Logliney Stuff:
The Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI uses psychological theory to identify and outmaneuver murderers, most often focusing on serial and spree killers. While half of the team swaps in and out fairly frequently, fifteen seasons means the core cast has some serious narrative heft when sweeps time comes around.
What’s Up With That:
Sometimes you just need pretty people to play uber-competent puzzle-solvers who also are dead shots and good at roundhouse kicks. Also, if you need to run to the bathroom, it’s totally fine if you don’t hit pause, because you probably won’t miss anything you can’t guess beforehand.
Metatext-Type Stuff:
I have a weird affection for crime-solving procedurals. They’re like comfort food to me, even though I am extremely susceptible to creepy music and any hint of stabbiness. What can I say? I dig me a genre with nigh-impermeable boundaries. They’re like sonnets.
Anyway, I was bored, I saw there were a BUNCH of seasons on Netflix, and I watched them all within, like, five months so I could watch the truncated final season in real time.
Character Natterings:
The Season 1 cast.
In no conscious particular order!
- Spencer Reid, Boy Genius with Poor Social Skills Despite His Obvious Prettiness
- Penelope Garcia, Tech Support and Team Heart, Much Smarter Than Everybody and Also Supposedly Terrifying Despite Her Extra-Kawaii Aesthetic
Why does Morgan always call Garcia “Baby Girl”?
Even in a flashback episode, it is unclear.
- Derek Morgan, Hot Guy Who Leaves to Have His Own Show on CBS, and Also Has Taken Boy Genius Under His Wing
Morgan calls Spencer “Pretty Boy,”
and we’re not going to read into that at all.
- Jennifer “JJ” Jareau, PR Savant Who Inexplicably Becomes an Agent, but Also was Somehow an Undercover Agent for Homeland Security or Something, I Don’t Even Know, Guys
JJ and Emily, being VERY SERIOUS.
- Emily Prentiss, Occasionally in Charge of MI-6 and Possibly Interpol and Eventually the BAU
- Jason Gideon, Founder in Charge, Killed After Retirement by His Own Moriarty
- David Rossi, Founder Who Comes Out of Retirement After Becoming a Millionaire Author
- Aaron Hotchner, Stalwart Boss Who Goes into Witness Protection in Order to Protect His Adorable Crime-Solving Son
- Luke Alvez, Replacement Hot Guy Who is Secretly Crushing on Garcia, I KNEW IT
- Matt Simmons, Hot Family Man with a Surprising Number of Children with His Equally Hot Wife, Also Whose Appearance Led Me to Yell, OMG AN ASIAN PERSON, YAY
- Tara Lewis, Researcher Who Inexplicably Becomes an Agent Because Why Not, Let’s All Everybody Do It, I Guess
The final season cast.
There are a few other agents along the way, but they sort of disappear without much fanfare, so who cares, right? (One of them for doing some extrajudicial murder, which honestly, only one of them goes out on? Let’s be real, BAU. Y’all are a ticking time bomb of vigilantism.)
The Shipping News:
So Aubrey Plaza guest starred on, like, four episodes, and it’s always a Very Special Episode where she matches her wits with Reid because they are at equal levels of cunning and pretty. Like, she’s a sociopath contract killer? But Spencer’s the only guy to beat her, which means he is all she thinks about, ever and ever. Naturally, I am deeply invested in their relationship, despite Spencer’s unfortunate habit of falling in love with pen pals or whatever. (Maeve? Whatever. That girl from She’s All That? Whatever. JJ? Get the hell away from me, YOU MONSTERS.)
Their first date! They are surrounded by armed people.
Well, the Spencer/Maeve thing was kind of sweet, except we only knew them as phone buddies and we never saw her face until she was kidnapped and murdered by Dawn Summers.
Seriously. We never really saw her face.
I also am super-fond of JJ’s weird romance with her eventual husband from the Bayou, Will. JJ’s got some commitment issues, guys, but Will persists in his dreaminess. (I said GET AWAY FROM ME, JJ/Spencer shippers.)
They are just BEST FRIENDS, you MONSTERS.
Anyway, after several seasons of Garcia calling Alvez “Newbie,” of course he confesses his love for her in the last episode. Of course he does.
Live for the Memory:
All right, let’s put all the Aubrey Plaza AKA Cat Adams episodes aside, even though I am obsessed with them.
Their second date, in a two-parter, takes place in an interrogation room.
In their minds, however, they are in some fantasy playland.
In “The Thirteenth Step,” Adrienne Palicki is part of a Natural Born Killers spree and she is, predictably, amazing.
Two Hotch-focused episodes are, I think, the most heart-breaking: “100” (I think is the title), when Hotch hears his wife killed over the phone, and “Route 66,” where Hotch is seriously injured and has all these visions of his deceased wife. Thomas Gibson didn’t get to play a lot of emotions most of the time, but he was stellar in both of these, particularly.
The Luke Perry cult episode is also a good one--mostly because it was so patently an episode about the Branch Davidian cult, but somehow did not feel grossly exploitative at all.
World-building Obsessions:
Given the many, many seasons of the show, one of my favorite episodes (putting aside all the Aubrey Plaza AKA Cat Adams episodes) is a big flashback episode, “Nelson’s Sparrow,” wherein young Gideon and young Rossi go about solving crimes prior to the BAU really being a thing. Lookit our grumpy, and in one case deceased, patriarchs in their larval forms! The two never interacted in the show proper, but this was a really nice episode.
They never really played with this enough--though they sort of tried to do some of that work with the two one-season spin-offs, #SuspectBehavior and #BeyondBorders, which gave us a sense of the BAU as a network with history, rather than a single crime-fighting unit. But I guess it’s easier to confine that kind of world-building to serial killers specifically focused on Our Heroes? I don’t know, guys.
Anyway, these people love each other so much, and I would say it’s weird they seem to have no other friends, but as far as I can tell, all their other loved ones just get serial killed eventually, anyway. WHO WANTS HUGS.
What the Hell, Show?:
Look, friends, if there are this many serial killers in the world, I really don’t want to know.
Capacity to Fic:
I am still puzzling out how to make Cat/Reid work, given she’s doing life in prison for being a sociopathic killer-for-hire. I’ll figure this out, I swear.
Third date! Spencer takes her roller-skating.
Then they make out in front of his apartment.
(She had his girlfriend kidnapped. She is inside.)
(In hindsight, I was way into this ‘ship months before I experienced my existential ReyLo crisis this past summer. Now I can’t decide if I’m relieved or extremely concerned about myself.)
Does This Suffice?:
Given the billions of crime procedurals out there, it seems silly to rewatch this one, but I honestly think I would? I got kinda fond of these weirdos.
WHEELS UP.
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