Not in Kansas anymore...

[a_blackpanther]

This is the discussion post for Episode 7x07 - "There's No Place Like Home". Watch out for SPOILERS in the comments

Comments

[nwjarvis.livejournal.com]

As much as it pains me to say this, through all the debris flying around I think I may have glimpsed a few fins in the water.

I love this show; I've been hooked since the first season, even though I really don't care for Mandy P. and wanted to drown Gideon almost every week.

I even liked the Prentiss exit arc, which a lot of people seemed to hate.

Season 7: Having the team back together is pretty much enough to make me happy. I think, though, that the writers need to dial it back a little - each week doesn't have to be more bizarre than the one before. Just give us consistent characterization, creepy unsubs, and good team interaction and we'll meet you here every Wednesday as long as TPTB lets us.

re: Fins in the water

[gsyh.livejournal.com]

Srsly? Cause that would be awesome details, and um, YIKES!


Awww, Gideon is an acquired taste. For me, the important thing to remember is that he started the series as a PTSD case who never recovered, and just steadily got worst. I think he really WANT to kill himself at the end, in the cabin, but he was thinking of Reid finding his body, so he wrote the letter instead...and that it's actually very possible he killed himself after walking off, and that's why we haven't heard from him.


Mandy has pretty eyes. I know he's thrice my age, but I still want to do things to this man.


I don't mind bizarre if it's workable, if it feels real, and this episode didn't...I feel bad for the kid, his actor came through, but the whole storyline wasn't carried out very well.

It's nice to have a non-sexually motivated killing though, that sounds weird...

I've been mulling over a plot bunny where woman in a Big Sisters program has been kidnapped and killed, by an unsub who was protected by her Big Sister until she was abandoned...and Garcia or Emily be in the program and sympathize with the unsub. Can't decide which. Garcia lost her parents in a car crash and it really depressed her, family is important, and she's like girl!Reid so they'll have something more to bond about. Emily on the other hand, is the acting Big Sister of the group, has her own issues, but she'll probably have less time.

Mandy when he was younger:

[gsyh.livejournal.com]

Doing anything for you yet?

Re: Mandy when he was younger:

[nwjarvis.livejournal.com]

Sorry, no - my pendulum doesn't swing that way,as it happens.

It's just a personal thing, and not that intense, really. You just sometimes encounter a person you dislike on sight and this is one of those times. It's not like I felt the need to mute the TV every time he comes on screen, as some people have said of some of the characters.

Gideon is definitely damaged goods. Badly bent and showing cracks right from the first time we meet him. I think it's his unshakable arrogance that gets to me, though. Even when he almost gets people killed, he's still chanting his mantra: "I did the right thing. I did the right thing."

And too, the first two seasons felt like 'Gideon and his supporting cast'. After Mandy bailed out, it became much more an ensemble show, which I think works better. YMMV, of course - each to his own taste, as they say.

Re: Mandy when he was younger:

[gsyh.livejournal.com]

It's actually his unshakable arrogance that convince me of how broken he is, here is Carl Buford, and then there is the father of 'Amanda', truly arrogant people who use people as they please, like objects.

...and then there are those who use it to mask vulnerability.


I'm an adult now and it is awesome, but I still remember being the bully-targeting kid. In hindsight, I actually feel bad about it, Gavin de Becker said violence is interactive (or something like that). The bully, no doubt bully by someone even bigger at home (their parent), comes to school to pick on someone they thin they can bend the way their parents bent them with fear - me. But the more they pick on me, the more arrogant I became in defense of my id (which was threaten by the threat that I was very very afraid that the people who surprise kick my shins would get me on the ground and kick in my head like it happened to some other kid on the news). At one point, I was on the fucking ground being kicked at, and I did the verbal slay the physically stronger bully route (not a good idea: cracked.com/blog/5-bad-ideas-dealing-with-bullies-you-learned-in-movies), in hindsight, maybe I was fucking lucky that there was a THIRD girl there who talked US down.

Gideon is PTSD case, and he's been noted that he never stands with his back to a window in the first episode, he feels vulnerable, like he has no safe space, no place where harm couldn't get at him. Arrogance is just his defence!

I don't like to think of it as 'bailing out', because it sound like the violence got too much for him, it really wasn't that graphic in the beginning. Before CM, he was in Dead Like Me, in the opening, the new Reaper girl, she died horribly, her body was in burnt chunks - and they didn't show any of it! Around the same time he quit, Mandy was struggling with his failing eyesight, which have had surgeries for - he called the cast after his walk off, which seem like a last straw stressor thing.

...but yeah, I get the personal thing, transferance? There is this character in Sanctuary I absolutely loathe, to the point where I stopped watching even though she only have a bit part, partly it's the trigger issue background (she kidnapped someone), partly it's because her mannerism reminded me of someone...


I like the team thing too, I just wish we got to see more of that earlier.


I don't know what this says about me, especially since my rant on how Wangst Fashion sucks, but while I never hated Rossi, he as a character never did much for me BEFORE the ex-wife showed up. I like his cooking, but Gideon did that first (love of cooking), it just made me wish it was Gideon. The soccer thing I like though. Still, I didn't find Rossi realised as a character until I saw his ex-wife. Now he's compelling. In my defence, while her death got me to sympathize with him a lot, I found Rossi compelling the moment his ex-wife was introduced, before we found out she was going to die.

Before, Rossi's three ex-wives thing seem like a throwaway line, it's pretty standard to stick a lot of ex-wives in a cardboard cynical character pro-type, they did it to Brent Spiner's character in Threshold, etc, but when the ex-wife is still here, and they obviously have feelings? Compelling character!


Srsly, Rossi, his FACE when he was talking to Emily, about how he might have a chance again with his first wife, he's such a hopeless romantic, poor bb! Gideon was haunted by a million reasons to be PTSD (we didn't see the six agents that got killed, but they were in his life...until they were suddenly, not). Rossi is the guy who is always haunted by Missed Opportunity - to catch The Butcher the first time around, to save his marriage the first time around, to have a CHILD with her the first time around (that was no way something he could have influence, but it's something he missed).

I really hope they don't Never Ever mention the ex-wife again though.