Words

[izumi-masaki.livejournal.com]

Didn't see this posted yet so...

This is the discussion post for Episode 7x09 - "Self-Fulfilling Prophecy". Watch out for SPOILERS in the comments.

Comments

[cammieluvr.livejournal.com]

I have to say I really liked this episode. Definitely one of my favorites so far this season. It held my attention more than most of the cases do lately and I liked that it didn't give away who the unsub was in the first five minutes.

[gmth.livejournal.com]

This felt like old-school CM to me, from the days when it was consistently good. An actual mystery with lots of twists and turns and good team interaction without the distraction of tons of hacked up bodies and torture porn. It really worked for me.

Just commenting to say I like your Gideon icon

[gsyh.livejournal.com]

I like the mystery.

Okay, they were still young men, some of them young boys, the institutional abuse had be wincing, but I'm so glad it wasn't a sexual abuse episode (cause Penn State). Okay, those episodes needed to be made, but somebody other than me could watch it since I'm aware of it already.



...and missing Gideon so much right now. Finished reading the CM novel Jump Cut, I don't think he's in other ones.

Re: Just commenting to say I like your Gideon icon

[liliaeth]

Really? I always thought that the best thing that ever happened to CM was that they finally got rid of Gideon, I always saw him as the one part of CM that just didn't work, and the series became far better once he was gone.

You are probably not a Gideon fan?

[gsyh.livejournal.com]

So your opinion is your opinion, and mine is mine, which is: I disagree with the hate-on so many have for them, and it puzzles me why so many people could like Reid the woobie but miss Gideon the woobie, because Gideon is Reid plus 30 years of age, and that's in body and emotional scars.

...I think SHOW-wise, for me, the Gideon ones are THE BEST, since then, the Gideon ones have me glued to the screen, whereas the new ones, I mostly stay for the fun fandom. I think this is partly because of Gideon and Mandy, and partly because script and production direction in general have decline - look at it this way, Criminal Minds is run by a board so stupid they tried to get rid of Emily and JJ. There are many good writers involve who are responsible for the many things I still love about CM, but they have to work with knuckleheads above, who would do something like that...

In Universe however, it really does make sense for Gideon to leave, in fact, it really would have made sense for him to take a medical leave - after Fisher King, they should have called in Rossi much earlier. I like Gideon more than Rossi, a lot, but that is only because I like Gideon a lot that I like him more than Rossi, because I also like Rossi a lot. I recognize that while Gideon is a very human character and a super detective, for the health of the team, Rossi is better. Rossi is a daddy type without a kid so he's perfect for the BAU team. Likewise, I also really miss Elle, but Emily handles what Elle doesn't - politics.


My dream BAU team would have both Gideon and Rossi, because without Rossi at the helm, Gideon and Hotch was steering it towards Crash and Burn. But Gideon means HISTORY, I know Rossi and Hotch were suppose to be old friends, but Gideon was there from Day One, and he came in with the history of Boston and older. Gideon and Haley together with Hotch adds a lot of history to the background of BAU, on day one, the very first episode, that makes one care for the characters so instantly, at least it did for me.


Or, one where Gideon occasionally visits. I'll like it if Gideon plays about the same amount and type of role as Reid's mom, the unforgettable ghost.

Re: You are probably not a Gideon fan?

[nwjarvis.livejournal.com]

I think the biggest difference Gideon's departure made is that it allowed the show to become a true ensemble drama instead of treating the other actors like, well as one actor put it, "animated set dressing".

It's hard to accept the notion that script and production have declined since Season 2 - that's very subjective, of course, and so difficult to measure - but even though a lot of people were convinced that CM "wouldn't last a month" without Mandy, when Season 3 started, ratings were higher than ever. And stayed that way.

Not that I'm denigrating Mandy's acting skills. Not many actors could deliver a line like "It's OK, it's OK..." (Open Season) and make it sound completely sincere AND AT THE SAME TIME sound like "I've got you, you son-of-a-bitch, and if you weren't dying I'd put you down myself." I always get a chuckle seeing Prentiss' expression at this point - she's finally starting to understand Gideon and I think it creeps her right the hell out.

Gideon's creepiness and creepy victims 1

[gsyh.livejournal.com]

Gideon creeps me out the same way the little dead girl in The Ring (American version because that's the one I saw) creeps me out: I'm instinctively creeped out because instinctively I know: Something creepy is going on.

...but then I /think about it/, and terror turns to /horror and pity/ and then sympathy. Really, we were suppose to think the dead little girl in The Ring is a villain (Moral of the Story: /don't/ help the murdered and the abused), but how did the boyfriend died? Did she drown him? Did she /drop him down a well/? No, the boyfriend died of fright - from looking at her face: which was a frightful sight, because she's soaking wet and kinda rotting, but um, she's ONLY this way because assholes have thrown her down the well and left her to die! So direct your horror from her to the assholes who have /DID/ it to her please.

Like wise, I get the fucking chills when Gideon starting screaming, "help me, help me help me help me" in The Fox, and when he laid on the bed in Plain Sight, and from the stricken look on his face, you know he was not just looking at the angles, he was imagining himself in the place of the women who were raped and murdered.

...but remember what Reid said in "Fear and Loathing", how it gets to him more now because he knows what the victims were thinking and feeling before they died? How he snapped at the volunteer at the shelter because she was better afraid then victimized - he was on drugs at the time, but the manifestation of his Issues are in tune with Gideon's.

One of the reason why Creeper!Gideon always wig me out, because I like Gideon and from what I see of his character, I don't see him as a sexual predator type, if he goes crazy, it would be the 'mercy' killing type, well, it's this, out of a group of three with Gideon, Hotch, and Reid (Reid,, and then Hotch, being the common victims of creeper!Gideon), from what we have seen of them in show so far, the likest victim of sexual abuse is Gideon. Compare his shock over the lost of his safe space in The Fisher King to Elle's comments about how her home should be a safe space (and during character development, in one of the write outs, /Elle was written to have been raped when she was 19, and they never caught her rapist, and this is something that haunts her/).


Though, while out of Hotch, Reid, and Gideon, Gideon is the likest one...it doesn't have to be sexual abuse for him to have the PTSD symptoms he have, which seem to be about protecting himself from an attack on his /person/ whether than from a bomb (which was trauma renewal, like the killing of the mothers in Machismo, like Foyet killing Haley after he most probably raped Hotch, Complex-PTSD). A lot of his creepy /trauma reenactment/ could stem from an incident where his 'sense of safety' was robbed from him by an attack on his person. Take Reid's for example, when he was twelve, the football team stripped him naked and tied him to the football poles...there was a fic "Blindfolded Innocence" that speculates that someone came along and sexually assaulted him that night, but while that is possible, even the stripped naked and tied to the football poles alone* would be enough to rob Reid of his sense of safety.

Gideon's creepiness and creepy victims 2

[gsyh.livejournal.com]

Reid was kidnapped at least twice, and from what we saw of Gideon, he was the kinda guy who goes out for gas and ends up at the gunpoint of the Footpath killer, when he was younger, he could have been kidnapped too, during the BAU day, or earlier (like the detective in The Longest Night). I just knew that SOMETHING happened in his childhood that made him feel unsafe, something that his parents failed to protect him against...but like Reid, I think Gideon had parents who were loving, but were just powerless to protect him against whatever the traumatic incident in question was, they don't even have to be crazy like Diane, heck, normal parents like Billie's couldn't protect her from being snatched in "What Fresh Hell", normal parents can't stop psychos like the one in "Psychodrama" from wandering into their birthday parties.



*Trauma: I count myself fortunate in that I have never been //sexually// //assaulted//, I've only been groped and //psychically// assaulted, the usual subway groping and sexual harassment that many many girls go through in highschool, plus playground beat downs...plus one incident which, not downplaying the severity of playground beat downs, which I also receive, but that one incident, it was the kinda physical assault I could have gone to court for, and it was very very obviously illegal, //but I was too in shock over it to call the police//, and the situation was complicated.

Afterwards, I was kinda confused, because the way I was feeling, when I started reading about the way I've been acting, my symptoms were in line with sexual assault, but it wasn't a sexual assault, though at time, I was /afraid/ the physical assault would turn sexual. Until I talk to someone recently, who was also /physically/ assaulted the same way I was, that I realise It Wasn't Just Me. Sometimes I just can't keep my eyes off where people keep their hands when they are within grabbing range of my person.

Re: You are probably not a Gideon fan?

[liliaeth]

yeah, I think that's the same reason I prefer the post Gideon seasons. Gideon wasn't in my top five of characters, yet he got all the focus, all the attention. It was the Gideon show with those other guys. Thanks to Gideon leaving, they finally got to show the other characters and give them depth and meaning beyond being Gideon's sounding boards.

Though admittedly, I'm not a Reid fan either. Don't dislike him, just like I didn't hate Gideon, he's just not a fave. I personally far prefer Morgan who's my woobie of choice. With Emily and Garcia sharing second place :-)

I like Garcia but I have never thought of her as a woobie

[gsyh.livejournal.com]

More like, The Cutie, while sometimes the writer plays Break The Cutie, she's not a woobie because the bad things that happened to her having cracked her on the inside yet, unlike:

Gideon, Reid, Hotch.....Morgan (my heart broke for him when he said, "I was so afraid of you", but overall he lives a strong and happy life)?

Jury is out on JJ (because for me, she's Hotch's female counterpart, and since she works in the media, she HIDE stuff even better. Plus Emily, she can be such a woobie, she was in her teen years, but she's pretty bitchin neigh invulnerable, mostly.

Rossi doesn't count as a woobie because his bad stuff didn't crack him either, somehow. Rossi and Garcia are the sweet molasse that holds the crackers of BAU together.

Re: You are probably not a Gideon fan?

[nwjarvis.livejournal.com]

yeah, I think that's the same reason I prefer the post Gideon seasons. Gideon wasn't in my top five of characters, yet he got all the focus, all the attention. It was the Gideon show with those other guys.

As hard as it is to believe now, the network really did have very very serious doubts about whether the show could survive the loss of Mandy. Have you ever seen the Season 3 DVD Interviews? They talk about that quite a bit.

Re: You are probably not a Gideon fan?

[liliaeth]

I've heard about that. Honestly, I understand that they needed a big name to get the series started. But I often dislike it when what should be an ensemble show basically becomes a one man show with some other people in the background.

[kwerkee.livejournal.com]

It was the Gideon show with those other guys.

I was rewatching season 1 and I thought the show should've been called 'Gideon and the Pips'. Even when the episode is centred around another character.

I don't dislike/hate him but I prefer the current team dynamics.

[piperwest12.livejournal.com]

I hated Gideon because he was such a know it all type and I found his supposed mentoring of Reid, especially when dealing with post Revelations and drug use, callous and cruel. He did not offer true help and did not allow the others to help either. He was a huge factor in causing more tension in Hotch's marriage, as an example the case where they went to Mexico where Gideon knowing that Haley and Hotch were already having problems, wouldn't let him call her until they were on the plane. This man was supposed to be their leader and mentor and he gave little to no emotional support and bad advice to his subordinates. Elle I didn't like because I have NEVER liked Lola Glaudini, so it was more the actress than the character. I've seen her in other stuff and do not like her.

[nwjarvis.livejournal.com]

Well, when it came to Reid's drug use, Hotch and Gideon obviously knew what was going on, but they couldn't acknowledge it because it would have cost Reid his job if it was known he was using illegal drugs.

This man was supposed to be their leader... He really wasn't, though. Hotch was the Unit Chief - Gideon sure acted like he was, though; handing out orders right and left. Only Hotch's lack of ego let him get away with it.

I doubt that Gideon would agree, but I always kind of pictured him as a big ole bloodhound that Hotch had on a leash - you just know the dog thinks he's in charge of the hunt but in reality the handler is using him to find the target.

Re: Just commenting to say I like your Gideon icon

[full-metal-ox.livejournal.com]

but I'm so glad it wasn't a sexual abuse episode (cause Penn State).

Criminal Minds ran their Penn State episode long before news of the scandal broke--consider "Profiler, Profiled."

Re: Just commenting to say I like your Gideon icon

[a_blackpanther]

And several others. But they would have pushed this episode if it was about sexual abuse. I'm sure someone at the network thought of it. They did with that ep in season 2 that ended up being 3x01.

[cammieluvr.livejournal.com]

ITA

[a_blackpanther]

*facepalm* I so completely forgot to post this. My apologies.

[blue-sunflowers.livejournal.com]

This seems to be the season of Elephant!Reid. Nearly every episode parallels Reid in a million different ways, but completely ignored. It`s weird watching storylines centered around other characters when all you can think is "why isn`t Reid mentioned?".

[nwjarvis.livejournal.com]

Hotch shoots a man through the leg who is pointing a .45 at him? Since when?

I think the NCIs gremlins have invaded the writers room. Pretending that a handgun can be used as a non-lethal weapon; or that you EVER aim ANYWHERE except the center of mass; or for that matter, that a leg wound is minor - the guy last night stands a very good chance of rapidly bleeding out from that wound. The only difference being that it gives him a chance to return fire.

I'm a loyal CM fan and I'm really really trying to like this season, but God, how I miss Eddie B.

[piperwest12.livejournal.com]

I actually thought about why wasn't Reid rolling around holding his leg like that when he was shot!!

[scotchsour.livejournal.com]

Imagination or was Morgan looking at him strangely after Hotch shot him?

[nwjarvis.livejournal.com]

Might have been - I'd have to look again.

After thinking about it, I guess what bothers me is that they've always treated guns and FBI shooting policy in the CM world the same as in the real world - a gun is a deadly weapon and any shot is a kill shot. If you have to shoot, you aim center-of-mass because you can't risk giving your target a chance to return fire, or even missing completely. CM has been very good about avoiding "Hollywood ballistics", where a shoulder or leg wound is treated as relatively minor.

Now Hotch is "shooting to wound". That kind of calls into question all those times one of Our Heroes has been forced to kill a suspect. "A Real Rain" comes to mind, among others.

I think some of this can be blamed on the absence of Ed Bernero, who was an ex-cop who knew better.

As much as the loss of Prentiss and JJ pissed me off (even without the behind-the-scenes BS), I'm starting to think the loss of all those writers, along with Bernero, was ultimately more damaging to the show.