photo: cbs
Criminal Minds
The Fight
Original Air Date: Apr 7, 2010
JD – Associate Staff Writer
jd@thetwocentscorp.com
I think I watched an episode of Criminal Minds last night, but to be honest, I’m not really sure. All of the fans of the show knew this was the big episode in which the characters for the spin off were introduced. If you read my My Two Cents editorial not too long ago, you’ll know that I wasn’t so pleased about the idea. But I decided to do my best to put my preconceived ideas about it to rest for the hour during the show and give it a chance.
I had even hoped my negative expectations would lead me to a pleasant surprise. What I wasn’t counting on, however, was that my show and my characters would just fade into the background this episode. If Reid and JJ were in last night’s episode, I pretty much missed them in the blink of an eye. The rest of the BAU filled the roles of sidekicks to the shiny new team. And we waited three weeks for a new episode for this?! Unbelievable. But let’s get this recap started, shall we? That’s what I’m here for.
So we start out in San Fransisco. A white male in this 30s has been found shot execution style. This has happened before, apparently, because the local cops jump straight to calling the FBI, stating that this is “starting again”. Meanwhile, a father and daughter team are walking the streets bickering when they happen upon Tyler Durden. Okay, maybe not, but how cool would that be?! We’ll call him Mr. Fight Club anyway. So Mr. Fight Club abducts the father-daughter team and whisks them away to his lair. By the way, does anyone really buy that that girl was fourteen? Because I don’t.
Meanwhile, Hotch is taking a field trip to visit Sam Cooper (played by Oscar winner Forest Whitaker), who is practicing martial arts in a gym. They greet each other like old friends, then get right to business. Cooper posits that the murders in San Fransisco follow a pattern, and not just the one of several men getting shot in the head execution style. He tells Hotch that he thinks the murders precede another set of murders, that of father-daughter teams being killed immediately after the other set of murders. He suggests that he and Hotch should work together on the two separate angles of the case in hopes that they will inform one another. As they are deciding this, Mr. Fight Club is telling Daddy that if he would just give the girl over to him, they will both live.
The BAU team flies to San Fran, during which Reid points out that all the victims have been transients, and that the same number of victims have turned up during the same number of days every year. He says there’s no historical significance to the dates, so they must be personal to the unsub. Hotch also informs the team that Cooper and his team will be working with them during this investigation. The team has their reservations, but Rossi backs Cooper up, and the team decides to play along. I bet if they knew they were going to be eclipsed, they wouldn’t have agreed. Then again, Hotch can be very persuasive.
Cooper’s team is, as I and other fans expected, hackneyed. There’s the suave yet rebellious Mick Rawson, the sexy and smart Gina LeSalle, and Jonathan “Prophet” Sims, who I can’t even come up with a descriptive quality for. They chat for a while, and I suppose the conversation is meant to be witty, but it just falls flat. LeSalle suggests a ton of ways to narrow the search for the father-daughter team, and they start on that. One wonders how they get their info without Garcia, but she seems to not be on the scene yet.
While Cooper’s team is busy being trite, Rossi and Prentiss are busy figuring out that all the male victims are from the same area of town, and Hotch and Morgan go take a look at Dead Guy Number One. The first victim appears to have been in quite a fight before being shot. And we find out why shortly. Mr. Fight Club sticks Daddy in an empty swimming pool and forces him to fight another man. The consequences of losing are that Mr. Fight Club kills both father and daughter if he loses. Thankfully for Daddy, he wins the fight. Things don’t turn out as well for the loser, though.
This episode was unbalanced. I realize that the point of the episode was to introduce the spin off characters, but the thing is that this is still Criminal Minds. The spin off characters should have been the supporting characters, not the main ones. The main cast got shunted off to the side and into supporting cast territory. This was really not a way to win me over. It only made me fear even more that the spin off could be detrimental to Criminal Minds. I felt like Criminal Minds, the show I love, got swallowed up by this new monster last night, and the new monster was an ugly thing. It was stale and did little to catch my interest. This show should have left me wanting more of the new characters if the goal was to get me to watch the spin off. Instead, I was glad when it was all over.
It’s really a shame because this could have been an awesome episode. I thought the case part of it was fantastic. It was dark and gritty, and it makes me wonder what is the future of the family involved. Sure, the daughter greeted her father with ‘I love you’ when she saw him after the unsub was killed, but what next? This fourteen year old girl watched her father fight and kill people. They were already in family therapy. I can’t imagine how much more she’s going to need.
So what did you guys think? Love it and can’t wait for the new show? Hate it and wish you could bury this episode never to be seen again? Give me your two cents!
Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine
TheTwoCents 
oh, yeah, the new team have magic, dark magic that somehow makes our team looks like three year olds who can just repeat the brilliant new team’s ideas. WHO THE HELL DO THEY THINK THEY’RE KIDDING? we’ve been watching our show for five years, WE KNOW WHAT OUR TEAM IS CAPABLE OF!!!
Maybe they thought the dark magic would work on us too. 😦
I completely agree with your take. The original BAU team were definitely out of the loop in this episode. And I wasn’t happy considering we waited so long for a new episode. To be completely honest, the idea of spin-offs has never really sat too well with me. I didn’t like it when they did it with NCIS and I don’t really like it with CM. Especially with CM. It’s pretty much the only show I make time to watch and I hope it doesn’t suffer because of a spin-off.
Thanks for sharing.
Yeah, spin offs never sit well with me either, but I was trying to put that aside for this. Obviously I wound up hating it anyway. 😦
They wasted an episode on these dummies! it’ll be a nightmare every time the network replay this episode, not that they will, considering this is a disaster and if they don’t pick it up there’s no point ever showing that stupid episode ever again!
Lamer shows have been picked up, so we’ll just have to cross our fingers that this one won’t make the cut.
it was strange, but who knows maybe a spin off wouldnt be that bad, as long as they keep criminal minds on that is!
Oh, I’m sure CM will stay on the air, but I worry about the quality diminishing with the talent pool spread out over two shows.
it was strange, but who knows maybe a spin off wouldnt be that bad,
You know, I just watched this episode being that Jason Wiles is in it and I’m on a huge Third Watch binge, and I am…utterly disturbed and confused at the same time. I’ll admit that I’m not a regular watcher of the show and this is why: some of those scenes were downright disturbing. Jason Wiles needs a hug and I totally volunteer.
But when I wasn’t being horrified by his predicament I was totally just confused by the way they chose to introduce this new team. I get that they’re supposed to be the focus of the hour, but at least when JAG and NCIS did it, they kept some balance involved. This was a little too one-sided for my taste.
I wish we would have had more of the case. I found it fascinating, but I guess after five seasons, it’s hard to disturb me. About the only thing that really gets to me on a regular basis is drowning/suffocation. Oh, and burning, but I think that goes along with suffocation.
I’m not a NCIS or JAG watcher, so I can’t compare, but to me, judging by this show, it seems like it would be impossible to cram two full teams into an hour. The case got left behind, and it seems like it could have been way more successful if they had only introduced Cooper. I don’t know, really. It was just really badly done.