Criminal Minds 5.17 | Solitary Man

Criminal Minds 5.17 | Solitary Man

i have so many feelings about the "why mess with perfection" scene. im going to analyze it in a way it was probably never intended to be. fuck you silly crime show i can overthink ANYTHING. this got long so it's under a cut. please please read it though im actually very proud of this one.

personally i count this line as being more evidence that william reid is a scumbag. this is how diana describes her pregnancy with spencer in the episode immediately proceeding this:

"I went off my medication when I was pregnant with you. I spent every day in terror, but I made it. And it was beautiful. I had you."

it's a bit of a mixed bag, because she clearly considers it to have been worth it, but. i mean, maybe this is just me, but if my wife went off her antipsychotic medication for the duration of her pregnancy and "spent every day in terror", i wouldn't be raring to put her through that again. "I made it" also feels quite charged to me, like there were moments where she wasn't sure she would.

from what i could find, there's still no real consensus on whether antipsychotics are safe for use during pregnancy (as much as any medication can be) and i imagine there was even less certainty during the early 80s. any subsequent pregnancies would likely have also involved diana going off her meds, and pregnancy is difficult enough when you AREN'T also skipping your antipsychotics.

and diana's expression here—to me, that's not the expression of a woman who had one kid and was then just like "nah im happy with this one." it's a woman who had an extremely difficult pregnancy and whose husband then tried to convince her to do it over and over again. there's resentment in the way she delivers that line.

as sweet as this line is, i think it's ultimately diana protecting spencer. she can't say "my pregnancy was incredibly difficult, i couldn't bring myself to do it again" because spencer will get a complex about it. so she says this, although that doesn't mean it isn't also true. in a perfect world where diana's pregnancy was as smooth sailing as pregnancies get (because i don't think there's really such thing as an easy pregnancy), i think she still probably would have only wanted one child. it's not that this isn't why diana wanted to stop at baby number one, but i do think there's a second reason she's leaving out because she knows the truth will make spencer feel guilty.

but i think he sees through it. not that he'd ever tell her. (she knows anyway. not that she'd ever tell him.)

HOLY- I don't even have a joke here, that was legit badass. Strong contender for my favorite scene of the season (thus far). Go. fucking- off.

here's the jordan analysis i promised. it got really long so it's under a cut </3 also to any jordan fans jsyk this is more a meta analysis of the role she serves rather than an in-universe analysis of her character, so. no major character insights if that's what you're hoping for.

as i've said before, i also don't understand the vitriol i've seen directed towards her when she was in eight episodes and occasionally mildly annoying at worst. i think most of the people who hate her do because she was a. being shipteased with morgan b. (temporarily) replacing jj and c. a woman of colour who breathed. i don't love her, although i do think her and emily should have fu— uh. who said that? anyway:

what i do really like is the narrative role she serves during her episodes, and especially during this one. with any long-running show with dark themes, there's always a risk of the audience becoming desensitized—a guarantee, even, if it goes on long enough. i think a lot of these shows (including cm, on occasion) fall into this trap where they think the solution to that is to constantly escalate, which i think is a huge mistake. you'll desensitize the audience faster when you're just showing them increasingly awful things; at a certain point you'll even bore them. also, it will inevitably become extremely unrealistic, and you'll start to sensationalize if you aren't already.

i think jordan's introduction was a really fantastic early effort to prevent the audience from becoming desensitized. we're following a cast of characters who have all been embroiled in awful things for years or decades. it's their job and it has been for a long time. the characters are already varying degrees of desensitized and they're the ones we're identifying with as the protagonists.

and then jordan. right away she's out of her depth and overwhelmed, and in this episode, she says outright that she can't do the job. i think it was also a great choice that the case in the episode isn't a particularly horrifying one (obviously they all are and the revelation at the end of this episode is really tragic, but jordan saying "im out" after this case reads very different than if it had been after something like no way out where it's clearly among their worst cases).

she's a reminder to the audience that the people we're watching are not normal. no normal person could do the job they do. the vast majority of the audience, if transplanted into the show, wouldn't be reid or emily or morgan or hotch—they would be jordan.

obvious backdoor pilot was obvious and i did not enjoy it. will probably be skipping it in any future rewatches. but i think sam cooper and hotch should [REDACTED] [CENSORED] [REDACTED] they clearly want to.

rambling about mosley lane under the cut SORRY this got lon and maybe a little incoherent i am sick. TLDR: i liked it a lot and mgg is a really good director

mosley lane was so good?? i know it sounds weird to be shocked given its reputation but holy shit it lived up to it.

to be honest, i had expected some of the hype to be bias because mgg directed. not that i had any doubts that he was talented—a cast member directing episodes of the tv show they feature in is nowhere near unheard of, and doesn't always mean they're a good director as well as an actor, but i do feel like directing twelve episodes of that show implies genuine talent. also, while cast members directing is pretty normal, most of them don't have degrees in directing. mgg had one before he even started on cm, only studied acting in HS because they didn't offer filmmaking, and iirc has outright said directing is his actual passion.

and yeah, mgg is definitely a really good director. i might just be biased like i thought other people could be, but i honestly think that may have been one of the best directed episodes of cm. (i see 3x10 getting a lot of praise in that regard, which i'm sure it deserves if i look just at the directing, but i...don't like that episode, sorry). i don't really know how to describe the rest of cm's directing, because...i mean it's not bad. but imo it's very safe samey. there were a lot of moments in 5x16 where i noticed the directing and thought it was very good. maybe i was paying more attention because i knew people talked a lot about mgg directing, but i have noticed the directing and editing of cm before. just usually not multiple times per episode.

also—this one i can't (fully) give to mgg, because it's partially the writing, partially beth grant's performance, partially mgg's direction of that performance, and other factors from various people that contribute, but i'm really happy this episode had an unsympathetic female unsub. i get frustrated sometimes with the apparent notion (not in cm so much, i think cm is actually quite good with this) that women are always Good and Pure and therefor only do bad things for sympathetic and understandable reasons. (obviously there's some nuance. i was writing about the nuance but it got nerdy and off-topic)

ANYWAY. i really liked it :) if mgg directed a horror film i would watch it.

(p.s. "he was alive yesterday?" hit like a train despite the fact that i knew it was coming. simon mirren and erica messer can i Talk To You.)