The fact that last night’s case on Criminal Minds was more like early seasons did not escape me. The difference, however, seems to be me … back then, I wasn’t a father. Not that images of a father hanging his own son wouldn’t have disturbed me before, but with my own son asleep in his room? I’m not saying I didn’t know what I was getting into when I signed on to watch this show, but still.
I’m not sure I even fully understand what happened last night. Why did the father get kids to play the hanging game (is that really popular with kids today?)? Something about being able to save them? Because, if that was it, how would he then have been willing to almost kill his son at the final showdown, knowing full-well that he wouldn’t be able to save him? And how did that all tie into the mother’s death?
And how did that tie back to our team, as many of these cases resonate with them personally? As JJ told Hotch on the flight home, her sister committed suicide when they were teenagers. I know her revelation was supposed to reach Hotch in some way, but I have to ask — how did Hotch not know all of that (save for the necklace thing)? You’re telling me he hasn’t scoured his team’s FBI files backwards and forwards, and that he doesn’t know more about them than maybe they even know?
It reminded me of Morgan’s story a few years ago, one in which he either realized that he was possibly molested as a kid, or knew and tried to hide it. If something even remotely along those lines was in his file, Hotch would have read it, analyzed and profiled it, and known exactly what Morgan experienced as a kid. He could have even told him about it in a “This is your life … surprise!” sort of way.
So JJ’s sister having committed suicide would be a no-brainer for Hotch to know, possibly something that he’d have to keep in mind as he monitored JJ’s choosing cases for the team, and her dealing with the public in what is supposed to be her only other role at the BAU. He’s not all-knowing, but I think this is a case of the writers, and not Hotch, dropping the ball.
Anyway, you Garcia fans were given a treat last night. I’ve never understood why she didn’t travel with the team, assuming they could portably provide her with the hardware she required to do her job. But I’m not so sure I buy her rapport with that kid — so she spoke in online abbreviations and threw some security jargon at him (which he didn’t understand) … that connected with him? Actually, what I think reached him was that she too had lost a parent — actually both — when she was a kid. And that she used to be like him, and maybe still was a little. Come to think of it, shouldn’t Hotch have been aware of that too when sending Garcia in there?
See what happens when the show doesn’t spend lots of time on each of these characters? It just gets confusing!
Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Jan 21, 2010 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
I understood it that when “saving” mom did not give him the thrill it used to he let her die and moved on to his son. When the same loss occurred with the son he introduced the game as having control over that many kids was his new thrill.
I agree that the writers dropped the ball in not having Hotch know about JJ’s sister. When he sent Garcia in to talk to the kid it was based on the assumption that the kid was doing it all and was a computer whiz, thus creating a bond between the two.
Thanks to L&O I have heard about choking as a sex game but as a game to get high? Granted I don’t get the whole sniffing glue and white out either. Out of touch am I.
*POST AUTHOR*
Yes; how could we not be up on all those popular activities?
Makes sense about the progression. Thanks. I hadn’t fully caught what they were trying to say about the mother’s death.
I see the connection between Garcia and the kid, but at least she should have ALSO been sent in to connect on a personal level of loss. Just something that Hotch should have been able to read instinctively between them: loss of parent, dark Goth proclivities, computer fascination. Maybe I’m seeing it backwards, because I think they connected on the loss level, so therefore I’m wondering my Hotch didn’t anticipate it … I guess that’s not so fare of me. Oh well. :)
I didn’t get to watch this episode uninterrupted, so I missed quite a bit of the story. As the mother of a pre-teen son, I’ve heard about things like choking and cutting becoming more popular with teens. It’s out there, but doesn’t make the nightly news.
I think the purpose of the exchange between JJ and Hotch was so she could let him know that it gets easier to cope with a loss as time goes by. Hotch should have known about JJ’s sister, but then they couldn’t have had this touching moment. Sometimes we need to just go with and not over analyze the back story.
*POST AUTHOR*
I definitely suffer from the over-analyzing affliction. :)
I just think that, particularly on a show like this, it seems so unlikely a scenario that it screams out at us to question it. They could have concluded things the same way (with JJ telling Hotch it gets better) even if he’d come to her in the beginning and said “Can you handle this?” in his knowing way that he’s used so many times before. It’s just crazy to have us believe that Hotch wouldn’t have to know everything about them, at least up to the point that they applied to the FBI and their files were first compiled.
It’s so funny you say that, because to me Hotch knew JJ would have a problem from the beginning, with that look he gave her when she first brought the case to him. Actually, several looks over the hour. Then when he told her on the plane that she didn’t have to tell him, it seemed to me that was because he already knew about JJs sister. Besides, Hotch isn’t the kind of guy to go “JJ, I know your sister offed herself, are you sure this one isn’t too much for you?” He almost always speaks in generalities when bringing up personal business with his team, doesn’t he?
*POST AUTHOR*
I’d chalked the look up to Hotch’s intuition that there was something, not specific knowledge. But you could be right.
I do like your imagined dialogue between them, though! :)
I’m sure Hotch did know about JJ’s sister, but he’s not going to bring it up unless he thinks it’s an issue that will affect the handling of the case. From the moment she brought him the file, he knew there was a personal reaction at play.
He’s also aware of Garcia’s parents death, and knew that, combined with not looking like a “suit” and knowing about the Netzien culture could possibly break through to the kid. He didn’t outright say it, but then Hotch is a man of few words.
Variations of the choking game have been around for a while, and the kids involved are getting younger from what I’ve heard. Older teens and adults often combine the buzz from lack of oxygen with some self love.
The father had an extreme case of Münchausen syndrome by proxy, in which a person deliberately causes injury or illness to another person to gain attention or some other benefit. In his case, he started with the mother, poisoning her over and over, with her miraculous healing in the hospital simply due to him not being able to have easy access to further poison her. Then he starts the cycle all over again, gaining attention from doctors and sympathy from well-wishers.
Whether her death was intentional or she simply couldn’t survive the continued stress on her body wasn’t clear to me. I don’t think they really answered that question, but the father definitely was aware that he controlled her life and death, and later his son’s. His son was also aware of this, and so conditioned to his lot in life that he no longer fought against it because he didn’t think anyone would believe him.
Essentially, he escalated to the point of getting a bigger “high” by getting the attention caused by multiple suicides in a small town, with bonus points for sometimes being the one on the scene as rescuer. He was also getting off on rewatching the deaths.
So I guess you could say he had Münchausen syndrome by proxy as the underlying cause, with layers of “angel of death” and “revisiting the crime to get a fresh buzz”. Or more simply, he was really effed up. ;)
*POST AUTHOR*
I feel like Hotch is generally more proactive than that, because what would he have done after-the-fact had the investigation caused JJ to do something irreversible or at least detrimental?
Maybe you’re right about Garcia, and it probably would have been crass to say “make sure to talk about your dead parents.” It just felt to me like he had overlooked it – which, by the way, would be understandable if they were using that angle. He did just lose his wife in a brutal murder.
Was this the same as the choking game? I felt like this was different for some reason, not sexual in nature as much as something else. I don’t know.
Thanks for the breakdown of the situation. So, what was the father getting of benefit by choking his son? They said that there were no hospital records of resuscitation for the kid, which would mean that no one knew to give the father attention or sympathy. Is that why he moved on to the game?
And I love your summary at the end! :)
I really liked Garcia in this one. That really worked.
The rest of the plot, though? Freaking weird. Of course, so was last week’s. I guess you have to stretch after awhile to find psycho scenarios we haven’t seen…
*POST AUTHOR*
Right? It always surprises (and saddens) me more that there’s fresh stuff each week on these shows.
Regarding Garcia, you’re right that the hardware requirements would be prohibitive, unless they built it into the plane, and there’s no real benefit to spending that kind of money. She’s probably running all those rigs at her desk in parallel, backed up by the FBI’s server farm. Even if she could work off of a single laptop, she’s got at least a T1 line back at Quantico, which some of these local sheriff’s offices definitely wouldn’t have. Basically, it’s simply much faster and more efficient for her to do the heavy lifting back home and just send the results to the team in the field.
MY THOUGHT ON THIS SHOW IS REALLY BENIGN. SOMEONES MISSING THE MARK, WHO, WRITERS AGAIN. MAYBE I’M WRONG, BUT THE WRITERS AND PRODUCERS NEED TO WORK OUT WHAT IS TO HAPPEN. ACTORS ARE ACTORS, THEY SPEAK WHAT IS GIVEN TO THEM.
*POST AUTHOR*
Certainly many things both positive and negative can be traced directly back to the writers, and I think that’s what we’re saying when we talk about the characters. Although I don’t think you can minimize what the actors bring to their characters, generally being disappointed in a character’s turn stems from disliking the decision that the writers made for them. But then there’s a difference between bad writing and bad decision making…. But the writers are certainly not getting a pass here. :)