Criminal Minds 3.07 'Identity'

Criminal Minds 3.07 'Identity'

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i need to talk about the goalpost scene or i'll explode. tw for the sexual assault of a minor, because. that is what reid is describing here, honestly:

i tried to gif it but the scene is quite long (especially because reid is constantly pausing to compose himself :(( ) and i realised while doing it that it's hard to gif a monologue, so instead here it is in text.

REID: I was in the library and, um... Harper Hillman comes up to me, and she tells me that, uh... Alexa Lisbon wants to meet me behind the field house. Alexa Lisbon's like, easily, the prettiest girl in school. MORGAN: So what happened? Alexa wasn't there? REID: No, she was there. So was the entire football team. They... stripped me naked and tied me to a goalpost. So many kids were there, you know, just watching. MORGAN: Nobody tried to stop it? REID: I begged... I begged them to, but they just... just watched. And... finally, they got bored and they left. It was like midnight when I finally got home. And my mom had... mom was having one of her episodes, so she didn't even realize I was late. MORGAN: You never told her what happened? REID: I never told anybody. I thought... it was one of those things that I thought if I didn't talk about it, I'd just forget. But I remember it like it was yesterday. MORGAN: Oh, Reid, you don't need an eidetic memory for that. You know, we forget half of what they teach us in school, but when it comes to the torment and the people who inflicted it, we've all got an elephant's memory.

i think about this a lot and honestly it makes me feel ill. because correct me if i'm wrong, but this is sexual assault, no? like yes reid is relating to owen as someone who was also severely bullied but he's also relating to owen as someone whose bullies committed a sex crime against them

something that i think gets missed a lot—reid was at the very oldest, twelve. again, correct me if i'm wrong, but football teams are big, right? reid even says "so many kids were there". just an unnecessary amount of people to restrain a pre-teen and a horrifying amount of people capable of standing there and watching. that is some stephen king level bullying honestly. not that ""normal"" bullying would be okay, of course, but just. jesus.

the implied length of the ordeal hurts too. a few things:

"they got bored and they left" to me implies that they left without untying him. had they done so, it would have made more sense to say "they got bored and they let me go." the phrasing reid uses implies they left him there and he had to get himself free. how long would that have taken?

reid also uses the word "finally" which. yeah. you know what the word finally means

the part that hurts the most is where reid says "[my mother] didn't even realize I was late." late. not gone. as in reid didn't go home inbetween speaking to harper and going behind the field house. this wasn't a "hey alexa wants to meet you behind the field house. nine pm" and the whole ordeal is "only" three hours. at best, it was right after school let out. at worst, he left the library and went straight there. so, at best, we're looking at...what, eight hours between going behind the field house and getting home?

this all happens in nevada. specifically vegas, which, from my understanding, is surrounded by desert. if it's winter/fall, the sun goes down relatively quickly and reid spends several hours freezing (i think? wikipedia says nighttime winter temps in vegas average at 4.4C/39.2F. is that cold in that region? canadian, sorry). if it's spring/summer, the sun takes a longer time to go down and reid spends several hours in the heat. ive usually headcanoned the second but the first is equally painful. but anyway, point is: take your pick. preteen reid gets either hypothermia or heatstroke. (also part of the reason i hc it was spring or summer is because i headcanon the goal post, which would have gotten very hot in the sun, scarred him. sorry to anyone whose day i just ruined <3)

sidenote: im always a little surprised by how calmly morgan reacts in this scene. not that he has a bad reaction, or isn't visibly troubled, but given how protective of reid he is normally...the first time i watched this scene i expected him to pull out a pen and paper and ask for names. so im headcanoning that the reason he's so calm in this scene isn't because he is calm, but because he's a good friend who knows that that isn't a productive response at the moment. and then he goes back to the bau and has garcia hunt them down (without telling her why) and uh. i dont know. maybe she destroys their credit scores or something.

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how are we fucking feeling gamers

4x21 a shade of gray is solid but that shot of the kid ominously eating doritos is SO funny for no reason. it would have been such an effective moment if it was just him staring but no. ominous doritos.

(hated writing "gray" but that's the episode title. grey grey grey. okay i'm good now)