Criminal Minds

I’m sad there is only one new episode of Criminal Minds. Shows like “Birthright” remind me how exciting and interesting the show is. The story involved missing and murdered young women in Virginia. As the team investigates, they find a victim of a similar crime that had happened 27 years ago. There was a series of killings in 1980, and this woman is the only survivor. She says she can’t help when the profilers come to talk to her, but she doesn’t appear frightened that the killer could be back. This leads them to believe the killer is dead, and they are led to his sons. They find out that the victim had become pregnant by her captor and had the child. They suspect him and go to talk to him. He knew about his father, but he cared so much about his mother that he never told her he knew - he played along with her lie.
The killer also had a son by his wife, who becomes the prime suspect. He doesn’t show up for work, and the BAU goes to his house.
There, they find a pregnant wife and a barn. As they search the barn, they find signs that he’d been torturing women there, but not holding them there. Now they need to figure out where the women are being held. They bring the only survivor of the 1980 crimes to the scene, hoping she can help in some way. She sees her captor’s wife and starts yelling at her…why didnt’s she stop him? Why didn’t she help her? She must have known what’s going on. The wife becomes so upset that she blurts out that she killed him. This kind of takes everyone aback. She said she came home - while pregnant, by the way - and saw all the blood. She figured out what was going on and killed her husband so he wouldn’t hurt anyone else. She didn’t want her son to know that his father was a murderer. But he does find out and continues his father’s legacy.
The surviving victim remembers walking to the barn, a long walk, uphill, with boulders along the way. The wife then remembers a piece of property that fits the description, and the team is led to the women. But not the killer.
Meanwhile, the killer’s pregnant wife goes to a spot where she knows he goes to be alone. She confronts him, and as the BAU is rushing to find him, they hear a shot. When they come to the scene, the killer is laying on the ground. His wife says that he came after her and she had to shoot him. She looks at the first killer’s wife, and it’s understood that that wasn’t exactly the case. She killed him for the same reasons his mother had killed his father.
It was perfectly symmetrical, and you kind of wonder what this unborn baby is going to turn out like.

Anyway, it was an interesting episode, and the story was entertaining. JJ gets a little more focus in “Birthright.” She is extremely bothered by this case. Hotch points out to her that the victims of crimes they investigate tend to be around her age. She identifies with them, and is wondering if she can stop caring so it’d be easier.
We also discover the mystery of the bracelet Rossi carries. He’s talking to the sheriff who investigated the 1980 crimes. This guy was haunted by the case, he knew every detail, but he couldn’t solve it back then. Rossi tells him that he carries this bracelet because he had a case where three children watched their parents get beaten to death on Christmas Eve. He promised them that he’d find their killer, but he need succeeded. This has bothered him for 21 years. And he notes, that every Christmas Eve, he calls to tell the children that he hasn’t forgotten and will find the killer. Last year, none of them bothered to return his call.
I liked how they used the former sheriff as a way for Rossi to tell his story. At the end, the former sheriff tells Rossi not to let it get to 22 - meaning not to let another year go by with his haunting case hanging over his head.
Hotch is also served with divorce papers at the end of the episode.

AJ Cook spoke with LA’s Daily News about the strike and Mandy Patinkin’s departure from the show.

In the beginning, it was very stressful because nobody really knew what was going on, but it’s been such a great transition. If ever there could be a great transition, this was it. Joe’s fabulous, he really does feel like he’s been there from the very beginning. He fits in so perfectly.

AJ seems like the type of person who is as nice as she appears. Hopefully, the writers and networks will reach a decision soon so we can see more of JJ’s evolution.
Ratings for the new season are just as high as they were for the previous two seasons with Patinkin. Another thing that AJ likes is the way her character, JJ, is changing.

I like that J.J. has seriously evolved. She went from being a couple of lines per episode to really coming into her own. I love it whenever she gets to pull her gun out - that’s exciting for me. Or when I get to put the FBI vest on and storm a building with everyone else. It’s a lot of fun. She’s badass now, I like it.

She’s also an important part of the team - Hotch takes her advice very seriously. There are cases that he agrees to investigate based on JJ’s say-so.

On the WGA strike:

We are entering into the great unknown here and I really feel for our crew. Many of them live paycheck to paycheck and can’t afford to have a five- or six-month strike. I support the writers and I understand; I just want it to be over quickly.

AJ Cook is another squeaky clean Criminal Minds cast member. Her full name is Andrea Joy Cook, and she grew up in Ontario, Canada. AJ is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The roles she chooses have to fit into her faith - she won’t pick roles that go against her beliefs. She says, “I will not do nudity. I will not do a sex scene. There are just certain things I will not do.”

“I am just your everyday, average girl. I live by the beach. I wear flip flops. I don’t wear make-up. I go to the gym.”

AJ’s job in Criminal Minds is anything but average. She plays JJ (Jennifer Jareau), who is the BAU’s liason to the press and local police departments. Part of her job is to choose which cases the team will work on. In the last episode of Season Two, Hotch is telling Section Chief Erin Strauss about the team. Of JJ, he says that she goes home every night tormented, wondering if she chose the right cases.
She makes a nice addition to the team. Although not an agent, she has an important job - in addition to her press and go-between duties, she comforts and informs the families of the victims.

Here’s a random AJ Cook fact - she didn’t begin acting until she was 17 years old. Her first role was in a commerical for McDonalds inn 1997.

Tonight’s episode is a rerun of “Legacy,” in which the BAU is called to Kansas City to investigate the disappearances of homeless people. Detective McGee from Kansas City approaches JJ for help because his own superiors do not believe the missing person cases are connected. McGee believes there may be as many as 63 victims. Hotch and JJ go to “unofficially” look into the case, while a prostitute named Maggie is fighting for her life.
Early in the show, Hotch walks into Gideon’s office to find him watching Charlie Chaplin movies - a little comic relief from the horrors of their job.

I never realized before that AJ Cook had been in a bunch of things that I’d seen. I guess I thought she appeared out of nowhere to be on Criminal Minds.
A YouTube clip from Out Cold, which I think is a dumb movie but always makes me laugh:

And another classic: Final Destination 2.
See AJ as a brunette.

AJ also starred in The Virgin Suicides. Set in 1970’s Michigan, AJ plays one of the five Lisbon sisters. The Lisbon’s seemingly perfect life is ruined when their 13 year old sister commits suicide. Their parents then try to isolate their remaining daughters, which makes them forbidden fruit for neighborhood boys. I’m actually going to put that on Netflix right now. I saw it a few years ago, but reading about it makes me want to see it again.
So AJ didn’t come from nowhere. You can also see an interview she gives about her character, JJ at YouTube.

AJ Cook talks about how the show will introduce Joe Mantegna’s new character, while at the same time explaining Agent Gideon’s (Mandy Patinkin) departure.

The writers are locked in a room somewhere trying to find out who this new character is and how to bring him on. It’ll be interesting to see how that changes the dynamic on the set and on screen…Last season [Agent Gideon's] girlfriend was killed and he was on the run trying to find the killer, so luckily they had that, to set up his departure…They’ve left us all in the dark here. All I know is we’re looking for him … We’re trying to figure out where he is and hunt the man down. What’s so funny is, it’s kind of art imitating life. In our read-through, we had lines in there that seemed to be pulled out of our lives — ‘Has anyone seen Gideon — or Mandy?’

Cooks said she’d be “shocked” if they killed off Mandy Patinkin’s character.
Shemar Moore expressed anger at Patinkin for leaving the show without any word to his costars, feeling they were “slapped in the face.”

I don’t like that he did this the way he did this. I don’t think it’s right. He left us hanging… no warning, no nothing. We all showed up to work on Day 1, and he didn’t.

Thomas Gibson was also disappointed: “We look at this as a great opportunity to shake things up. This is certainly a disappointment to everyone, but I don’t think it’s a catastrophe.”
AJ recently said of Patinkin:

We have been kind of playing phone tag, but he has gone out of his way to make sure he reached all of us. I think that was the biggest part for us … We just didn’t know what was going on, and we were all worried. Once we got into contact with him and knew he was OK, then it was we just want him to be happy. (National Ledger)

As to Mandy Patinkin’s final appearance on Criminal Minds: He shot one day of scenes that will be stretched out into two episodes. TV Guide reports that he will be in the scene alone because none of the other stars wanted to work with him again after he left without telling them. “What’s more, Minds’ producers were forced to use a special crew to shoot the pariah’s scene because the show’s regular staff refused to be on set with him.”
Apparently, the scene will show Agent Gideon getting into a car and driving away, and which, according to TV Guide, will air on October 3.

(Look for more on AJ Cook tomorrow.)

In 1973, only 24 out of 8,767 FBI agents were women. In 2007 there are 30,646 agents, 13,692 of whom are women. The percentage is smaller in the BAU, but on Criminal Minds, women are well represented by Emily Prentiss (Paget Brewster), JJ (AJ Cook), and Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness). These agents each bring unique skills to the team, without which they wouldn’t be as successful.
I found this clip on YouTube of the ladies hanging out at a bar together. Before their night gets interupted by work, they have a little fun with a man who claims to be an FBI agent. The scene is actually based on a real event - an FBI agent that Paget Brewster got to know through the show had this happen to her.

For the longest time, fans - myself included! - have asked the big question: Yes, the chase to catch killers and rapists is awesome, but will JJ and Reid ever finally hook up?

There was once a mention of a date way back when, but then nothing ever came of it and everyone was left wondering if we’ll just have to deal with the cute tension between them without anything further. A.J. Cook, the wonderful actress who plays JJ is just as in the dark about it, as seen when she was asked about the relationship that never was:

I’d personally love to see it as long as it doesn’t override the main purpose of the show. And if it never happens, well we always have about eight thousand fanfics revolving around their relationship to make us feel better.