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Parasite
Original Air Date: Feb 3, 2010
JD – Associate Staff Writer
jd@thetwocentscorp.com
Hello, and welcome to the recap and review of Criminal Minds’ Parasite. In this review, expect to see excitement, glamor, chaos! …Okay, maybe not. This episode involves a Casanova killer and real estate scams. It just sounds so much better my way.
The first thing we know about this week’s unsub, aside from the fact that he’s a murderer, is that he’s good looking, judging by the heated gazes he gets from about every woman he passes in the restaurant he walks into in the first scene. He’s not really my type, but that’s beside the point. The point is that he’s a con man, seducing women into giving him their money, and we meet two of those women in the first scene. One winds up dead, the other is blissfully ignorant that she could go the same way.
Russell Goldman, a white collar crime agent, recognizes these murders as the man he’s been tracking (the woman killed at the very beginning was planning to confront the unsub after she found out he was a fraud), and comes to JJ for help. And help she does! I’m honestly not sure why, considering it was just one murder and killers have to have committed three murders to be considered serial. I know the BAU has taken cases where they weren’t even sure there was a case, but it’s usually explained better than this one. But having a case is important for there to be an episode, so I’ll let it slide. JJ and Goldman brief the team on the unsub, and the team flies off to find out why a con man started killing. Con men tend to run when caught, not kill.
Once on the ground, Prentiss and Morgan head to the first victim’s house. She was a real estate agent, and Goldman tells them that she didn’t give their con man much money. Prentiss guesses that she must have been useful to the unsub in another way, while Morgan digs into the victim’s computer. He finds a website that might be the unsub, and Garcia The Wonderful is able to track down nine other websites with identical content except for nine different aliases.
Ten names in one head has got to be hard to juggle! The team decides that this must be causing the unsub’s personality to fracture–it’s like a carousel in the unsub’s head, except every horse has the unsub’s face. Rossi also points out that the first three places the unsub found victims, the victims were in a particular social group. The women after that had no pattern. The team decides they need to start with how the unsub is finding his women and go from there…
My first opinion of this episode was this: It was an episode.
Not really a shining review, huh? The episode wasn’t bad, but it was unexciting. I found my mind wandering in a few spots as I watched. I felt like I’d seen the episode before. There was at least one scene that was funny when it shouldn’t have been. After the unsub gets shot, there were the women crying, and the team giving each other knowing looks and Goldman staring in shock. Those are normal reactions, right? But it felt like it went on and on and on. I finally started laughing at how ridiculously drawn out it was (and at the mistress shutting the door like she could just hide)! I know that doesn’t say much for my ability to empathize, but it says even less for how effective the scene was. Maybe the episode ran a little short and they had some time to burn?
There were a couple of noteworthy things, though, and one of those was the humor in this episode. This is such a serious show, so breaking up the murdering with laughter is always appreciated. Prentiss’ comment about them taking turns piloting the jet and Morgan’s question to Reid about it being hard to be normal really broke up the action well. The other thing that stood out was a reminder that Criminal Minds is great with camera tricks. The scene near the end when the unsub is at one woman’s house and has two other women calling him was particularly effective. I don’t think it would have been without the split screen. It was three different women calling him three different names, and the “broken up” look of the split screen emphasized the fracturing of the unsub’s mind.
So for me the episode was maybe a six out of ten. What did you guys think? Give me your two cents!
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TheTwoCents 
I have to agree. I’d rather hate an ep, actually. It’s criminal (hur) to underuse this cast and this show with such mediocre material.
I know, really! I’d rather be able to spew praise, or make fun of it. This was just… boring, both to watch and to review.
The episode did benefit from a second viewing, but it’s very likely just because my expectations were lower the second time.
BAU doesn’t have to take cases involving death. The unsub’s long pattern of conning made him an excellent target for behavioral analysis. The killing indicated he might devolve quickly and therefore posed an imminent danger.
And since I live in DC, there’s also the idea that they heard the weather reports and went “Hey! Florida sounds like a really good idea about now.”
An excellent target for behavior analysis doesn’t mean it’s a BAU case. It could have been a one time deal gone sour. The bigger issue I had was that usually it’s better explained why the BAU took a case when it’s not a typical serial killer. A lot of times it’s all JJ’s biased opinion. Not that that is a criticism, it’s just the way it works because they come across her desk first.
Yes! That makes more sense! 😉
It was alright, not good, not bad. I thought the case was interesting but really could’ve done with more twists and more action. A con man whose mind was fracturing from one con too many…they could’ve really taken this places but just didn’t. It fell flat, was predictable when it could have been stellar.
If its going to be a mostly boring episode, let it be a boring Unsub. A narcisistic con man who has affairs with rich women for dough and starts to unravel mentally….*frustrated groan* It could have been stellar, that’s all I’m saying. Even the family man twist was a snooze.
It really did fall flat. I’m honestly kind of bored by the Casanova killer thing now. I feel like you can only do it differently so many times before it starts to fall flat. I didn’t even feel sorry for the women, and I should have. I just didn’t.
The family man twist MIGHT have helped for me if the child actor they used had any range. He was pretty one note. There have got to be better child actors to choose from that that. (Jeeze, is that heartless of me to say about a kid?)
I don’t know about you, but if I’m with my kid and we’ve got guns pointed even vaguely in our direction, I’m gonna grab the kid and storm the house, husband’s girlfriend standing in my way or not. I’d be on the other side of the house, under the bed or in the closet, with my body between my kid and any flying bullets.
I’m not a mother, so I didn’t even think about that. That’s a good point, though.