And that was the point: To give context to why Morgan acts the way that he does. It's something that he'll live with for the rest of his life, but by the time we meet Morgan, it's not something that's been actively happening to him for ten-fifteen years. The layer to Morgan's characterization that was added by that episode was the whole point. It doesn't have to be at the forefront of everything for it to be there. Like in "Into The Woods", you could see the way that Morgan reacted to the case, even subtly, and realize that he was thinking about his own trauma. It wasn't so much a story line as a layer, a reasoning.

Like I said, I'm not dealing super-hard with the Reid arc right now because I never get anywhere with that. It seems to be a you-see-it-or-you-don't thing. I see the subtle moments, like the sad smile in "With Friends Like These" when Seaver mentions the suspects being drug addicts in their mid-twenties, or the moments where Reid knows a little too much about support groups for it to be learned from a book. This show works better with its subtle moments, which is probably why I hate the colossal amounts of anvil-dropping this season.