Her review of "Paradise" wasn't favorable, but she did squee over the casting of Wil Wheaton and that they went against type with Mapother.

I like her focusing on themes, both season and series-wide, and her concentrating on character consistency. Those aspects of Reid's character that I quoted above were stuff I think I had noticed but never articulated to myself, so it was nice that someone else did.

Thanks for the YouTube suggestion for Season 5! I've just made my way through half of the season, skipping The Performer (since it'll be on A&E tomorrow) and 100 (which I've already seen most of on YouTube already). Just watched Uncanny Valley--oh so creepy! Loved the diabetic victim. As soon as the unsub left the ladies behind, she's ditching the IV and saying, "Let's go." I love this show when the female victims (of all ages) fight back and try and save themselves. (Also, loved when the boutique's owner got all snippy over the dated "doll" dress, but then got pushed out of the way by the seamstress who pointed out that it was handcrafted by an artist with the needle.)

Reid is already pissed at Dr. Daddy Frakes before he has his "inference" confrontation with him (again, already seen that on YouTube) as soon as he found out he'd subjected his 10-y.o. daughter to electroshock. Character consistency is such a great thing to have on a long-running tv series. Reid being the defender of the mentally ill has been around since the beginning, and I love it when the writers use it.

Uncanny Valley was phenomenal-- I loved that it was one of those creepy ones without a lot of gore or violent deaths. And wrathful Reid is a thing of beauty.

Uncanny Valley is the only CM ep I've seen. Creeped me right out. Clearly I will need to rent the DVDs at some stage.

The entirety of the show is deeply psychological, but it's really, really at its best when the cases have the UnSubs be as much victim as perpetrator, such as in Uncanny Valley, Conflicted, or Pleasure is My Business. Or conversely, when the UnSubs deliberately pit themselves against the profilers, such as in Fisher King, No Way Out, or Masterpiece.

At least, those are the eps I tend to like the best.

Uncanny Valley was the ep where I really saw Reid's maturity. His confrontation of the unsub's father as amazing, he made eye contact, he didn't sutter or dither. Wonderful.

Leverage:

This AG from West Virginia is a trip. I can't believe the writers went THERE.

le n, there's already someone on John's blog getting all pissy because they went there.

Any public figure can be parodied! Why shouldn't they parody Palin ?

no shit. and she's a cheap target anyway. it isn't like he went after Ronald Reagan.

Leverage isn't a procedural.