Criminal Minds

Whenever I write the title, I hear Tina Turner in my head. The big wheel here referred to the ferris wheel that Vincent, the unsub, helped Stanley, the vicitm’ son, to build. Let’s rewind and see how that came about.

Vincent had severe OCD. In the beginning scene, it shows him going through his morning ritual, keeping an eye on the clock the whole time. He kind of jiggles the handle a few times before opening doors, he has black plastic over the mirror. We see him getting ready and walking down the sidewalk with those big black glasses. He stops at an open house, when the realtor assumes he’s going to look at the house. She sees no threat, but then he stabs her. He guides her to the couch and watches her. He looks concerned throughout. But when he stabbed her, he looked immensely relieved.

The next scene has JJ presenting the case to the team, and Hotch tells Garcia to pack a go bag because she’ going with them. Finally, Garcia gets to leave her little office! As far as I can tell, she does the exact same thing on the road, but it’s nice to change the scenery once in a while. The unsub had sent a video to the police, writing “Help Me,” at the end. He indicates that the 29th will be the day he will kill next. They discover that he kills about every 12 months, selecting blond women in their early thirties as victims.

Breaking the pattern, the police find the body of a younger black woman. She had shown up at Vincent’s apartment - and he hates the break in routine. She sees a news broadcast that shows a police sketch of the man who killed the realtor. And she feels the need to say, “Wow, that looks just like you!” Why? Why do this? Why not just say, “Sorry for dropping by. Let me know if you can take the job. Bye!”

There is a scene in which a blond woman is watching a boy ride a scooter. Vincent is nearby, and I assumed he came for her. But no, it was the boy he was visiting. He says he’ll come back later. It turns out this boy was the son of one of Vincent’s victims. He was there when Vincent murdered his mother, but he’s blind.

Vincent notices police cars and officers and walks down an alley to get away from them, taking off his glasses as well. He bumps into a gang member, who says that he shouldn’t be there. Vincent says he doesn’t want any trouble, but the other man flashes a gun. Vincent stabs him, getting shot himself. He leaves another gang member unharmed. Next he’s at his home, stuffing bread into gun shot wounds. I find this odd, especially for someone so concerned with germs. Ah well. Then he wraps them up with saran wrap. In the background is the video that keeps popping up: a blond woman being stabbed. Vincent’s mother was killed by his father. He was in the closet, taping it.

Vincent takes Stanley to a ferris wheel - they’d built a model together. Vincent worked with a mentoring program so he could get closer to Stanley. He was very protective of him. He said Stanley helped him see. His first murders were done with overkill - he stabbed the victims 20, 30 times. After Stanley’s mom, he still had the urges to kill but only could stab them once. Remorse? He couldn’t stop, but wanted the police to stop him.

So they’re at the top of the ferris wheel, and Vincent tells Stanley never to wish he was dead, that he is special. As they go down, Vincent dies, holding Stanley’s hand. He knows he killed his mom - that part was really sad. He just lost his best friend - who killed his mom. Sad.

I had one complaint: it is the same as last week. It seems that Morgan and Rossi are so intuitive that they don’t even need to listen to witnesses. It’s amazing. Stanley’s foster mother was talking to them after she notices Stanley is gone. They don’t let her finish her thoughts, but supply answers for her. It wasn’t so bad in this episode, but it was really noticeable in other episodes. It seems to be Morgan and Rossi more than the others. This bothers me because shouldn’t they want to hear what she says without putting words in her mouth? I understand that sometimes you would need to prompt a witness, but you can’t tell them what happened; they need to tell you. Maybe a minor point, but one that gets to me!

Anyway, overall, I liked the episode quite well. I felt bad for Vincent - that is an unimaginable thing for a child to see. But then again, he killed several women. He orphaned Stanley. It shows us again that life is not black and white nor are all the unsubs. There is true evil (like the sociopathic little boy in last week’s episode) but then there are also people who have been broken like Vincent.

What did you think of “The Big Wheel”? And Alex O’Laughlin?

Update: I totally forgot! We have another CM on tonight. “Brothers in Arms,” about a killer targeting Phoenix police officers will reair tonight at ten on CBS, taking the place of Harper’s Island (which moves to Saturday night at nine). Enjoy this bonus!