Criminal Minds

Criminal Minds was in top form for Wednesday night’s episode, “Lucky.”

The show opens with bubbly, happy, smiling Penelope Garcia. She meets a guy at a coffee shop, fixes his computer, and gives him her number. She tells Morgan, and says she’s not the type to get hit on from across the room, and that it usually takes men longer to realize how wonderful she is. Morgan tells her to go with her gut, which she does. She throws his number away. But then, as she is talking to Morgan, she gets mad when he implies (or seems to) that there must be something wrong with the guy if he asked her out. So of course she sets up a date.

The case the team is investigating is particularly gruesome. The victims have pentacles carved into their chests, their legs are missing, and one had partially digested fingers in her stomach. The crimes take place in a small Florida town, and it revolves around the church. After the team deduces that the unsub is a former mental patient, they find the hospital where he was likely a patient. They find out that he bit a chunk out of his nine-month old sister when he was seven. Luckily, they also found out his name. From there, it was easy to trace him - he didn’t use an alias or try to hide. The last victim is saved, but one woman is still missing.
Morgan interrogates the unsub, who wants to talk to the parish priest. The priest tells the unsub that he is not alone, God is a part of him. To which the unsub replies, “And Tracy is a part of us too.”

The gruesome part: he signed up to help with the search party. His job was to feed the other volunteers. There are flashbacks of him ladling out soup to people in the community. This was so disgusting to me - they’re eating the person they’re trying to find.

On the personal side, Morgan is struggling with his faith. He lost faith in God when he was a child and was being abused. God did nothing, Morgan says. At the end of the episode, he is praying in church.

And Garcia’s date…at the end, James says, “Garcia, I’ve been thinking of doing this all day.” Hmmm…first date kiss? No, he takes out a gun and shoots her in the chest.

This was a great episode - very dramatic and creepy. Not only was the case interesting, the characters were developed further. We got to see more of Penelope - her interaction with Morgan when she gets mad at him lets us see a different side of her. Her character shows a lot of personality, but we don’t know a lot about her personal life. This will change in the upcoming episode when the investigation into her shooting takes place.

The third season started off well with “Doubt.” I was less impressed with “Scared to Death,” but the subsequent episodes have been exciting and entertaining. Next week’s offering, “Penelope,” continues the story and leads the team to suspect that the attacker is someone close to the investigation.

If you want to read a bit more about the WGA strike, Buddy TV has a new article, with thoughts from AJ Cook, CM exec producer Edward Bernero, and CM writer Andrew Wilder.