Criminal Minds (TV Series) Through the Looking Glass (2012) User Reviews

Far from the Lost one

[nicofreezer · 7/10 · 5 October 2021]

Lost Season 3 final épisode is name "Through the Looking glass" and its one of the absolute Greatest TV épisode ever.

This épisode of Criminal Minds is a décent story about a " perfect" family, but it was kind of boring for the first 20 minutes. 7/10.

A great underrated episode

[bcameron-07042 · 10/10 · 8 September 2017]

Season 8 was a good season in my opinion, with just a few subpar episodes. A couple episodes I didn't care for in this season was the dreadful "Nanny Dearest" (8x21) and the so-so episode "The Good Earth" (8x5). But overall, season 8 was a good season.

At the beginning of the episode, the Yamada family is found dead, close to a construction site at night by a drifter. Three members of the family are found dead, but the son is missing. He's later found dead by a construction site, with no evidence of sexual abuse or torture. The Yamadas were missing for 5 days before they were killed. The killer tried to frame the father by putting a gun in his hand. The BAU team quickly deduce that it was an attempted frame-up.

Hotch gets a call reporting to the team that another family, the Acklins, have been reported missing. A father, mother, 17 year old daughter and 11 year old son. The father is in the middle of a lawsuit, so at first they wonder if the family disappeared voluntarily. They can't take any chances.

The unsub in this episode locks the father, mother and teenaged daughter in a basement room that's in a house in the middle of nowhere. But he doesn't lock the son in there. The Acklins are obviously worried about the youngest member of their family. The BAU deduce that the unsub probably broke into the boys room first, held a gun to his dead and forced the family to tie each other up and put on hoods so they wouldn't know where they were being taken.

In this episode, the family argues with each other a lot. Some viewers may find that or them annoying, but to me, they're just like a normal family who has fights. It's part of being human. The actors playing the father, mother and daughter did a good job interacting with each other. I believed that they were a real family. They had good enough chemistry to be believable.

The killer communicates with the family with a built in mic that's in the basement room that he's holding them in. And the situation is tense and threatening. I can imagine myself in the same situation with a madman holding me and my family hostage in a basement room. You realize that this unsub either enjoys seeing the families he holds hostage argue about their problems or he's upset that they're not the "perfect family". He could be angry that they're misbehaving and making a mockery out of the family unit.

The unsub forces the family to to come clean with their flaws. The father has been having an affair with his sons tutor. The daughter sometimes takes drugs, starting with her mom's pain pills and then illicit drugs. The mother is obsessed with money and she's a shopaholic. It's a normal family with normal problems. Everyone has faults, so you realize this unsub is out of his mind. The mother does make a choice in this episode though that was disturbing and will probably turn most viewers against her.

I did like how one character gave his commentary on how the family unit was dying. He told Blake and Reid that everyone was on their phones, texting and tweeting and e-mailing. I thought it was a good commentary.

Also, the main cop in this episode made a comment on a suspect and said "I say he's guilty". The suspect was totally innocent and there was no real evidence against him. However, it reminds you that throughout history, there have been many people who were wrongly convicted of serious crimes because cops/detectives were too lazy to investigate crimes properly and look for multiple suspects and just settled on the first person that "looks good" for the crime so they could close their case.

Damn good episode.

Love 'Criminal Minds', but "Through the Looking Glass" didn't do much for me

[TheLittleSongbird · 4/10 · 8 July 2016]

Having been a big fan of 'Criminal Minds' for seven years now, being a show that airs regularly on SkyLiving, there are some great episodes, and a fair few masterful ones. But there are also misfires especially in the later seasons, and for me "Through the Looking Glass" is one of them.

Granted there are worse in the show, this reviewer is one of those who has an intense dislike for "200" and it isn't the waste-of-great-potential that "The Replicator" was (that could have been an enthralling end to potentially one of the show's better story arcs, but it fizzled out pretty badly), but "Through the Looking Glass" has a lot of the problems that the show has from time to time.

"Through the Looking Glass" is not all bad. With one exception, the lead acting is very good indeed, Joe Mantegna as Rossi and Matthew Gray Gubler as Reid have always been high points. There is an appropriate moody, gritty and dark, yet always slick and stylish, atmosphere in the visuals, and the place in which the family are held provide an effective sense of claustrophobia. The music is haunting and melancholic, and there is some decent enough directing if more in the visuals than anywhere else.

However, while the leads are fine, the supporting cast are not, with the exception of John Fleck, who does provide chills and eerie tension as Rykov even though most of the time he's unseen. This was a point in the show where Alex Blake had not fitted in yet and when it was difficult to warm to a character as cold as she was. She did get better later in the season to me and in Season 9, and generally she is one of the better Prentiss replacements (Kate was too bland, out of place and often forced and shoe-horned in in her earlier episodes), but it did take time to get used to her. Jeanne Tripplehorn does do her best considering. Beth is a total bore of a character, and Bellamy Young's acting is not enough to make one change their mind on the character.

It was also really difficult to relate to the family. Not only do almost all the actors overact, with Danielle Bisutti being particularly overwrought and annoying, but they are all uninteresting and continually frustrate with decision-making that stops anybody from relating to them (for example what sort of mother in their own mind would choose money over her own daughter?). The script is remote and not particularly tight, shining only in Rykov's chilling ultimatums threats. Alex's quip to Reid can go either way and those who do have Aspergers (although this reviewer has Aspergers, she was not sure what to make of it) might take offence, and sorry but Morgan and Penelope's flirtatious and over-familiar exchanges are getting increasingly unrealistic and annoying.

Regarding the story, there wasn't enough to engage with and because the supporting characters are so badly acted and frustrate the viewer so much one couldn't connect with it, which waste the claustrophobic setting somewhat. It isn't exciting or tense enough, and there is a lack of a plausible explanation (even the nicely done flashback didn't make that clear) for how Rykov knew which family to target, where they lived and how he knew so much about them, the most obvious way is through stalking them but this reviewer missed any explanation.

All in all, didn't do much for me. 4/10 Bethany Cox