Well, they tried.
I know there were two episodes...but really, they were practically one long one and the issues present in one episode were present in the other so it's better to grade them together than separately.
Let me start by saying, honestly, if this wasn't a show I've watched for years on end and if this forum wasn't so engaging with lively discussion, then I don't know how much I would want to bother with watching the rest of the season.
...but...
As Dave Rossi and Emily Prentiss themselves implied in the second episode, catharsis from misery sure is easier when you have company, and here there is company.
So, as long as I'm not alone in hate-watching this thing, I'll be around.
That said...the episode...
...um...I really don't know.
I'll give the writers this much- at least the connection to the cases is simple with the briefcases. Still incredibly implausible and absolutely ridiculous, but, hey, this is Hollywood.
Joe Mantegna seems to have been revived, as he was stellar throughout. It was strange seeing Rossi swear up a storm but Mantegna sold it like the champ he is, plus that scene with Rossi and the daughter at the end of the first episode was touching and emotional, and I loved every minute of it.
Kirsten Vangsness also reminded me about why I liked Penelope Garcia at first, because when Garcia could be her cutesy self but still act like an adult, she was riveting. Unfortunately, towards the end it looked like the bad Garcia was starting to show up again, so I'm not sure how excited I'll be about Garcia going forward.
Glad that Paget Brewster is going with the haggard look, not just because it's refreshing that Hollywood is letting an actress actually show her age but also because haggard suits the Prentiss character. I don't like how I waited an episode and a half to realize she's now the new Section Chief, replacing Matteo Cruz (quietly fired by the looks of it), but at least the role suits her.
Oh, and Prentiss' quip about her being the only one who is "not getting laid around here" was gold. Though I'm not sure I felt the temperature rise when Tara Lewis showed off her new girlfriend.
I also liked how there's actually some hints that JJ's workload could actually start affecting her marriage, even if that storyline is eleven years too late. Yeah, it's a bit of a retread of the Hotch storyline, but if they can make this storyline fresh and are actually committed to seeing it through (that means no cutting corners where it's solved with some simple JJ peptalk or Will "just accepting things" like he used to), this could actually be interesting.
Also interesting- did A.J. want to show off how badly she hit the gym or something? I'm not criticizing her look because I think she looks fantastic, but I also noticed JJ bore her abs more in these last two episodes than she did in the entire series beforehand, and it's not like she was wearing anything truly risqué.
I mean, despite bearing her abs, we still didn't see her navel.
That's about it when it comes to the positives.
I'll miss Reid and Simmons for sure but I'm also glad neither are back because I'm sure if they were, they wouldn't be that great of characters anyway. They weren't in CM's final days so what makes me think it would be different in the revival?
Speaking of which, Luke might as well have not been there because I don't know what he added. Guess there's a testosterone quota on the team or something.
The deputy director guy...I don't like him. To make a pro wrestling analogy, when I say "I don't like him", it's not in the "good heel" sense where I can't wait for the day the good guys get to beat him up and give him his comeuppance...no, the deputy director is a "bad heel", a guy with "go away" heat who I never want to see ever again.
I mean, this character was so bad that he wasn't just dull and pointless- his scenes and his character actually dragged down the story and the episode, because his character is such a cliche that you can't help but roll your eyes the entire time he's on the screen because you can't believe the writers cooked him up like that.
It's like the writers checked off every box for "standard Obstructive Bureaucrat character" that was there before conceptualizing him. Wow. As much as I disliked Erin Strauss as a character, she was at least way more interesting than him.
I also need to throw shade at the show's practice of depicting actual harm to the men and never hurting the women, with only the women getting rescued. It's a continuation of the same kind of "woke" nonsense the show has been dealing since S10 or so, but it's also poor storytelling (since it telegraphs the eventual beats in the story) and isn't exactly as "progressive" as the show thinks it is. Not only does it make the male victims feel meaningless because the show deems them unworthy to save, it does the female victims no favours because they're reduced to being mere objects who need the heroes to save them.
It's the same victim exploitation and gratuitous violence nonsense that police procedurals nowadays have moved on from but CM, for some reason, still can't. Five minutes of some helpless, whimpering victim strapped to an operating table adds nothing to the story- in fact, CM could easily cut those scenes out and spend more time actually telling the story, having it make sense and giving it some actual stakes.
Yeah...the stakes.
I find that CM's biggest fault- even in its halcyon days- was that it wasted too much time with the atmospheric stuff and thus didn't always do enough to establish why the baddie present this week is some special, significant baddie worthy of my attention. Which is odd given that CM is all about exploring the motivations of the criminals, but the issue goes deeper than that.
To be clear, it's not about knowing why the criminal is doing what they are doing right from the beginning- I get that revealing the UnSub's true motivations for their crimes is the puzzle CM's entire framework is built around.
It's more about the show simply not understanding that simply having several dead bodies doesn't make for a special story. At least in the early days, regardless of how farcical it got, we understood our heroes were called in because the local police were at their wits' end trying to catch the criminal so they called in additional reinforcements.
Now we don't even see that anymore. I've said it many times before on this board that the police in the more recent CM days do little more than provide coffee and doughnuts for the FBI and let them solve their cases, because the UnSubs are written so poorly that you wondered why the police couldn't have captured them themselves.
I'm not sure I could make that complaint in these episodes because the police actually looked pretty competent, but there's another complaint in the same vein I will make.
So we won't know until the end why Sicarius is doing what he is doing- fine.
(If Sicarius is even a "he". Don't be surprised if CM throws that swerve...which could be a great way to bring Cat and Reid back but I digress)
However, why are these serial killers deciding to join Sicarius' network? What made Sicarius' network so special that the serial killers wanted to join it? Also, why are the serial killers so loyal to Sicarius that they will follow his commands and his actions to a tee, going so far as to kill themselves so that the FBI can't ask them questions that would lead them to Sicarius?
(Which isn't actually true anyway once you actually think about it...sure, Sicarius' lackey is dead but that doesn't mean you can't dig up information about them- like cell phone records, Internet chats, etc.- that could be traced back to Sicarius. In fact, people who are dead have less protection from intrusive FBI searches because dead people can't object about violations to their right to privacy because dead people have no rights (essentially). So Sicarius' "air-tight, foolproof plan" is even stupider once you do actually think about it)
Even if Sicarius' plan actually did work and actually did make sense, it's more of the same from CM's display of "group dynamics". There's always the jerk who "dominates" one or more pathetic minions, who follow the jerk's instructions to a tee without fail, until the climax where one of the pathetic minions decides he or she doesn't want to be pathetic anymore and "breaks the rules", leading to the group leader's capture.
Ostensibly, it's not a bad story, but CM writes those plots without adequately explaining why those particular group members decided to join up and need the group in the first place. Even in these episodes, why would either minion care so much about preserving Sicarius that they'd rather die than get live and be arrested? No matter what Sicarius would have on his lackeys, he should be smart enough to know that he can't rely on all of them to do exactly as he says, especially once they're in the crosshairs of the police. I mean, Sicarius is helping them be better serial killers- whether they are dead or arrested still means they're no longer serial killers. So why would a lackey bother committing suicide?
Evolution would have been far better if they went with these options:
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