Oh.

oh.

man criminal minds is just full of these lines that never ever come back. nothing in this scene causes me immense pain in hindsight.

(also: just because it's a little hard to tell from the screencaps and I'm unsure if this is information that's okay to include in Alt Text given that it's context not included in the screencaps—here is the conversation with who says what.

ELLE: You know how many rapists I saw walk during my Sex Crime days? [...] It was enough to make you explode.

JJ: Well, it's a long way from feeling like that and actually committing murder. Don't you think?

HOTCH: Oh, not really.

GARCIA: This better be hella good. GIDEON: Garcia? ...Hello? GARCIA: Oh, yes, sir. I'm here. I'm sorry. I just...I wasn't...I'm surprised that you're calling me. GIDEON: I need to know who Joseph Davin shared a cell with. GARCIA: Yes, sure. Uh, it was a guy named... [typing] His name was Tony Canardo. They were in together for 18 months, and both were released three years ago. GIDEON: Before the killings started. Is that it? GARCIA: His current address is 865 Kentwood in Jacksonville. GIDEON: That's all you got? GARCIA: Yeah. GIDEON: Garcia. GARCIA: Yes? GIDEON: You do great work. Keep it up. [hangs up] GARCIA: Oh, thank you, sir. Thank you.

i wonder if part of garcia's frazzledness in this scene is due to some lingering iciness from gideon post-fisher king (he was easily the most angry with her about her playing a game on the bureau's wifi and letting a hacker in), and i wonder if gideon's "you do great work. keep it up" is him finally letting her off the hook for it. of course it could just be that garcia finds this case especially disturbing, which is throwing her off, and gideon is acknowledging that with his last line. i could go either way.

(sidenote: gideon complimenting her and then hanging up before she can respond is so very in character, i love those little moments like that that tell you something about the character)

also sorry i have nothing else to say about this episode. i actually finished it and went back to grab this exchange because it was really the only part of the episode i had any particularly coherent thoughts on, which is a shame because i think it's a very good, very tightly written episode with a good twist—it just didnt have much i had that itch to yell about.

i love love LOVE this blog so much. your thoughts are brilliant

thank you so much!! that's really kind of you =] this is how i enjoy pretty much all media and its nice to see other people feel similarly

(same person who asked abt the spence gif) omg sorry i didn’t know you tagged the season! i saw the post from a reblog too & aren’t really familiar with your account so that’s why i asked 🥹 thank you for answering so nicely though!

oh no need to apologise! i figured that was what happened, i dont mind at all =]

hey simon mirren? what the fuck was this:

(it's a little hard to tell from the image, but elle's "it's totally you" reads to me as earnest, if slightly teasing)

am i supposed to think elle is being sarcastic? because it's not coming off that way to me—although caveat that i am autistic and bad at reading tone. is it platonic? it doesn't read platonic to me. and not because "oh my god a man and a woman complimented eachother. they must be in love" but. im sorry im legitimately trying to read this scene from any angle other than "there is mutual attraction" and i am not finding it! am i biased because i ship them or is this scene legitimately just Like That.

EDIT: forgot that this happens like a minute later. what the fuck!!! you cant do this to me!!!

JJ: It's something we call the buddy system. That means, you always go everywhere with a friend. MORGAN: That's right, because bad men and women are more likely to talk to us only when we're by ourselves

this is likely unintentional, but i like to read into things, so.

for context, they're speaking to a room full of children in a town with a serial child murderer, and are giving them some precautions to follow to stay safe (on a lighter note: the scene is intercut with a scene of gideon doing the same to a room of adults, which i really like)

jj addresses the children as "you" while morgan addresses them as "we". i dont like the term "freudian slip" because i hate freud, but thats the shortest way to describe what i think/headcanon is happening here. im sure they had a script, and i think morgan's part was "bad men and women are more likely to talk to you only when you're by yourself" and the "us/we" came out accidentally. or i could believe that morgan wrote his part of the script and wrote "we" because he sees himself in the victims.

obviously the way morgan was victimized during his childhood was very different to what's happening here (there is no sexual assault and we later learn that the violence was done by a peer, not an adult) but it's made clear several times that morgan takes any case where children are harmed very personally. they all do, because that's just how people are, but again, morgan specifically sees himself in the child victims they encounter. he was victimized differently, yes, but he knows what its like to face violence as a child, he knows the fear they felt, and, considering in this case they profile that the children know their attacker, he knows the feeling of betrayal