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!
When JJ told Reid she was pregnant, she was referring to the fact that she was in her first trimester at the time of the abduction and subsequently lost the pregnancy as a result of the torture. Where did you get the idea that Reid was the first to know? It's not like she was telling him that she was pregnant now!
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you about the PTSD. The reason it's called POST Traumatic Stress Disorder is because the symptoms occur well after the initial trauma. For JJ to have experienced these symptoms much sooner would not have been genuine.
ReplyDeleteYes, but the fact that JJ was ready and able to go back to this strenuous job after only 2 WEEKS when she was /clearly/ showing early signs (You can see it in her interview in Mr. and Mrs. Anderson) was preposterous and did not feel genuine at all.
ReplyDeleteAll we know is what we are told ON SCREEN. Everything we imagined that has happened off screen is up to interpretation. Personally, I'd like to think she told Will at one point or another, but the only person we got to see her tell was Reid.
ReplyDeleteShe did say, "No more secrets" at the end of "200" when getting a hug from Will. So who knows, maybe she did mention it to him then, and now she's told Reid, too, and would just prefer to leave it at those two knowing (as I figure it might get exhausting reliving the same painful story over and over with multiple people). Unfortunately, since Will doesn't show up on a regular basis on the show, we don't get as many husband/wife moments between them, so we just have to assume what they do or don't talk about, and that can make things tough sometimes. Despite what I said above about why she might not have shared that information with Will, I too would like to think she did open up to him about her loss at some point. He would've been very supportive and understanding, for sure.
ReplyDeleteWhen I brought up ship-pandering, I mean the fact that JJ and Reid are a way more popular pairing than, let's say, JJ and Hotch. Larry Teng teased this episode by saying that JJ was going to confide in Hotch about her struggles. Low and behold, they decided to go with Reid instead. The argument is that "Reid knows what JJ went through." Sure, Reid know's what it's like to be abducted and drugged, but if we go by this logic, pretty much every member on the team, past and present can relate to JJ too! What about her miscarriage? Wouldn't Rossi be a better person to talk to (since he can FINALLY bring up Carolyn delivering a still-born)? Obviously I wouldn't expect the show to go back to this, let alone remember it even happened. But, nevertheless, Reid was the one who got her to open up, which is okay. I mean, the best case scenario would have been Blake, in my opinion (because Blake was knocked out/abducted too, and she has lost a child, and the whole post-Bully and post-Blood Relations scenes where JJ asked her how she was doing and Blake could be returning the favour) but I digress. It was still a nice scene even if certain parts felt weird to me.
ReplyDeleteI completely missed Hotch's fist bump, probably because I was so upset that they found the time to question Reid's knowledge. Morgan's comment definitely bothered me. Haven't they been working together for /more than/ 10 years? The flashbacks in Profiling 101, weren't they from 2004? I could be wrong. Thank goodness Reid stood up for himself. I was facepalming so hard - I mean - does Kate really want to get into this now? :P
Absolutely. I saw your comments about how JJ might have felt that she let him down, which would be gut wrenching. I hope for their sake that they have talked about it, and have overcome it together. Or, maybe they haven't, and "Askari" is going to make another appearance and maybe she will be forced to open up to more people; I don't know.
ReplyDeleteAhhhhhh, okay, I see. I do remember hearing initially that she was going to talk to Hotch, and was a bit surprised by the switch in character. Oddly enough, from the fanfic and such that I've seen out there, it seems reversed to me-JJ/Hotch seems much more popular now than JJ/Reid (or maybe I'm just hanging out in different areas).
ReplyDeleteBut I take your point on that aspect of it all regardless. For me, personally, I was more than fine/happy with the JJ/Reid interaction (and I know you liked it, too, as your review stated), but you make a great point about other options of people she could've turned to, too, notably Rossi or Blake in regards to losing a child. That would make perfect sense. Indeed, Reid has no firsthand experience with that-hell, his face when she revealed that information to him showed just how helpless he was to advise her there, for that very reason. Like, "Okay, I have no idea what I'm supposed to say to that."
And since Hotch and JJ have bonded by way of the fact that they're both parents, no doubt Hotch would've had some good advice on how to handle things with Henry from here on out-he could've fallen back on his experience raising Jack after the trauma of losing Haley, and how he had to deal with juggling his own PTSD with still being a father. So that's something worth considering, definitely.
It'd be very heartbreaking if that were the case. To think you wouldn't be able to open up to the person you've committed to spending your life with...it further drives home the point of Askari's nasty taunts at the end.
ReplyDeleteBut I too hope they did get a chance to talk about this, or still talk about it on occasion. If they haven't, though, yeah, it'd be interesting to see if the show would have it to where she would finally need to talk about that with more people. Maybe we will get an appearance from Will down the line and we can get a glimpse into that part of things, too.
"That's really not Reid's thing, not when it comes to facts." EXACTLY! And Kate has made comments about his knowledge before, most of which were positive. That's why this one seemed so out of left field to me.
ReplyDeleteAnd ditto to your points about Jotch. In the Twitter/Tumblr community, I've seen a lot of Jeid. Heck, even Harry Bring retweeted someone's video in tribute to them. I think it would've been beautiful if she went to him; after all, he is her boss, and she told him about Rosaline before ANYONE ELSE. (And then she told Blake, something people often forget about.)
And Kate has made comments about his knowledge before, most of which were positive. That's why this one seemed so out of left field to me.
ReplyDeleteBingo. That, too.
Ah, okay. I've still yet to sign up for Twitter-I remember talking about doing that a while back and blanked on it. And I'm not on Tumblr. So I've missed out on that. I mainly hang out at the Fanfiction.net site, and have briefly skimmed a forum or two, and I see many JJ/Hotch stories/support on there. That's interesting that someone from the show retweeted a video about that pairing, too-hm. Course, I've also seen occasional comments from AJ and MGG commenting on the interaction between their respective characters, too.
I personally DO like the JJ/Reid pairing, so I freely admit to a bias on that front with this episode. But I do love the interaction between JJ and Hotch as well, and you're right! She did open up to him about Rosaline before anyone else, which indicates a deep level of trust right off the bat. And Hotch has always made sure to tell her how much he trusts and respects her judgment and abilities on the job, and considering that's no doubt one of her big concerns right now, whether or not she can keep doing her job well...I think some of that sort of validation from Hotch would be just the sort of thing she'd want to hear, need to hear right now. Plus, they were in cahoots on covering up Emily's death. They know how to keep secrets, too :).
A good point about her opening up to Blake as well. Heck, it obviously won't get aired on the show unless she decided to make an appearance again, but I also like the idea of JJ calling Emily and talking to her, too, since Emily also has firsthand experience in the "losing a baby" department.
I missed the show and your reviews and once more I totally agree with you . The case wasn't well treated and even if AJ Cook was awesome, the PTSD seemed to come from nowhere . I think it was an excuse for another JJ centric episode but I was disappointed this week .
ReplyDeleteSince the episode I'm even afraid about AJ Cook not staying on CM the next season ...