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kaleestraza
Let's all stop with this crap where we completely trash a show in our reviews and them rate them with a 7 or higher, shall we?
For me, a 5 is on the bare edge of "watchable"-- something you can manage to get through but will definitely skip on rewatches. A 7 is decent, no brain-melting problems but nothing stand-out. A 9 is a must-watch, and a 10 goes from simple excellence within the show to excellence in the medium.
I'm here to cut through the fat and tell you what's what. I am not here to toss out 8s to episodes I just happen to watch because I'm bored. I do my best to cater to the fans and understand what they're really looking for, rather than give things high scores for basic competence. I don't watch much TV, so when I watch an episode, it's something I've sought out on a streaming service. If it's not good enough, I can easily move on, so my standards are higher.
I take into account a show's history and mission statement when analyzing what they offer in a particular episode, and how it holds up against similar content. People are looking for particular things when they seek out particular shows, and if an episode only contains content that you could easily get elsewhere and neglects the content fans are looking for, their rating will be low.
For example, if an episode of Criminal Minds, a dark show about the psychology of serial killers, offers nothing more than something I could see on my Grandma's favorite episode of the family-oriented cop drama Blue Bloods, its value is lost.
I have no interest in shipping, romance, bias against or for particular characters, or "fandom" drama.
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RedLetterMedia is love, RedLetterMedia is life.
If you don't like I'm Not There directed by Todd Haynes, we can't be friends.
Reviews
Criminal Minds: 52 Pickup (2008)
Good premise, lacklustre execution
Criminal Minds is at it again with their trend of eschewing their horror-ridden, psych profiling roots for rote cop drama I could easily find in any one of the many police procedurals currently airing.
The idea of a serial killer disemboweling people and using the slow death that entails to force them to clean up their own blood and guts is uniquely horrifying in a way that, as the series grows, becomes harder and harder to find. Unfortunately, this episode contains almost no criminal profiling, and utterly fails to capitalize on that horror. Why a serial killer may choose this method of killing and this avenue of sadism is left entirely unexplored. There are no artistic shots inviting the viewer to understand what being victim to this killer might be like. We are given no insight into his daily life. Even after we find out why he commits these crimes and what his stressor was, there is no interesting psychobabble explaining it all.
The idea of a serial killer using oft-sociopathic PUA tactics was a great idea as well, one that predicted the recent Isla Vista and Toronto killings, but again, this episode fails to dissect and criticize the practice properly despite taking much time to present them. I have no idea why they missed the opportunity to go in-depth on why such techniques are poor and attractive to antisocial personalities.
The scene with Reid and Morgan was cute and a nice insight on them both. The filmmaking and script were competent, I suppose, if barren.
The time spent on things tangential or even outright extraneous to the case is disproportionate to how meaningful the scenes therein are. Take, for example, "What Fresh Hell" from Season 1, and compare it to this episode. It uses less than half the time that "52 Pickup" does to cover extraneous subjects, but somehow the scenes from "52 Pickup" with the sole exception of Reid and Morgan's one manage to be far less meaningful, informative, or realistic.
If these showrunners lack the ability to make plot-irrelevant information compelling, I suggest they give us more of what we came here for: Actual criminal profiling and infamous, mind-bending crime.