I sometimes abuse ampersands

For all my love for Criminal Minds, I'm pretty bothered by its militant anti-intellectualistic tendecies. Superior knowledge is closely linked to insanity, violence. There's Diana Reid, of course, and episodes like Derailed (with knowledge leading to insanity), The Fisher King (with the insane killer lost in a world of literary allusions - an ep that clearly shows the scriptwriters' lack of reading, for mixing the epics, the gothic, and the postmodern like that is a questionable choice at best), Empty Planet (reading leading to insanity), Masterpiece (knowledge leading to insanity), etc.

Reid's knowledge is played for laughs more often than not ("shut up kid, who would read 15 C. poetry for fun?" - well, I know several people who would & do, and not one of them is a schizophrenic or a serial killer); Prentiss has anxieties about her knowledge (she blames her social ineptitudes on her self-professed geekery, with her having read Kurt Vonnegut as the sole proof of that; again, I don't think there's a correlation between being an avid reader & being socially inept). It's getting pretty offensive at times.

The knowledgeable ones are constructed as mutants with strange, possibly hostile super-powers; they are always the Other, either ridiculed or demonized, but never quite accepted.

So, I'm watching S1, and I'm not nearly as excited about it as I was about the later seasons. Should have stop watching, but the damn show is addictive.

The reasons I'm not as happy about/dislike S1:

1. They are still laying out the rules of this universe, which leads to lots of unnecessary exposition (I mean, I was able to plunge into S3 without any expo - why are they not relying on watchers to figure all that stuff out themselves?).

2. Like I said before somewhere, I liked that in later seasons, the victims are not defined by the trauma, and the killer is never romanticized. Well, not so (or at least, not quite to that degree) in S1.

3. I still dislike Gideon, the way he just fazes out and investigates in epiphanies rather than, y'know, actual actions. Also, he licks his fingers before turning pages of books he reads. I'm neurotic about not spoiling the pages, so that irked me A LOT.

4. What I do like, though, is the way they subtly hint at the protagonists' tortured pasts without keeling over into the emoporn land. Hotch's background in 1.09, Reid's in 1.08 - all done masterfully.

5. The artsy style murder flashbacks are shot in make me want to shoot somebody (preferably the director, but I'm not picky).


As to the 4.24, ( it was sorta awesome )

Caught up with the show, yay! (having skipped most of seasons 1 & 2, but I plan on catching up on those two too, eventually)

( 4.13, in which we learn that in some cases, cultural appropriation is okay *headdesks* )


( 4.18, which was a shipper dream come true )


( 2.12, in which we get Morgan backstory )


On a sort of overall note, I like that victims on CM are seldom defined by traumatic experiences - they have lives, they move on, they kick ass, etc.

As I tried jotting notes down while watching eps I realized that, indeed, I do not watch for the plot. Yes, I'm shallow XD

( 4.01, in which things go boom )

( 4.02, in which there was an eviller twin )

( 4.04, which was creepy )

( 4.05, which was xenophobic )

( 4.06-07, which were all about Reid )

( 3.10, in which the director comes out as a Sin City fan )

( 3.11, in which the scriptwriters took a vacation )

( 3.12, in which Azazel is in witness protection )

The next two episodes were extremely Rossi-centric, which is always a good thing in my book.

( 3.13, in which Hotch & Rossi review vintage porn together )

( 3.14, in which there might have been a plot, but I squued to much to notice it )

( 3.17, in which there totally could have been the 'undercover in a gay bar' plorline :)  )


( 3.20, in which there totally could have been the 'undercover in a gay bar' plorline :)  )



Supernatural 4.21
In two words: hated it. ( the longer version under the cut )

This is a placeholder for actual thoughts - I've only watched ~10 episodes thus far; just jotting stuff down so I won't forget it by the time I see more of the series.

Most victims (though not, as I've been told, all of them) are middle- to upper-class icons of sorts: blond cheerleaders, sweet families from suburbs going out for their morning jog, successful businessmen in impeccable suits, etc. A threat to them becomes a metonymical threat to the social order as we know it. => BAU is presented as the power stopping the world from tumbling down. BAU performs miracles, much in the way Sherlock Holmes performed miracles; but whereas SH embodied the positivist idea that reason was magical=all-powerful=sacred, BAU embodies the idea that state is magical=all-powerful=sacred. (Not the concept I'm comfortable with ideologically, but I love the whole cast regardless).

(my immense thanks go to taelle for weeding out episodes that would be too gory for my liking)