Criminal Minds: To Hell… And Back (Part 1 & 2) [season finale]
By fred | May 21, 2009
(S04E25-E26) Alright, so I have very mixed feelings about this episode. In fact, I think I want to split this thing in two, two different entities or whatever, two things to be considered completely separately, like they didn’t belong together — they just happened to have taken place on the same day/episode. Let’s open with the good, and the good was obviously this new case.
We know that the quality of an episode depends also for a large part on the case and, of course, the unsub they are tracking, and needless to say this was a pretty brilliant one. This had everything to make a terrific episode/case, and it did, starting with a nice little twist right at the beginning just to mess with us, for the fun of it.
The “misdirection” into getting us to think we knew the unsub from the start was interesting, and even better was the whole point of this, and how the team got to end up tracking one of the most prolific serial killers they’ve came across, all thanks to an ex-solider of a brother looking for his sister.
The case was really good, even though it could have better without some repeated “hints” as to what was going on while everything was obvious enough already. But the case was good, and Garret Dillahunt is just pretty awesome, especially to play a creepy role. Whether he’s some weird Russian freak, a Terminator from the future or just some guy stuck in his bed who can’t move at all, he’s freakishly creepy and it is a delight to watch!
And if for a moment I wondered what would happen next, because they had just found the guy (or, one of them) and we were only halfway through the episode (or done with the first part), and I was worried for a second that the second part could suffer from something often seen in such double-parter : things get slow, and you feel the story had to be dragged on for too long, and after a pretty solid first part you start wishing that’s all there was.
But not here, because finding the brain of the operation was only the beginning of things, and while things took a different tone it remained as brilliant as it had been so far. But, it is also when the team started to miss things and not be at its best, I felt.
I’m not talking about Morgan obviously affected by the horror of the situation/place, and not even Rossi seeming to be threatening to kill the unsub if he refused to talk, although watching him play with the guy’s tube was interesting. No, what I mean is… well first, it’s not really the team but the writers who failed. I know it was meant to create some tension and highlight even more the horror of the discovery by Morgan & Prentiss, but still.
Had this come from just a local Sheriff of some random cop who doesn’t know better, I guess it could have made sense. But this guy, he was not (just) a friend of Rossi, he had been trained, he was a profiler himself, he knew about a profile and how things work, and to see him going all “you were wrong, go back where you come from” and all that crap, while the profile was still strong, while all evidences still pointed here, while they found blood over the place or some hidden cars at the border, to have him of all people “freak out” like that really didn’t work for me – and quite frankly, what they found here didn’t need such fake BS to work on us, really.
When the team itself started to not be at its best, IMO, is for starter in Hightower’s whereabouts. The guy was a soldier, and he had already gone through a lot to get them only to investigate. He was around, and everyone kept talking about the horror of what was done and how the guy could possibly walk away from it free and clear, because of his condition, they let him walk around freely and of course they left firearms out in the open like that.
Seriously, you can’t tell me that was the responsible thing to do! I know there was a lot going on, but there are profilers and it’s their job to know how people act/think/react, and it was rather obvious that guy wouldn’t let the monster who treated his sister like nothing but meat, a worthless pack of meat, get away with it.
And then there was the brother. Kelly didn’t always do the right thing, but in the end she was able to “connect” with Lucas and did what she had to do to survive, and when she was found she did her best to prep him for a safe arrest, to ensure he wouldn’t be hurt. Yet, they all opened fire on him as soon as they could, almost. And I blame the team, because it was obvious Rossi didn’t believe what he had been told, and that shouldn’t have been discussed only between him and Hotch, the whole team should have been aware of that, and after what Reid found out, they should have made sure the (Canadian) cops also knew the guy wasn’t that huge threat he’s been described as.
Anyways, sometimes you do everything right, you save the girl, and yet you feel like you failed at the end of the day. Great episode, until that last scene, where it all went downhill. I was loving this episode, until this part, and not even because Hotch might have been shot in the head at close range. Well, that’s part of it, but that’s not all of it.
First of all, I just hate that they seem to think they need to create such a stupid cliffhanger where the live of one or more agents is in jeopardy, to get us to tune back in next season. Really, if they really believe that is the only reason we were coming back for another season, I take it as an insult — both to me/us, viewers, but also the show itself, which deserves more credit!
Also and unless they kept everything highly secret, Hotch isn’t leaving, so he isn’t dead, and like last season he’ll be fine in the end – even though this time it’s much worse, considering how he had a gun pointed at him right in front of him, so to dodge that you’d have to know kung-fu or something.
But also, I hate, hate, hate, that they brought him back. In case you didn’t follow, that guy was of course George Foyet, from Omnivore (S04E18), the one who first passed as a victim – the only surviving victim of the unsub – before revealing to be the actual unsub, and escaping from jail in the end, as he had planned from the start. And I really wanted him to remain the one who got away, a killer on the loose, one they had but who escaped them, and that would always remain like that.
As I said then, that episode was brilliant, to to bring him back would only “diminish” that — unfortunately, they have, he’s back. So in the end, I thought this was a terrific episode, a great season finale, expect for that last scene and stupid cliffhanger.
What did everybody else think?
Posted in Reviews
Shows: Criminal Minds
I agree with you. I dread the season ‘cliff hangers’with a passion. I think it ruins the flow of any story line and I keep thinking that just one of these shows is going to be smart enough one day to say..hey..lets be the only one without a stupid cliff hanger. That I’d applaud.
I agree with most of your post, though I have to add that I thought the quote (or non quote) at the end was pretty brilliant. It was great for them to show how the case affected them and how Hotch appreciated it. It was especially great to see after his seeming lack of care toward one of his agents being put in a hospital.
So they had to have that cliffhanger to fit in with Hotch’s little speech, but it still pisses me off. I don’t mind cliffhangers if they fit in with the current storyline, or if they don’t involve one of the characters in mortal peril. Seeing as that was an amazing and powerful episode, they didn’t need to end it like that.