Criminal Minds - The Forever People - Review: "We're Not Broken, Just Bent"

This episode had its highs and lows, but overall, AJ Cook delivered a beautiful performance. Too bad it felt a little off because it was a year later than it should have been, but that is neither here nor there. Let's get to the review.

JJ is boxing. I guess that's her stress reliever. She's having flashbacks to being abducted in the 200th episode. My heart feels so heavy for her. She's devastated. This might have been more realistic if we were seeing this episode directly following 200, but I digress. And the victim has an electrical burn, to which JJ replies, "I've seen it before." Wow, that's a doozy. You've seen it before because you've experienced it before. Anyway, these criminals are abducting their victims in the complete public? That's ballsy, for lack of a better term (and I couldn't resist the Blake reference). They locked a man in a freezer and said, "Good luck." I'm sure he'll need all the luck he can get. As an intro, it could have been worse.

Opening Quote:
Spoken by Jennifer Jareau - "Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times, we call a man cold when he is only sad." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

The BAU are on the jet. They really had the time to question Reid's intelligence at a time like this? This show is getting more and more unrealistic as the episodes go by. Thanks, Kate. I already wasn't that fond of you before, and now I'm feeling even less happy about this situation. Then, the team goes to the station. "All this talk of cold is making me cold, is that weird?" "There's nothing weird about you, baby girl." Reid and JJ are observing the body. JJ is having more and more flashbacks. Just because it's almost the 1-year-anniversary doesn't mean this PTSD should be so prominent, right? They're putting so much emphasis on the fact that this is an anniversary when in fact, it's a month before the first year. Am I wrong to get angry over this? Either way, these unsubs are part of a cult, and freezing and then resuscitating these people is their initiation to this cult.

Reid and JJ went to go talk to the mom of a victim. They informed her that she was brainwashed and she wanted to join this cult. At the profile delivery, Reid compared this cult and the cult leader to three real-life examples. Well, that was reassuring. This is quite a creepy cult. After they deliver the profile, Reid pushed JJ to finally talk about what happened. "What you're going through is entirely textbook." JJ said, "Stop being you." And Reid replied, "I can't help it." Well, we've seen this situation before, with Emily Prentiss. Reid is so worried about her. "All I know is my friend is hurting and when I see her in pain, I want to see it stop." Reid is being a great friend. He told her not to blame herself, but she was not listening. JJ told Reid that she was pregnant. If you mean to tell me that she would tell Reid about this before Will, her husband, something is off about this show. And then JJ walked away like nothing ever happened. Hotch asks if there's something he should no, of course Reid said no.

Morgan and Kate go talk to someone that was a part of the cult. He is seriously delusional. Kate attempted to talk down to him, but it just seemed too weird. And how about that scene where they froze another victim? Talk about creepy. It's a shame that the criminal mind has become so unimportant to this show. Pandering to certain characters and certain ships is now at the forefront of the writers' minds. Oh well. Now the team gets Garcia back on the phone. "Hiya. I thought you guys were getting cold feet. Pun unintended." Cute, Garcia is making this episode survivable. The FBI has arrived at the location of the cult. That was fast. JJ goes to talk to a victim. She asks him, "What happened to your hand?" and he retorts with a snappy, "What happened to your hand?" Classy. Hotch and Rossi go to talk to the cult leader, and they end up arresting him. Atta boy, Rossi, way to get the job done.

Furthermore, JJ tells the man, "Leave it to me, keep you head down, and let us do our job." She seemed persistent. The team are now discussing who's the actual unsub of the cult, since they have decided that the main leader is not the unsub because he was surprised and shocked by the crime scene photos. "Talk about a needle in the needlestack." Perfect quote, Rossi. It turned out that a Brother Jon was the criminal mastermind behind the murders. Reid and JJ went back to visit the cult. "You can't go in there without a warrant!" "Wrong." That's right, Reid. And now Reid and JJ get a cute moment with kids - I saw that coming a mile away. Then we get some backstory delivered in record time that would have been so nice if we could actually hear it profiled by the BAU. You can't always get what you want, I have learned. JJ has insisted that she goes to confront the unsub, despite given orders by Hotch, Morgan, Kate, and Rossi. The unsub tries to mess with her head by saying if she pulls the trigger then they will all die. But JJ knows better, and shoots him. The family rejoices at the end.

Reid and JJ talked and they cracked a joke about serial killers. Reid asked if JJ's feeling any better and she said no, that the pain wouldn't go away because they reunited a family. Reid told JJ that he called Emily and got intel about Askari, and he put it in her office if she wanted to read it. JJ went inside her old office, and the only flashback I really wanted to see was the flashback of Blake and Rossi combing for information about JJ in 200. Nonetheless, JJ starts reading a file about Askari's early days. She started to panic because of the things she was growing to learn about him. Then, all of a sudden, we see Askari come to life while she read the stuff. The quote that inspired the title of this review: "You broke me." "Oh no, I bent you." Ouch. They exchanged a lot of words about the fact that Askari has no plans of leaving JJ's mind any time soon. Interesting; I hope we see more of JJ's PTSD come out soon.

Final Thoughts:
All in all, it was an okay episode. The profiling was lacklustre, to say the least, despite there being so much potential for them to delve more into Jon and the cult. This show used to pride itself on really getting into the minds and behaviours of these criminals, but not with this episode. JJ's PTSD after NOT EVEN a year since being tortured was alarming. Although AJ gave a stellar performance, it seems as though it was too little too late. Garcia and Rossi's quotes, as usual, won the episode.

I give this episode a C. It felt odd and the profiling could have been so much better.

What did you think of The Forever People? Did it make you think twice about joining a cult? Did you hope that Askari would just fall off the face of the earth and never return? Leave a comment down below!