Criminal Minds Season 4 "Mayhem" & "The Angel Maker"

[marydell]

I just got CM Season 4 on DVD because I like being hopelessly behind on shows. So far I've watched the first two episodes.

Spoilers.  And cussing.

Episode 2, "The Angel Maker" was pretty good, but I have to say: Hotch, you drama queen, buy some damn ear plugs.  I mean, seriously.  Walgreens, 4 bucks. Dumbass.

Episode 1, "Mayhem," and its part-1 predecessor on the last S3 DVD, were gripping but also totally whackadoodle.

1. The FBI only has, like, 12 agents, I guess?  This is the only reason I can think of that a not-NY-based profiler who doesn't manage anyone would be offered a promotion to head up the NYC field office after an opening becomes available, instead of, oh I dunno, the 2d-in-command for NYC or maybe whoever heads up Boston.

2. So, your terrorist group has weeks of advance notice that an assassination target will be in a particular hospital having surgery on a particular date.  You have a guy who knows enough medicine to pass for an ambulance driver/EMT - and in fact appears to be a real ambulance driver/EMT, judging by his having an actual ambulance.  You also have at least 7 other guys.  All willing to die.  You seriously can't get an assassin into that hospital by any other means than an elaborate, Rube-Goldbergian plot with 1000 moving parts and multiple corpses?  If you have your heart set on getting the ambulance into the hospital garage by convincing the secret service that your patient will die if they don't let you in, why not just shoot a couple of your willing compadres and stick them in the back of the ambulance?  Easy-peasy.

3. Hotch chews out Morgan for not trusting his fellow agents with his life. Whuh?  He was trusting Garcia with his life when he was doing the ambulance driving, right? As for trusting Hotch or the other agents, what was he supposed to do, wait for them to catch up and then all get in the ambulance together?  Ticking time bomb scenario! Everyone knows that's a one-man job, unless there is a red wire/green wire situation, in which case having a sidekick help you to decide is an acceptable variant.  Anyway maybe he just doesn't trust Hotch with his life because Hotch is a dumbass who doesn't know about earplugs.  No, wait, that comes later.

4. "We can't send anyone over to help you until we clear the area."  Ok, what are you doing to actually clear the area?  Standing around behind the barricades doing fuck-all does not count as clearing the area.

5. When the bad ambulance driver is trying to send the signal to blow the truck up, why do all of the agents slowly file into the room pointing guns at no-one in particular while looking helplessly in his direction?  It's not a deadman drop switch, it's a cell phone.  He's repeatedly pushing the button and failing to get a signal. SHOOT HIM.

6. After the press in NYC reports 2 shootings by guys in black hoodies, do we seriously think a guy in a black hoodie could get on the subway without being attacked? 

7. What person with secret service protection has a planned-weeks-in-advance surgery at a busy NYC hospital, with the whole hospital being closed because of it?  There are other places in the country, you know, some of which might be more secure and quiet than Manhattan.

8. "Did we ever find out who the secret service had in the hospital?" "Does it matter?"  YES IT FUCKING MATTERS, HOTCH, YOU DUMBASS.  A terrorist cell full of willing-to-die clever people is trying to assassinate that person...you work for the FBI, remember?  This is your job.  Like, well, two of those guys are dead and so I guess the other 6 will just pack it in now.  DUMBASS.  Also, get some earplugs.

Comments

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

I had these same reactions, except I got so PISSED at Morgan for moving that bomb.

Because Morgan has had bomb squad training (we saw this way back in S1 when they were still inventing things for him to do) and the first rule of Bomb Squad is you do not talk about Bomb Squad you do NOT MOVE THE FRELLING BOMB. My fiancee who works for the NYPD (as a forensic scientist) had to leave the room after that scene because he could not refrain from making snarky remarks afterwards.

Moving a bomb is just asking for it to blow up in your face. That's why bomb squads most often end up doing a controlled detonation on site when actual explosive material is found. Because you DO NOT MOVE a live bomb. Morgan should have known this. Also? Even if he had to do it, driving a bomb that could ostensibly blow up at any second through traffic in one of the most highly populated areas on God's green earth is the perfect recipes for lots of casualties. And anyone with a brain with bomb squad training would know that.

7. What person with secret service protection has a planned-weeks-in-advance surgery at a busy NYC hospital, with the whole hospital being closed because of it? There are other places in the country, you know, some of which might be more secure and quiet than Manhattan.

INORITE?! I had that same reaction. They have hospitals for people like this - like the one that the president himself goes to when he needs medical stuff. So why in the world didn't they do this in D.C. There's no reason I can think of why you'd just HAVE to come to NYC instead of going somewhere more protectable.

My other problem with that episode was that they just let the unsub die. Nobody tried to save him or compress his wound. Given how that they were in the hospital's basement (IIRC) they had a pretty good chance of getting the guy to medical help in time to save him.

I'm just hoping that S5 impresses me more than S4 did, because honestly, I think CM is skirting shark jumping territory.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

You're so right about the driving-the-bomb-in-traffic thing. Like, it's ok if we risk having tons of casualties, as long as they're not the casualties the unsub is actually trying to cause.

And yeah, I guess moving a bomb would be bad. I'm so used to the tv-tropes type of bombs that the idea of actually handling them sensibly is kind of foreign to me.

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

And yeah, I guess moving a bomb would be bad. I'm so used to the tv-tropes type of bombs that the idea of actually handling them sensibly is kind of foreign to me.

Trust me, if I didn't live with an MOS (member of service) who does fire debris and explosives for a living, I probably wouldn't know it either. I, too, have been spoon fed all those TV tropes and believed them for a long time.

But moving a bomb is bad because things that explode tend to do so when jostled a lot. Generally, anything combustible enough to cause an explosion is something that, if too many forces are exerted on it (either heat or motion) will go kablooey. My fiancee goes to various seminars and other things to watch people blow crap up in just this manner as part of his profession.

Which is why I know very well what is very likely to happen in the back of an ambulance that's hauling ass through Manhattan traffic with a bomb in it.

Plus, moving it was stupid because it's easier, logistically and practically, to evacuate a hospital full of professionals who know how to handle themselves in an emergency situation (nurse, doctors, etc would know how to conduct a quick evacuation and the secret service would certainly have had a plan for evacuating their Very Important Patient on short notice) and move people to a safe distance while a bomb squad came in and defused the thing.

This is why I don't write for Criminal Minds. I would take away all their toys and make them cry. Also? What I know about forensics makes me sort of cringe every time I see Penelope Garcia do dental matches or DNA searches. I love Garcia, but that is far beyond her pay grade it's not even funny.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

What I know about forensics makes me sort of cringe every time I see Penelope Garcia do dental matches or DNA searches.

The database queries that return results at the speed of human thought are what get to me. Her laptop has achieved the singularity.

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

The database queries that return results at the speed of human thought are what get to me. Her laptop has achieved the singularity.

I LOL'ed. That's gotta be a quote of the week or something. I admit that's something I didn't pick up on, but now that you mention it, it does stretch the imagination.

I've always kind of wondered what databases she's searching when she looks for certain things like, I dunno, people who have bought cupcakes or bicycles in the last two weeks or people who have gotten fired. I didn't realize there was a database of such things. I could barely get the federal government to find where it put my passport.

I think it's safe to say that I watch this show because a) Derek Morgan sort of owns me and b) Reid is the little geek who could and c) the cast chemistry makes it possible for me to turn my brain off.

[calanthe-b.livejournal.com]

As for trusting Hotch or the other agents, what was he supposed to do, wait for them to catch up and then all get in the ambulance together? Ticking time bomb scenario! Everyone knows that's a one-man job, unless there is a red wire/green wire situation, in which case having a sidekick help you to decide is an acceptable variant.

He was supposed to tell them where he was going and what he was doing, even if it was utterly stupid and life-threatening, and not wait for Garcia to risk giving his position away by calling him. Basic protocol for emergency services personnel in the field - you never drop out of contact with your team, because if you do, they will assume you are dead or in danger, and they will be forced to pull resources away from the work they are supposed to be doing to search for and take care of you. They will be fine with doing that if you are in fact dead or in danger. They will be seriously unhappy if they end up having done it because you were an action-happy egotist who couldn't be bothered calling your heroics in, which Derek Morgan is a bit too often for my taste.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Okay, that makes sense. Morgan is such an action-hero cliche that I don't really think about what a person should really be doing in those situations. They're always creating a reason for him to run, knock down a door, and what have you, but when the other characters analyze him it's always about "trust" instead of "dude, what's with all the running?" etc. So I figure in their alternate universe, the Bruce Willis stuff is normal...

[calanthe-b.livejournal.com]

I figure they remember that he's an ex-footy player and think, well, he has to work it off somehow...

[jry.livejournal.com]

I just watched the season 4 opener for the first time the other night. Great list. Plus...

Penelope jams all the cell phones then continues to talk with Derek on his cell phone. Or did he suddenly have a police radio and I didn't notice?

All the bomb stuff was so dumb. Even apart from all the good points above about stability in motion, they described the bomber as an artist at obfuscation and reliability and yet he doesn't have a motion sensor? Or a link to the opening of the door? Or a deadman? Or a timer? Or a link to the vehicle's ignition? All of those things occurred to me as Morgan did one thing after another that could easily have been set up to trigger the bomb.

And then the bomber, rather than walking out of the hospital and disappearing into the night sits down, puts down his gun, takes out a big knife and waits until he's surrounded by four FBI agents to slit his own throat? Jeez, you'd think he'd at least take some of those guys with him. Or have a couple more mayhem causing goodies about his person (like the cell phone-sized bomb that supposedly blew up the SUV for example)

Oh, and why is Kate Joyner still updating her facebook page on a regular basis?

[sanguinity]

2. Rube Goldberg. Totally. On the other hand, as someone who likes spinning crazy-complex poised-on-the-point-of-a-pin ultra-conditional scenarios, I kinda liked it. In an aesthetic sense. Any ACTUAL terrorists who pulled that shit would deserve what they got, just for the sheer incompetency of it.

4. I've a little HAZWOPER training, which is different, but HazMat emergency response procedures have no whiff of emergency about them. You spend the first half-hour to hour getting dressed, while other people case the situation and build infrastructure. If there's someone dying in there, you get dressed faster and build infrastructure faster. Maybe you'll be able to get in there in fifteen minutes or so.

And yeah, to the actors who are pretending to be victims inside the response area? It looks like you're doing fuck-all. One of the things I'd always dreaded about the possibility of having one of those scenarios go down for-reals, is having to face the victims and families after and explain why you ignored them for so long.

I couldn't tell you what this particular emergency response should look like, and I certainly didn't get the sense that the extras had a set of tasks they were supposedly doing, but the endless, apparently pointless milling? Struck me as reasonably authentic.

(On the other hand, every arson episode they've done? Makes me claw at the walls in pain.)

5. MORE SHOOTING, SOONER.

8. I figured that was someone else's job. That they were behaving as if, yanno, the rest of the FBI exists, and that Hotch and Co. don't have to do EVERY DAMN THING THEMSELVES.



I haven't seen ep 2 yet, so I can't comment on earplugs. (I know, I know, I should have waited before clicking. But I was ready to close my eyes tight FAST if you had extensive ep 2 commentary.)

[marydell.livejournal.com]

You will understand the earplugs thing soon!

4 sounds reasonable, while you explain it like that. If they'd had a couple of guys in Dickies looking at a gadget or something, it would have suggested some form of non-cop expertise. Having a bunch of regular cops posing as if for a shootout was not suggestive of proper emergency procedures.

As for 8, you can't convince me that there are other agents and law enforcement professionals in this version of our world after 100 ridiculous scenes where the team has to drive like crazy to get to a house clear across town to save or warn a potential victim, instead of radioing for the effing cops to send their nearest effing patrol car. That makes me SO crazy.

What do they do wrong with the arson episodes? I mean, I believe you, I just haven't spotted the stupid because I don't know about fires.

[sanguinity]

I'm not saying 8 wasn't a major break in continuity, because it was! But I enjoyed it anyway. "Aw, look! They don't have to do everything themselves! And they trust the other agencies! They're being so adorable! I want to pat them on the head and give them cookies! Good Hotch! Good Morgan!"

I had an extented rant about 2x19 Ashes and Dust. Basically, the fact that the place instantly exploded when he hit the lighter tells you benzene was at (minimum) 12,500 ppm. Unfortunately: rezoning regulators would have been aiming for something below 0.5 ppm; you can smell benzene at 5.0 ppm; and 3000 ppm gets people so drunk that they can't reliably stand or walk. That "before I kill you, Mr. Unsub" scene should have been played falling-down drunk.

Also, having dealt with environmental regulators before, I found it utterly preposterous that the anti-hero was somehow pushing the rezoning through on fake tests. I could go on and on about that, but basically: underground storage tanks are federally regulated, so regulators would have been involved from the get go; the appropriate test equipment includes a cheap, easy, insta-read device that most field enviros carry around in the back seat of their car; regulators are as skittish as hell about putting their signatures on "this site is clean and safe" paperwork, and would only be MORE skittish about rezoning for a school (OMG SRSLY!); and did I mention that the ACTUAL contamination observed in the show would have knocked regulators on their asses when they opened the door? Because it would have.


In the arson episode at the beginning of season 1, the fire suppression systems were totally wrong. Sprinkler water and water fountain water are on separate lines; sprinkler systems have tamper-alarms on them twelve ways from Sunday (so there was a security guard somewhere who knew something was going down before Gideon stumbled across the water fountain); even if the water had been shut off to the system, there's still going to be enough standing water in the pipes to power the sprinkler heads for a little bit; ...and I think there was other stuff I've blocked. (grrlpup always grabs for the remote to pause at the first hint of any sprinkler- or alarm-related anything. TV gets it so egregiously wrong, and I have such a compulsive need to yell. As I recall, CM did not go for "and then the sprinklers everywhere all turned on at the same time!" which is what every other TV show does, but still.)

The thing with the fire coming under the dorm room door and setting that one kid instantly alight was, ahem, VERY CREATIVE. You can't get things to catch on fire unless you heat them up enough to off-gas flammable vapors first. If that kid's clothing was that instantaneously flammable, he'd never be able to work a gas stove. Or smoke a cigarette. Even if they'd somehow squirted lighter fluid on him through the crack under the door, he wouldn't have insta-engulfed like that -- his shoes might have caught on fire -- or rather, his shoes might have acted as a wick for the flaming lighter fluid -- but that fire would still have had to heat his jeans and shirt before being able to climb his body. And if they'd used some high-powered oxidizer or something to lower everything's flash point? The door would have burned, the stuff around the kid would have burned, the arsonist on the other side of the door would have burned...

[marydell.livejournal.com]

LOL! That all sounds right. You will be enraged again later in season 4 because they have another arson ep! I would feel deep sympathy for your pain, because you obviously know this shit extremely well and professionally. However, what I know well and professionally is computers, so I have to suffer CONSTANTLY while watching TV, so I only sympathize a little bit. Garcia's access to the Single Network that Contains All Data is so ridiculous I just think of it as a magic mirror at this point (Because I love love love Garcia, so I am ok with her having a magic mirror and pretending she is using a computer).

[sanguinity]

Aw, drat. I was hoping that they would back off the arson episodes now that Gideon is off the show. But you're right; it only comes up infrequently. Speaking of which...

YES GARCIA'S MAGIC DATABASES!

That she can instantaneously cross-reference between what have GOT to be discrete never-meant-to-be-cross-referenced databases, databases owned by different orgs, databases that she has istant access to, databases that she never has to LOOK at to figure out what's in them let alone how/if to meld them... it just boggles me. I've done just a little bit of work with database design and maintenance, including reconciling databases that were about different aspects of PRECISELY the same workforce (each member of which even had a conveniently unique, known, employee ID number to cross-reference by), and given how much time EVEN THEN I spent asking "are these two records the same person? Am I sure? Did all the records get considered, or do I have stray records I need to check manually? crap, can I reconstruct what these fields were supposed to mean, and do you think there's anyone around who still knows?"-- The only explanation is that yes, she has a magic mirror.

I mostly just try to ignore what she's doing with her spiffy spiffy computer. (What I find nearly impossible to ignore is that she's ALWAYS got it printing EVERYTHING to her screen, as if that wouldn't make her processes crawl like death warmed over.) I'm waiting for the episode where her magic mirror melds two different people into a composite, or returns false data on someone, or or or... Because as much as I love her, and as much as I love her awesome legendary geek awesomeness, I keep thinking that not even her magic mirror database could be THAT freakin' perfect. And at some point, the team is going to fall flat on their faces because of it.


In an hour I get to find out about the earplugs!

[sanguinity]

Oh, Hotch.

Also, don't tell me doctor-lady can't profile her patients better than that. If he wants to blow out his eardrum, he can do it on his own time. Ain't no need to do it on the FBI's.