FUCK William Reid All My Homies Hate William Reid.

FUCK william reid all my homies hate william reid.

i know they try to retcon his reason for abandoning diana and spencer to make him more sympathetic but a few things: a. it's very much a retcon that i think contradicts what's established in revelations. b. i don't think the "better" reason makes him any less of a scumbag and c. i think he's lying to himself about why he left to make himself feel better.

walking out on your ten-year-old son and mentally ill wife because her mental illness is too much for you to handle is pathetic it makes you pathetic. diana doesnt even know what day it is when william leaves and she tries to get him to take spencer with him because she knows deep down she can't take care of him. it's one thing to be overwhelmed—that would be sympathetic and understandable.

i think what people miss sometimes is that it's established that diana was diagnosed with schizophrenia and on medication for it before spencer was even born, as she mentions going off her antipsychotics for the duration of her pregnancy in memoriam. diana's diagnosis is not recent in the flashback in revelations, she was diagnosed at minimum ten years prior. it's not like this is some new, overwhelming thing he's struggling to get used to (not that it being sudden would make abandoning her better). i always gathered that she was fine and had a handle on things at first, but her illness slowly worsened and she became less good about taking her medication.

again. being overwhelmed would be understandable and sympathetic. even considering divorce. but go to counselling. get her the help she clearly needs. especially because you have a child. sure, fine, you're overwhelmed because your wife is seriously struggling to take care of herself and manage her mental illness. but how the hell is your response to that to leave her with your ten-year-old? especially when she's asking you to take him with you because she knows she can't take care of him by herself. how is your response to that to go "bye severely mentally ill wife! bye ten-year-old son! oh, how will you two manage now that the household consists of a woman dealing with severe mental illness and an actual child? idk. figure it out."

and i know it's contradicted by memoriam, but my headcanon has always been that part of the reason he left is because he found a "normal" woman and wanted to go have his picket fence, abandoning the family that needed him in the process.

good job william. you fucked up a perfectly good ten-year-old. look at him, he's parentified now.

i agree! if i could cut either reid's expression or hotch's line that immediately follows it, i'd cut hotch's line. the expressions are very good (especially the last one where it looks to me like he's trying not to be sick) and i generally like subtler moments.

man i remember liking no way out a lot more than i did. i think my issue was that yes, frank breitkopf is scary. yes, his MO is horrifying. yes, the concept is disturbing. but the characters would not stop commenting on that. i dont have an issue with them being horrified, because obviously they would be, but it just felt excessive. we don't need a close-up on reid's horrified face as they enter frank's trailer and hotch saying "i thought i'd seen everything." i dont mind them establishing that this is the worst case they've had, or that "even these people, who deal a lot with things too fucked up and weird for local law enforcement, find this too fucked up and weird." my problem was that they kept establishing that every five seconds. like. okay. i get it.

i did really like the framing device/use of in media res, though. if you haven't seen it, the episode starts with gideon meeting frank in the diner, then it goes back to the beginning and continues in chronological order with occasional returns to the diner scene, continuing until we reach the diner scene itself and continue from there. i especially liked the way they repeated the beginning of the opening to establish that we were back where we started—i got excited when i saw that waitress again lol. i like it in general when cm plays with the formula.

call me sadistic but i really wish we'd gotten the rest of the team's reactions to reid Actually Fucking Dying. in the episode, only garcia and gideon actually watch it happen, then we cut to tobias deciding to perform cpr. there's a gap between these scenes during which the rest of the team is filled in but we don't get to see it.

s02e01 — the fisher king

s02e15 — revelations

even if you don’t ship spencelle romantically and u think they were platonic. im so obsessed with the idea of them just like…. Hanging out. cause they would so be the ones finding themselves always together for some reason. like elle would stop by his apartment to drop something off and end up coming in and they’d accidentally spend 7 hours together doing nothing. they’d so just lay on the floor and have random meandering conversations. spencer would literally talk with her abt anything. he’d entertain conversation topics w her he never would with anyone else just because he likes talking to elle and she similarly would genuinely engage with him in conversations abt physics or philosophy for hours. like they would just have such a good reciprocal relationship they could talk forever and they do. they go get food and stay in the corner booth until the place closes. they go on drives until they’re like oh shit we’re two hours out of town. I. LOVE. THEM. THEY. ARE. BEST. FRIENDS. WHETHER. YOU. THINK. THEY. ARE. IN. LOVE. OR. NOT. !!!!!!!!

DYING ON THIS HILL!!!!!!

i was keeping track of this for my trypanophobic girlfriend who's watching cm with me (we're on 2x05 on our joint watch) but it might be useful for other people too, so. here are all the times needles are onscreen in 2x15:

about 12:50. close your eyes when tobias says "it helps" and open them again when you hear a man say "spencer, please go to the other room."

about 25:30. close your eyes when reid says "you can leave again[...]" and open them again when you hear child!reid say "mom?"

about 37:55. close your eyes when tobias says "no one bothers you here" and open then again when you hear diana say "what are these men doing here?"