Other things may change us, but we start and end with family...

[a_blackpanther]

This is the discussion post for Episode 7x16 - "A Family Affair". Watch out for SPOILERS in the comments.

Comments

[tragicllyhip.livejournal.com]

Why don't people like Beth? just curious...she seems nice enough

[liliaeth]

Yeah, I don't get it either. For some reason people seem more willing to accept the male love interests than the female ones.

[dhae_knight_1]

Have we had any serious ones, aside from Beth? Reid had a thing going with Lila and the bartender, but those were both singe-eps. And Morgan had that cop-of-the-week in Miami, but she was single-ep, too.

Whereas we had Will, who had an ep as cop-of-the-week before he became love-interest (and even then, he was in that episode for a reason divorced from his status as love-interest), and Kevin's always sort of lived around the edges. I know a lot of people dislike him intensely. Personally I like him because he's a geek and also, he's Xander! ;-)

Beth just... Seems to serve no purpose but to be love-interest for Hotch, and I find that kind of boring. :-(

[dhae_knight_1]

Urgh. Don't get me started on Tamara. All for Morgan getting some love - not so fond of his lack of professionalism in getting involved with the sister of a victim. When Garcia calls you on it, you know something's seriously wrong... :-(

The more I think about it, the more my issue with Beth is that I don't know who she is. This is a show where we were just talking about how brilliant their bit characters are. They have been brilliant at creating characters with personality in nothing more than two lines of dialogue and 30 seconds of screen-time. Victims get to be real, live human beings, with interests and lives beyond their role as victim.

And Beth... Nothing. I don't know anything about who she is. Not even the fake-cramp to win told me anything about her personality. Now, in the sense of being a writer - awesome! I can do all sorts of things to her and with her. I can turn her into a crazy serial-killer! I can make her nice! I can do whatever I like with her, because we know nothing. As a viewer - I find it somewhat disappointing... :-(

[dhae_knight_1]

What really, really bugs me is that the character development in Hotch Beth represents could just as easily have been conveyed without having to show us Beth. Better, even, because we would all have been able to form our own image of who Beth is.

I mean... Will was pretty much not there, after the two episodes that introduced him/introduced him as JJ's boyfriend. We've seen... I'd say about as much of him as we have of Beth, by now. And yet there is so much wealth implied in JJ's actions and reactions, in phonecalls and conversations in the team.

How much could have been told in a scene where Hotch tries to prepare Jack for meeting his new girlfriend? Not only would such a scene have meant Hotch seemed a lot less like an awkward teenager (and, dear God, I hate that bit of characterization!), but it would have given us a much-welcome scene between Hotch and Jack. Which, really, I'm all for. We've seen and heard too little of Jack these past couple of seasons. :-(

[dhae_knight_1]

I wish I did like her. I just wish the show had given us more Jack and less Beth. Or more team, and less Beth. :-(

What I liked about Will was that he was hardly there. We had the one episode where he was cop-of-the-week, and a year later he turns up as partner to one of the vics of the week, and it turns out he's in a relationship with JJ.

I... actually think we have more screen-time with Beth, now, than we ever had with Will as straight-up love interest.

Well. Who am I to judge? I like my shows with as little on-screen romance as I can get them. :-)

[gsyh.livejournal.com]

I dislike her placement in the show and I distrust her character.


I dislike how she got so much screentime as Hotch's love interest and so fast, when Will got less even when he should, like when JJ was hurt at the end of "Closing TIme", and even Haley didn't show up so frequently - but when Haley does, she feels real. I'm not saying we need to learn all about Beth's life for her to feel real, that would be annoying, but there are characters who could feel real with just a minute, and Beth doesn't. The more we see of her alone with Hotch, the more it seem like ??? outside of Hotch's GF AND it annoys some viewers who feels that we should have gotten more team time instead of Hotch alone with Beth.

It could have been easily remedied by leaving more stuff off screen, creating more stuff to exist off screen: Don't show so much of Hotch and Beth in the same scene or their date, DO show one of Beth's friends dropping Beth off to be on a date with Hotch

Like, Will exist outside of JJ, he moved across the country for her, and normally this means big trouble (when one partner makes a disportionate sacrifice), but Will loves spending time with his kid, it's what he wants - I think Will really needs to put his family first because there might have been a part of him that feels his father didn't. Then there was Will's friend, as much as he loves JJ, he was insulted when she puts the move on him in the hotel room of his murdered partner.

When Hotch comes home and see Haley, Jessica is there as well, and it's clear that Jessica and Haley have already been talking before Hotch arrives, Haley has existence outside of Hotch.


I distrust Beth character because she didn't seem real, it just sets off my unsub alarm bells. As Hotch's dream girl, she's too perfect, I'm not saying a relationship should be fight-fight-fight, but everyone have their own interest. It's a bit Truman's Show the way she just shows up to be his GF. ...and over all, it's too fast, irl, especially if I have a kid, I'll be concerned about something that moves this fast.

We the viewers love Hotch because Thomas Gibson is hot and Hotch is a beautiful character, flaws aside, but what does Beth knows about Hotch? He's FBI, and he has a kid...what happened to the wife? It's realistic for a woman to slow down about that, especially if she didn't have kids of her own or did divorce before and especially when she reads as YOUNG as Beth does.

As is, unsub alarm bells! Plenty of fics have been written already, and here is mine:

When They Ask Why:
http://bau-fic.livejournal.com/1593872.html

[tragicllyhip.livejournal.com]

Maybe its perception because i don't think she's gotten much screen time at all, she's only been seen like a few minutes 3 times. I think its more to show a different side of Hotch which i appreciate. They're just dating as far as i can tell, and it seems like probably more than one date has happened off-screen. The focus is still on the team and the case, so her presence probably won't make a huge difference anyway.

[gsyh.livejournal.com]

Perception, it's also because her time with Hotch is a loose end. When Will was introduced, he was a part of the case story, and when we know he's been dating JJ as well, their interaction also tied into the case storyline where his partner was killed.

Kevin was introduced during "Penelope", and because he works for the FBI, he ties into the rest of the universe as well.

Haley was introduced in the first episode, and from her baby name suggestion of Gideon, we know that Hotch and Haley and Gideon knew each other for a long time, much longer than the rest of the BAU team (Hotch didn't know Reid much yet, or Morgan or Garcia, or any of them each other, except Elle who was trained by Morgan back at the academy).

When Rossi's first wife appeared, it was thematically tied to the case storyline about life after death, and it finally told us what kind of person Rossi was in regards to his marriages - it wasn't as flippant as he made it sound when he said he was more married to any of his team than his wives, though it could still relatively be true - the end scene of the episode where Caroyln dies shows Rossi before her grave and the grave of their stillborn(?) baby. Carolyn taught us something about Rossi we didn't know before.

Ditto for Sarah Jacobs, she only appear roughly twice in the series, shown only when she arrived at Gideon's cabin, and when they were dancing and the head arrive. When she was shown opening the door to Frank and when Gideon hallucinated her. Sarah's time with Gideon paralleled Hotch's time with Haley, and even Elle and Morgan's vacation. In a short time we know, and I think we can believe, that Sarah was Gideon's old schoolmate, that she was a doctor, that she had three children. It's tied into the theme of what Gideon was going to lose to his job, the last of his innocence.

...and with Beth, we see Hotch being cute, but we saw that already. It's a loose end.

Maybe, if instead of some rom com she chases him down in a park, they had met at the cemetery, Beth putting flowers down for her father, and Hotch for Haley and maybe HIS father, who had also died of cancer...

[gen-is-gone.livejournal.com]

Well, not every relationship on the show has to has to come about as the result of a case.

[gsyh.livejournal.com]

Um, Rossi and Gideon's relationships with Caroyln and Sarah Jacobs did not came about as a result of a case, but they did tied into the rest of the universe and storyline. My point is, storytelling, you don't want to have a loose end flapping around on center stage. It's cool if the characters have lives that have nothing to do with the case or the people they work with, but why are we being shown this?

Like, Kevin and Garcia, when he surprised her in her apartment, that scene serves a purpose, not only those it shows that Kevin probably have some social understanding problems, /how much/ Garcia got jumpy is a continuity of her having been shot by someone she was dating. When we saw them post-coital, as cute as OMGXANDER is, that scene ties into the rest of the universe because Rossi walked into Garcia's apartment, so the Kevin/Garcia thing isn't just hanging loose away from the rest of the story.


tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLawOfConservationOfDetail


...and Chehov's Gun:

tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChekhovsGun

...is why so many people perceive Beth as an unsub: the last time we saw a character given this much screen time solely as a love interest is the douche who shot Garcia.



...because THIS:

We have 42 minutes. If we give a detail, it better be important.

Especially considering the huge ensemble cast! Think about it, the BAU not only work together, they hang out after work, this is because they are close and they are a family, but storytelling wise, it's because there are so many characters and we get to see more of them overall if we don't cram in additional loose end friends that no other character is connected to. Giving a character friends and family adds realism, but if you aren't careful about who you use to give them relationships, like, with other main characters, even if it means ( tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EveryoneIsRelated)Everyone Is Related...you are going to end up with something like Naruto:
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters

Haley Hotchner was awesome, she felt real, and her appearances have a storytelling purposes: the strain of BAU on private life, apparently cops have a high divorce rate, and according to John Douglas, it's even worse for the FBI. Plus, because Haley have been married with Hotch for so long, both of them knew Gideon so long that she suggested Gideon as a baby name, and Rossi knows Haley for a long time too.