delga | { it's not confidential, I got potential. }

So, I spent much of the weekend rewatching the second-half of Criminal Minds' second season. Traditionally re-watches begin at the top of a series or season, but, um. Well. I just picked Prentiss' first episode and carried on watching. Because of this (her first full episode is 2x10, Lessons Learned) I've inevitably skipped the whole Elle arc which is a bit of a shame because there are some fantastic stand-alones in the first season. The Sister owns season 1 so eventually we'll just swap boxsets. Or marathon, whoop whoop.

I watched 2x10 through 2x17, a span of episodes which include Emily's arrival and outsider status, the reveal of Derek's childhood trauma, Reid's kidnap and torture, and his subsequent drug addiction. All of this comes on the heels of Elle's spiralling descent and eventual bottoming-out. This season begins a trend of more personal episodes - it's the season which ends with Frank coming after Gideon, a story line that ends at the top of season 3 with Gideon just disappearing.

The span of episodes I watched also included Frank's initial appearance (No Way Out, an episode which features the awesomely badass MELISSA LEO FUCK YEAH, as well as Keith Carradine as the tres creepy Frank) as well as the episode where the unsub is a man suffering from PTSD who is killing people at construction sites thinking he is in Somalia. That remains one of my all-time favourite stand-alone episodes. That episode also shows the break in Reid and Emily's relationship which, when you watch the episodes so close together, is even more wrecking than when the episodes first aired. Up until Reid's kidnap - that very episode included - he and Emily have been working as a team, and it takes so long for the two of them to regain that ground. It's one of the reasons why Minimal Loss is so satisfying to me because the two work so well in tandem.

Emily's introduction is so great. She is totally the girl with foot-in-her-mouth syndrome, awkward and wanting to fit in as quickly as possible. She tries to hard to please and is anxious about causing offence. I remember wanting to know so much about her and only getting bites: she hates politics, she loves Vonnegut, she hasn't read Mother Night in fif-- twelve years (you'd better believe that last one had me flipping out). And I just adored her. I adored how competent she was, I adored how socially awkward she could be. I adored that she should have felt in control and maybe even superior to her team members (considering her education and her privileged status) and yet, almost counter-intuitively, how she was very much the opposite in these regards. And fuck me, I love that she's a linguist.

(Two of my favourite Prentiss moments are actually quite similar in tone. One is Reid's aggression towards her in the army-guy-plus-PTSD episode, and how she confronts him and then is pushed back so forcefully. She's wounded there, and I often notice that Emily will do this a lot - be verbally struck and then unable to countermand. The other is in Revelations when JJ gets frustrated at Emily's calm, and then to add insult to injury Hotch backs JJ. "I compartmentalise better than most people." Oh, oh, oh. One line - so defensively said, too - that sums her up. And we're back to Minimal Loss, in a way, because she can take the abuse. She can take it.)

The thing that I didn't anticipate was missing Gideon. Watching him in these episodes - he really brought something to the team that Rossi has never been able to replicate. I like Rossi; I don't mind him in the least. I find his transformation a little bewildering (one minute a complete antagonist in the team, shaking things up and making the scene interesting; the next thing, he's everyone's nanny. What the hell?) but whatever. But Gideon. My gosh. To be fair, I find episodes like The Evilution of Frank tiring because I am not into exploring Gideon's ptsd issues. BUT. Gideon's relationships with other people and the way his mind works: these are beautiful things, and I do believe that it was Gideon's presence that brought such a spark to the show. Not precisely because of him, but of how he engaged with the team, and what the team lost when they lost him. So, yes, I miss him, too.

Other things that I miss: the team working separately but in tandem. Two people interrogating, two people tech-ing, two people on the beat. I wouldn't want it as a formula but I do miss the way the machine used to work, and I think the show is less successful at that now. ALSO! The variety of cases. Everyone is a serial killer now, whereas one of the episodes I watched had Anton Yelchin (lols, who played Paget Brewster's son in Huff) living the nature vs. nurture argument out via his own body - unable to curb his violent impulses but afraid of them, too. What happened to that variety? Yes.

And Reid. Reid, my gosh. His guilt over his mother, his addiction, his increasing loss of control. I haven't played that arc through yet (and you can't, not really, not until a year later at the least) but I'm looking forward to paying more attention this time. There's so much that I miss with this show, I know it. But that's the benefit of the rewatch.

Afterwards I watched some seriously old-school NCIS. HEY THEY WORK FOR THE NAVY WHO KNEW? (Baby McGee! D'awwwww).