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Criminal Minds: True Night

By fred | December 2, 2007

(S03E10) There is no doubt that this third and final season of Criminal Minds will stand out when looking back, because many changes took place during its course, the biggest of all being - obviously - the departure of Gideon, replaced by Rossi. By the way, I was kidding when I called this season the final one, it probably won’t be. And there’s nothing wrong with that, quite the contrary.

Because while, like many, I got highly worried when I learned that the one character I believed to be like the backbone of the show would leave, and after a few episodes which did nothing but reinforce those fears, things finally got better. And by better I mean we were back to normal standards of quality, as one could expect from this show.

And then came this episode, which was very different than anything else that’s been done before, this season or the previous one. Now thinking about it, I’m pretty sure that this will be the kind of episode that not only fans but probably all viewers will either have loved, or hated. I can totally see it not letting anyone neutral, no one will think it was just okay. It was either good, or bad.

As far as I’m concerned, it was absolutely brilliant, I freaking loved it !

There are many things to say about this episode and why it was different than the usual episode of Criminal Minds. I’ll start with the killing scenes, which were obviously made as a reference, at least, to Sin City - and I’m sure everyone who saw the movie thought of it instantly. it’s no wonder they mentioned Frank Miller by the end of the episode.

It’s nothing new that when nicely used black&white can provide some pretty cool look and feeling and it sure did this time, add to that a play on colors with a few filters “à la” Sin City, which also intended to show how Jonny McHale “lived” those as comic sequences out of his imagination, and you got yourself a winner. It thought those scenes not only looked great but were brilliantly made both visually and in their meaning.

This episode was unlike any other because for once it focused more on the unsub, McHale, than it did on the team. They were not completely absent, but we did see much less of them throughout the entire episode, instead we got to see how McHale was handling things. Because while he may have been the unsub here, he was also a victim first.

Obviously, he was a victim of a highly violent crime, during which his pregnant fiancée got raped and murdered in front of his eyes. A traumatic event which affected him so much that he switch to the dark side. Which brings us to the other thing he was a victim of. Because as we saw him going though his life killing people without knowing and remembering it, what we got to witness was of he had became of victim of himself, of his craziness.

It wasn’t hard to figure out that his fiancée was dead, despite the fact that he kept calling her cell over and over again. But that’s alright, because this episode wasn’t about finding out who the killer was, but finding out what kind of person the unsub was, just like we usually do on the show. Only this time, we got to dive into his world and see things directly from the inside, as he himself was trying to figure things out. This time, we found out about what he experienced as he tried to go through life, we did so through his own eyes for a change.

And I have to admit that I thought this was a really nice change, and of course as it was later said on the plane this whole episode played with the idea that the unsub used to be someone completely normal, like you and me, that he wasn’t a “bad guy”, but that because of what happened to him he changed. It played with the troubling idea that this could be anyone, this could us, that turning into such a killer could happen to anyone one of us.

I’m not sure if that’s something to be said, but the way I felt was that what he did was completely okay. I mean those MF asked for it, what they did were actions of monsters and they only got what they deserved. I mean, not P.C. I know but I just applaud the guy, the same thing would happen to me I can only wish I’d be able to do what he did. That was most likely not the message of the episode, but those are my personal feelings on the episode regardless.

One other thing I felt as I watched this episode : I wondered when this episode was originally written. I might be totally wrong on that one, but I felt like this could have been written before the big news, that Gideon was to leave. Take the scene when Rossi and McHale first met in the street, and talk for a few seconds. Replace Rossi by Gideon. Same situation, same words, only the characters are different. Wouldn’t that totally fit Gideon’s method and attitude ?

Anyways, I personally loved this episode, and I think this was without a doubt the best episode of the season, if not more. I’m sure many fans will have hated it as the team was less involved, but I absolutely loved everything about it. And a special mention to Frankie Muniz, whose performance was pretty great - I’m sure even fans of Malcolm In The Middle didn’t saw Malcolm there, I sure did not. (Well, maybe for a few seconds at first, but that doesn’t count.)

Posted in Reviews
Shows: Criminal Minds