Criminal Minds: The Big Wheel
By fred | April 30, 2009
(S04E22) Not all episodes are the same obviously, and they don’t all inspire the same things either. Even two episodes that are both good and enjoyable might have very different effect on you, especially on this show where there isn’t a predefined standard of what a good episode is, how it should end or what should happen during the course of the investigation.
It’s all about the unsub, and with each new personality comes a brand new world, one that our team needs to enter in order to save people, and very different worlds can create completely different episodes, each of them still being pretty awesome. And just because it was great, doesn’t mean it inspire a lot to comment on…
This episode, for instance, was pretty good. There might be a couple of little things I though were odd – like how they mentioned all crimes happening during spring, and yet the kid’s mother was apparently killer when there was snow all over the place; or how we didn’t get to have any sort of explanation on why he changed his ways. Until he heard the kid was going away, he was stabbing a lot of times, but once he found out he then did exactly as his father: one single stab.
But it can’t be that he was willing to finally “become” his father or got to that point, because once the kid would be gone, he would be be lost and stop. He can’t, it wasn’t a choice. He wanted to be “helped” or stopped, because he was afraid to loose it or something once the kid, in whom he saw hopes, all the things he couldn’t be but wanted to be, once he would be gone.
Still, I liked how the whole thing was played out, how they managed to make this guy not look so much like a killer, or like someone easy to hate. He was obviously killing people, had been for quite some time, and yet to see him trapped within his obsessions (by the way: is it me, or was it sometimes two – e.g. open/close the door of the fridge twice before he can open it – and others just one, like the door of his car?) and how he was nice with the kid, especially in that last scene, you almost felt bad for him and wished he wouldn’t die — until you remembered who he was and what he’d done.
I’m not exactly sure why he made such a fuss about the 29 though? He let that as a clue for the cops, he had big plans for that day, but they apparently only were to take the kid to the big wheel and nothing more. He wasn’t going to kill his (new) mother, or the kid, so why made such a big deal out of it? Actually, why not just ask the mother if they couldn’t go there? Hell, for his birthday I’m sure she would have taken him herself!
Anyways, it was a good episode (and I didn’t think of Moonlight once watching it), I liked how the whole team was involved on he case, they all contributed, and again how we might be left with confusing feelings when it comes to the unsub, not as much because of his terrible past (don’t they all have one like that?) but because of the way he was with the kid, who had to know/suspect he killed his mother, and yet told his he wished he was his dad. Confusing feelings indeed.
Other than that, though, not much else to say. What did everybody else think?
Posted in Reviews
Shows: Criminal Minds
Alex did an amazing job!