Criminal Minds – Recap & Review – With Friends Like These…

photo: cbs

Criminal Minds
With Friends Like These…

Original Air Date: Mar 30, 2011

JD – Sr. Staff Writer
jd@thetwocentscorp.com

After that big build up with Prentiss’ story arc, and the emotional toll it took on a lot of fans, it’s probably a good thing that we got a week free of the show before coming back this week, just to process. I really thought it was going to be hard to watch, but thankfully they came back with a solid episode. The reminders that Prentiss was gone didn’t overshadow the case, and for that I’m thankful.

While I don’t like the major changes the show is pushing through, I have to admit that the writing has been good this season. Or maybe the major changes they’ve pushed thorough have caused me to lower my standards in keeping with CBS’s decisions. But I digress…

Let me introduce you to Crazy Guy. He’s walking around a supermarket with his friends, and they’re talking about cereal and guacamole (not together–eurgh), and seem to pick on Crazy Guy (let’s just call him CG) a lot. They encounter a woman, CG asks her about how long she lets her cereal sit before she eats it (because that’s a totally normal random question to ask a stranger), and she dismisses him. Bad idea. The Bullies talk CG into following her home, and things do not end well.

Back at the BAU, Garcia is sulking over losing Prentiss, even though she tells Morgan she’s not. She’s surrounded by testosterone now, she says.

Me: Aww, so true.
Morgan: Um, remember Seaver?
Me: …oh yeah.

I am by no means a Seaver-hater, but she’s not part of the BAU family in my head yet. Also, I find it annoyingly coincidental that she’s graduating from the academy the very episode after Prentiss is gone. “Here, this one has no Y chromosome; put her in the empty spot.”

Okay, so I’m still a little bitter, and the beginning of this episode at the BAU made me irritated that all the main agents on the show now are men. Grr.

Moving on…

The lady who doesn’t eat cereal is dead, and so is another man before her. They were both struck with blunt objects and stabbed. A lot. Random Guy was stabbed 31 times, and Anti-cereal Woman was stabbed 40 times, along with being bludgeoned by multiple blunt objects. The team determines it must be multiple people involved, and head to Portland.

The team discusses the case on the plane, and Reid has a geological profile already. Meanwhile, the Bullies are pushing CG to go out again.

On the ground, Rossi and Hotch go to the last crime scene, while Reid and Seaver check out the alley where the previous victim was killed. They determine the unsubs must be in their twenties… and Hotch realizes there aren’t multiple unsubs at all. There’s only one shoe print in the blood at the last crime scene, and the killers were too disorganized to have gone to the trouble of matching shoes. The team suspects the unsub must be on drugs, which explains his erratic behavior… annnnnnnnd CG is already out killing again.

The team is a step behind, and find the next victim at his apartment the next day. He’s been stabbed 40 times. Morgan and Seaver talk to the neighbor, who is pretty much useless. In fact, she heard the unsub screaming the night before about not wanting to kill anymore, and didn’t call the cops. Brilliant.

Morgan and Seaver do, however, come to the conclusion that if the unsub was having drug hallucinations, he would be too afraid to talk to them, so he must be a paranoid schizophrenic, and the Bullies are in his head. They go to give the profile, and Reid is acting weird. Oh, so we’re going back to the headaches now that Prentiss is gone.

CG is in a meltdown, and calls his oh-so-loving mother… who tells him she’s sick of his problems, and he should find a church to help him. Niiiiice. He finds a priest, and it all comes out. CG thinks the Bullies blame him for some fire that must have happened a while ago, and he wants the priest to perform an exorcism on him, like he had done when he was a child.

Back at the police station, Morgan corners Reid in the bathroom, and gets him to confess. Reid tells him about the headaches and more. But he also has a feeling they’re missing something. This unsub’s hallucinations are more vivid than they should be. And they have to figure out why.

Okay, look. I take issue here. First of all, wwhhhhyyyy would the show want to go the Crazy Reid route? Secondly, Morgan says this is a scary age for Reid, when most schizophrenic breaks happen? What? Surely Morgan realizes that Reid is past the age that most schizophrenics start showing signs. In season four’s Memoriam, I’m pretty sure I remember that Morgan guesses Reid was 4 in 1984, which would make him 30 or 31 now, depending on his birthday. Sure, Reid could still have it, but the prime age to start showing symptoms is about 18-25! So yeah, I’m not gonna be happy about it if the show makes him crazy.

That said, I really liked the episode, and I was happy that they team figured out the unsub was hallucinating pretty fast. It was pretty obvious to me from the first scene, when Anti-cereal Woman didn’t respond to one of the bullies insulting her. The show has already done people hallucinating their “special friends” very well, my favorite being season one’s Derailed, and it would have just been bad if they’d tried to do it again as a “surprise twist” at the end.

The end when Reid is talking to CG, and CG is imagining he’s hearing Reid say something else, did remind me of Derailed again, when Reid is talking about string theory. This was really well done in this episode.

I also loved the scene with CG attacking his hallucinations. Did anyone else think that he was attacking himself? When he stabbed the first Bully, I was sure he would come out of the hallucination to find he’s stabbed himself.

So what did you guys think? If I ignore the issue with Morgan’s assessment of Reid’s schizophrenia concerns, and the fact that Prentiss is gone, I give it a thumbs up. What about you? Give me your Two Cents!