know who he was and wanted to find out, once he did, once his memories were back, he was apparently still not the same person.
Because while he remember everything, all the things he’s done, the women he killed, he wasn’t going to kill anyone anymore, he didn’t want to do it, he wasn’t the same. Leading us all the way back to : are our past experiences determining who we are ? How much does our past influence the way we behave, and person we are today ?
It was a really good episode, ending with a Reid redeeming himself to my eyes (not that he really needed to) by going to talk to the father, and asking him to quote some poetry his daughter used to love, because what better way could there possibly have been, for him to find closure.
I really enjoyed this episode, and I can’t wait for the season finale next week. I can only hope it will be as good as this one was…
Posted in Reviews
Shows: Criminal Minds
