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delgaOh my.
So, Emily Prentiss. I have been waiting for Emily Prentiss back story since she made her first, brief appearance in season 2 and Hotch throws her out of the office. It's not a secret: I love the character, a lot of my interest in the show (these days) is based on my interest in her, and I've come to really adore the actress, Paget Brewster. For a while I wanted back story a lot, and then I came to appreciate the way in which Emily's silence said so much about her. The little hints were tantalising but interesting. Her patterns of behaviour, her interests: I love them.
In a lot of ways, I fell for Emily Prentiss because she held traits that I aspire to: a breadth of intellect, linguistic-fu, compassion, guarded empathy, patience, an ability to compartmentalise. Emily is a person who doesn't press too hard; she tries hard to fit in (and often puts her foot in her mouth); she is someone who is about detail, and understanding her is about understanding details.
In recent months I've gone back to wanting to know something - gosh, anything - about her history. The hints were great, but now it was time for something concrete. Now it was time for Emily to open up just a hint. And then I heard about this episode. Oh boy.
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Let me say straight off that in terms of case, this is a weak, weak episode, and I know that for most people this episode will be a bore if they aren't invested in Prentiss. I think exorcisms are an easy target in fiction, especially crime fiction, and I was pretty disappointed when the mini-synopsis of this week's episode was basically 'Killer Priest uses Exorcism as weapon; Prentiss is involved'. I held out hope because CM has this habit of taking something - a practice, a belief, an action - handing us our expectations and then proceeding to stab each preconceived notion and cliche in the heart with a butcher's knife. I thought maybe that's what this episode would be about and instead it... really, really wasn't. I mean: it REALLY wasn't. And in that way, this episode is a HUGE let down because to my mind, Prentiss' development should not have been left to such a shitastic case.
That said: Paget Brewster acted the shit out of this episode. I am so biased, I know this, but I think I can argue my point by pushing you towards the range and depth of emotion that Prentiss displayed this week. Paget is a crazy personality; Emily is so subdued, so subtle. This episode is Emily thrown from her bedrock, so yes, she's somewhat out of character. And in those moments, she's amazing. She's just phenomenal.
I want to talk momentarily about David Rossi. How the hell did Rossi become the guy that people turn to when they can't talk to the others in the group? I wonder if it's not because he's so emotive at times when others are mostly shut down. Consider him leaving Reid mostly to Morgan in Reid's two-parter earlier this season, but choosing to be there for Reid all the same. Consider his kindness to JJ when she returned, and the way that played out. Consider, now, him with Prentiss this week. He is so wildly different to Gideon. I cannot imagine Gideon being so fast-ball and free-fall with Emily. It's Rossi who tells Hotch to swallow the politics (back to that momentarily); it's Rossi who watches Emily, and pushes her enough to get her to break her silence. It's Rossi who openly helps and believes her from the get go. And it's Rossi who is the last to leave her there in the snow: what are you thinking?
Rossi is her confessor, which leads to a nice touch of characterisation: the effects of confession. Emily opens up to Rossi and then the next scene is the profile to the Catholic priests; Emily is much more composed, much less frenetic and frustrated. When she gives that profile, she is in a good space. She is doing what she knows, she is doing what she is good at, and she has shared, so she's a little more unburdened than she was before. I love the direct contrast between her stifling her tears and then that clear, calm imploring tone that she uses when giving the profile. Oh gosh, seriously: Paget Brewster, guys. SERIOUSLY.
Contrast Rossi to Hotch who's known Emily a little longer. The Hotch&Prentiss relationship has always been interesting to me because he's always ridden her hard, and she's always made strides to accommodate and please him. Earlier this season Emily asks Hotch for leniency on Jordan's behalf, and that conversation is so telling. Hotch knows that he pushes Emily (and the others, but to an extent her more - their history is a little complicated because he's always been her boss, there's less of a personal connection, and the issue of her hiring [and re-hiring] was problematic), but he doesn't always seem to register just how much is pushing her effects her. In that conversation she deftly avoids that issue, but he sympathy for Jordan arises from her own dealings with him.
The post-credits section of this episode was great because Emily is, at all other times, so composed, so well put together, so unshaken. She's the one who, by her own admission, compartmentalises so well. Even after the beating she took at the top of the season, even bleeding and bruised, she was still well-composed. She was still thinking clearly. But here she's downtrodden, she's soaking wet, she's on the verge of tears, and Hotch notices that immediately. (How could you not?) What's interesting, though, is how his show of sympathy changes as the episode progresses. At first, in this scene, he is open; he attempts to offer support; he does what Hotch does, which is, he offers the team. Later, when there's been a complaint against the team, Morgan points out that Hotch could have reemed Emily over but he didn't, which is uncharacteristic of his behaviour (see again: how he once would have approached Emily; think of his dealings with Jordan). Then, as the stakes get higher, and as Emily gets more challenging, he shuts her down and tells her to take a couple of days' leave. It's Rossi who tells him to make the calls that need to be made, forcing him to see past Emily and see the case for what it is: someone who needs to be stopped; another life that needs to be saved. (I think it's telling that Emily as gets more 'aggressive' with Hotch, he shuts down more. This is very Hotch-like. He shuts that shit down*, and with good reason, but he does get blinded by Emily's personal connection.) I'm not saying his treatment of Emily is specific to her - he treats everyone in a clinical way - but I think their relationship is complicated by a lack of friendship and affection.
Politics are something that Hotch and Emily have in common. It's politics that put them in opposition to begin with; it's a hatred of politics that brought them together; it's Emily's unwillingness to be manipulated by them at the top of s3 that really brings her out of new girl status for Hotch. She will not play by those rules and so she earns his respect. It's interesting to me, then, that it's politics that Rossi wants Hotch to play against when he finally makes those calls to the Italians &c. Hotch knows what the right thing is, but he needs pushing, and explicitly, he needs to be pushed to (potentially) give up what he does give up for Emily. For others it would be different, but with Emily, he needs that push. In a way he lets her down. I mean, his actions make sense and are understandable, but where Emily never gave Hotch up, he sort of gives up on her. It's a little sad. Understandable, but sad.
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I would have liked to have seen a little more interaction with the team as a whole, but I can see why that didn't happen. Emily chooses very carefully to speak to David and not to any one else. She's not really explaining herself to Morgan, and his characteristic detachment and lack of sympathy in her direction (which, I personally feel mirrors the way he treats JJ; it's different with Garcia and Reid, and Hotch&Rossi are Mom&Dad*, so that's a different thing, too) explain why she wouldn't go to him. It's telling that she doesn't want to talk about the things that make her different: that's such an Emily trait. She's the girl who had to make friends quickly and repeatedly; she's the girl who, again by her own admission, wants to fit in. She knows that different groups operate in different ways; she has to cut off elements of herself so that she can fit in to different groups. So, in this group of people, she doesn't talk so much about herself because her history brings her some shame; because she doesn't want to be known by her mother's merits; because she likes these people and wants them to like her. So she picks Rossi because Rossi comes to her. And in picking Rossi, she immediately does some damage control: she doesn't talk to Garcia, to Morgan, to JJ, to Reid, to Hotch (though the latter is for different reasons, natch). I would have liked to see her talk to JJ but JJ has a child now, and JJ 's sympathy isn't useful. I would have loved to see her talk to Reid, but I wonder how much she worried about whether or not she would get sympathy from Reid. I don't think these are conscious decisions so much as instinctively emotional ones. I don't think people make these decisions as deliberately as they think they do. I think you have friends you go to with one set of problems and friends you go to for other sets. And I think, very much I think this, I think that Emily felt so alone this week, so much of an outsider, even now. She still thinks of herself as the new girl. (I think the writers could have built on the trust re-established between Emily and Reid from earlier this season, but I think some of the decision against that has to do with how much they have or haven't used Reid this season. I think that's a little stupid, but whatever. I'd have liked to have seen it.) I did like the scene after Reid, Prentiss and Rossi give the profile to the priests and Reid exits to call Garcia; I loved how Prentiss knew he had something; I loved how Reid's small show of support this week was to (a) give the profile and (b) help in the search for the priest. Emily and details; Reid and details. It's Reid' observation of the details in Emily's absence of those - his ability to take the information he's been given and apply it (via numbers, via Garcia - and that, too, is such a nice moment) to the situation at hand, it's that act which helps Emily at a time when she can't put the information together fast enough, and also when her visibility and sense of protocol prevent her from moving more quickly. By that I mean: Reid just walks from the room, doesn't even think about it; Emily can't just dismiss the audience of priests. She needs them; she has to cater to them.
Back to Morgan temporarily: I liked how his issues with faith came through this week. The things he does or does not believe in fall distinctly into those two categories, or at least, he likes to think so and thus operates accordingly (as we've seen before, that's not always the case; she the way Rossi manipulates him and opens him up just before Garcia is attacked). It's weird to me that Morgan was the straight guy this week; I'd have expected his and Rossi's roles to be reversed, but it really does make more sense this way around. Morgan is so steely at the end of the episode; he acts like Emily's sincere thanks are an apology of sorts (which they are, thinly, but really it's mostly just gratitude) and his reply is something of a chastisement. His words say, literally, 'of course', but his tone says, 'I would always do this when it needs doing' as opposed to 'I would always do this for you'. Morgan has this habit of pushing out instead of pulling in. He's done it to JJ, too, though the opposite is true with Reid and Garcia. I think it speaks volumes about how he acts when he feels threatened in some way, or powerless (his callousness towards JJ comes after Reid is taken, after all, and now this with Emily is a confrontation over God). I thought the character interaction was strong, but compare it to Reid, and people's careful caution; compare it to Garcia, and all that love. Emily is an outsider, but how much of that is because she's the 'new' girl, and how much is that because she never lets anyone in? A lot of her loneliness is self-perpetuating.
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(*) [aside] This notion of Hotch as Mom (and subsequently, Gideon &/or Rossi as Dad) has always been a bit of a fandom joke, but it has interesting implications, and actually plays out that way on screen a lot of the time. Hotch shuts down the tantrums, the bullshit; Rossi is a little more indulgent. Hotch, in a lot of ways, is the authority figure that Emily has spent her whole life trying to impress or live up to or appease; Hotch is often a stand-in for Emily's own mother. Look at the way Emily defers to her mother in that (horrendous) episode in S2; look at the way she defers to Hotch so often, and how she doesn't argue with him in front of others. With her mother she would have waited until company departed before questioning her; with Hotch she waits until the priest leaves and they are in Hotch's office before she opens with her torrents of protests. And Hotch shuts her down, and she walks away tight-lipped. You know what sort of kids do that? Kids who can't argue with their parents; kids who want to please their parents but are also controlled by them and so don't have a lot of their own volition. I'm projecting a bit here, but fuck, that was so familiar. Open-mouthed, wordless, ineffectual protests. Emily says something to the effect of, you said you'd give me leeway, and the lack of support she gets from Hotch in that moment (understandably, always understandably; it makes sense that he did what he did because that is Hotch) seems to me a reflection of the absence of support Emily once faced with her mother. She says, you said you'd give me leeway and the echo of that, the ghost of that, the predecessor to that plaintive utterance is, you said you'd be there, or you said you'd make time for this, or Mom, you said we could do this. We still don't know anything about Emily's father; Emily turned to Rossi. There's something to that, I just don't know what yet, other than: she couldn't/didn't want to talk to Hotch/the figure standing in for her mother. She never tells her mother about the abortion. [/aside]
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So, things that we knew about Emily Prentiss: she moved around a lot as a child and an adolescent because of her mother's work; she is multilingual; she hates politics; she believes you can't choose who you love (I take this from her reactions to various cases/people in the three-ish seasons we've known her); she wants to be a mother; she has been known to wear a slight Christian cross (which is mostly covered up). edit: I don't think she's wearing it this week? Or it really is hidden. I only really noticed it in Minimal Loss so I can't be sure that she wears it all that often.
Things that this week came to light and thus explained what we already knew: she ended up in Italy; she had some sort of religious/Christian affiliation which, I think, she may have gotten from Benton, not her mother; she tries hard to fit in with groups, and that sense of belonging/family is important to her because she didn't have it herself, and she didn't get to tie down roots; she got pregnant and had an abortion at 15.
That's a lot of explaining.
There are still mysteries. Emily is by no means an open book, but that's good. You can't explain everything about a person, and explaining everything about a character leaves them hollow. But a lot of what made this episode compelling to me (and which may not appeal to others who aren't so invested in Emily) is the way in which Emily was systematically made to open up in ways that she normally baulks at. Emily is someone who listens and notices details. She's someone who allows others to open up and a lot of that is due to her silence: the absence of her speech leaves space for others to speak into. She plays her cards close to her chest. Even her emotional outbursts tend to be subdued: her anger, her sympathy, they're all quiet. (I am going to point out something that once you realise will never leave you alone: Brewster plays all her scenes with her mouth open; her lips rarely close. Mostly you wonder why but it adds a dimension to Prentiss:) She is someone who has things to say but nearly always chooses not to say them.
This week Emily speaks at moments when she would normally choose not to, except at one crucial moment where she defers to Hotch in what I feel is a re-enactment of her relationship with her mother (the moment when the priest leaves interrogation and Hotch shuts Emily down). Her anger and her frustration are such open expressions of powerlessness, of lack of control. Her friend's death brings up all the baggage of that friendship and of her adolescence - it brings up all those emotions that she bottled up and tucked away and never spoke about. In a lot of ways, Emily fails to compartmentalise these emotions because they spring from (a) a defining event in her life and (b) from a point in her life when she didn't have that self-control. In a lot of ways, she regresses: she can't talk to her mother/Hotch; she doesn't have a support network in place; she doesn't have confidence in herself. She is out of place, she is out of her element; she feels weak, and small, and helpless, and her anger is often displayed in a manner or pattern of speaking that is very adolescent. Whereas Emily would usually argue her points this time she doesn't do that - I think she can't do that; I think her grief overrides her controlling impulses (understandably) and she ends up sort of standing there with her arms open protesting ineffectually. There's that moment when she turns to Morgan and demands, almost, an explanation for his lack of support, but you know, Morgan is sort of right: she doesn't get his support because to his mind they're linking coincidences with wishful thinking. Emily can't believe it; she wants blind faith of a sort that friends give and she doesn't get it, and I don't think she often gets it in her life. That said, I also don't think she often asks for it.
But yes, her anger, again, in the scene with her dead friend's parents, and then all that grief - the way she is continually suppressing her tears: when she comes into the BAU, when she's talking to Rossi, when they apprehend the priest. She doesn't allow herself to grieve; that feeds in to her frustration; the frustration feeds into those short, sharp bursts of anger which fizzle out so quickly (see: her inability to argue with Hotch; see: her frustration with her friends' parents) because she's not used to sustaining anger. She sustains frustration and then she sublimates it, continually, continuously. That's Emily Prentiss: cut and control.
What I do like about this episode is that it makes Emily emotionally accessible/vulnerable without disempowering her. She's a powerful female character without being cold; she's a powerful female character who is characterised by her femininity. In no way does this episode detract from her inherent strengths, nor does it add to her inherent personal weaknesses: it simply explicates them. It opens her up a little bit. It adds a dimension to her character, and does so in a kindly, sympathetic way. The reluctance with which she approaches her friend to begin with; the effect the news of the death has on her; her pursuit of quiet for him and for herself; the sadness of her kindness towards her friend at the end; her solitude: all of these things brought together the different elements of Emily that we've seen. Emily became a little more whole with this episode, and I like that, I like how that was done, I like that is was done, and wasn't just left. That part was well-constructed and well-executed.
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I have been thinking about Prentiss a lot this season, more than I usually do, and this post is long because this episode gave a way of cohering the various pieces of information we had about her, and thus gave me a way to talk about her characterisation in a way that was previously more difficult. I talk about Ziva David like this so often because her story is linear and coherent, whilst Emily's is non-linear and fragmented. Until now. I hope there's more to say; I hope there is always more to say.
But yes. This post is long. It's really long. And I wrote it more for me than any one else because I don't think any one else really cares that much. But hey, it's worth it. We were a long time coming to this point.
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Date: 2009-03-12 04:39 pm (UTC)And yet again, CM is one of those shows that never fails to bring it for their female characters. All the women on this show are amazing.