Review for Criminal Minds Premiere Episode 10×01, “X”

Review for Criminal Minds Premiere Episode 10x01, "X"Review for Criminal Minds Premiere Episode 10×01, “X”

 

Note: This review is more ‘recappy’ than usual. Just felt like taking this route for once. ~ T.J.

Here we finally are. The first episode of the TENTH season of Criminal Minds. Before I get into the review, I’m gonna take a sec and just say how thrilled I am that our little show has sustained, persevered, and finally triumphed to achieve this milestone. CM has been winning the night since most of last season, unprecedented in a show this age, and it just keeps getting more popular, earning more and more eyeballs each episode despite virtually no promotion to speak of from CBS. Every procedural has criminals, but no other show has this team, both in front of and behind the camera. I say huzzah! and congratulations to the unique and crazywonderful, hard-working cast and crew of Criminal Minds for giving us an entire decade of the lives and trials of our heroes at the Behavior Analysis Unit!

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“You think I killed them? No, no… I just bought their limbs!

Word of the day: Creepy. So we begin by seeing a young boy outside at play, jumping down a hillside, clamoring around an abandoned ruin of a shack. He picks up a big stick and starts hitting things, throwing rocks around like boys do, and as he gets further into the shack he begins to get nervous (as well he should). He starts creeping around and spots something weird on the filthy floor. He’s startled and turns tail and runs away, and we pan back inside to see… a freakin’ naked limbless torso amidst the debris!

From there it’s a creeptastic tale of pedos, perverts and people parts, but hey! Here’s Kate Callahan, new agent, pretending to be one of those things in order to catch one, giving us a glimpse of her style at her old job with Andi (yay!) Swann’s unit. In case you’ve had a rock as a residence lately, Jennifer Love Hewitt joins the cast this year, and she blows in radiating humor and warmth, both things our team could use some of, to say the least.

We see Reid’s leather satchel (has that same bag really lasted 10 years?) jammed in between closing elevator doors, and the good doctor apologizes before joining Callahan in the car, both heading for the 6th floor. Spencer remembers he saw her at the karaoke bar last season and after an awkward but playful exchange, he directs her to Hotch’s office. She aces the interview and bam, Hotch introduces her and there are congrats and welcomes all around, and we feel like we already know her.

It’s a deftly done intro, with the writers showing awareness and consideration of the fans still-bruised feelings from Paget’s and now Jeanne’s departures. She’s natural with everyone throughout, and if the worst anyone can think of to say is that they don’t like her hair? She’s doing it right. They don’t hammer us over the head with her, but instead let us like her, because we want to anyway.

 

Several writers weighed in on the all-important Hotch/Callahan interview.
Several writers weighed in on the all-important Hotch/Callahan interview.

 

So the trail leads the team to Creepy Cowles (Kerr Smith), who isn’t the UnSub but we don’t know that yet (and was it just me or did anyone else think that if you removed his sicko fetish and the amoral and illegal means he went through to um… procure the object of his desire [Human legs. Dead human lady legs – oh yeah, I’m judging him], that he’d be a pretty okay guy? Just me?), and after a lengthy amount of time spent with clever Rossi and Callahan – who talk about him like he’s not there – where he didn’t say much of anything, he ends up copping to buying the legs, but no way did he kill those people! See? He’s not so bad!

The team redirects and Reid ends up figuring out (mwah! Love you Spencer!) that the real UnSub is using a bridle to gag these victims and that leads them to look at horse… places. Meanwhile the killer is this twisted fuck who never had any love or anything and just chops up people, sells off their limbs, and then sexually violates the torsos, disposing of them when, y’know, they start getting a little ripe.

He didn’t count though, on his victim du jour having a plan, keeping her cool, and psyching him out enough to make her one-armed escape, head-butting him after he grabs the machete, and fortunately running smack into the BAU who show up, lights flashing, as our heroes sometimes do. They split up (don’t you guys know not to do that by now?), Callahan gets bonked, knocked down, and suffers a nasty machete slice of her own from the killer. Aaron is hot on her heels though and does what he does best and busts a cap into not his ass, killing him. YAY!

Back on the jet, the team compare battle scars, JJ mentions her torture in a classic coping-mechanism kinda way by laughing it off with a “Good times.”, and Morgan chimes in with his various ouchies. Absent from this exchange are both Hotch and Reid, who have each lost more, and have been more grievously injured than anyone else on the team, Reid most recently. The fact that neither of these men want to talk about their hurts as glibly as the rest do speaks volumes.

I suspect that while there has been much made of upcoming PTSD for Garcia and JJ, that we haven’t seen the last of how Reid is coping with nearly getting killed. Again. Hey season ten! Why don’t y’all do something really subversive and give the man something/someone totally amazing in his life? Matthew’s expressed that he’d like that for Reid, I know many fans who would like that too.

All in all, an auspicious effort by everyone involved. The fan boards seemed really pleased with how this one came together (minus a few nitpicks, but there are always those) – loved the shoutout to Emily, and to Andi Swann, though personally I hope that doesn’t mean we’ll be subjected to Seaver at some point. Please show, no.

If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that we’re glad our show is BACK! Next week looks to be emotion-packed, and I for one can’t wait!

 

FUN FACT: The guy who played the first victim with the tat and the long hair is Dylan Hay-Chapman, from the Graphics Department on Criminal Minds, and he also created many of the graphics for Firefly. Shiny!

 

Written by: Erica Messer

Directed by: Glenn Kershaw