When I started watching, I was able to start from the beginning with Ion's last cycle through the first four seasons, so I know what you mean. I couldn't resist the A&E reruns, however, so I did get a bunch of eps out of order (one of my first eps was the S2 two-parter with Tobias Henkel, so I got a big dose of Angsty Reid right off the bat).

Tonight's rerun of A Real Rain made me rethink which ep I'll first show my mom next week. That one is a good all-team ep that doesn't focus too much on any one character, and it also has great Garcia-and-Morgan phone flirtation, so I think I'll show that one first, followed by Derailed for a really good unsub, although A Real Rain does seem to parallel Derailed in terms of the unsub (psychotic hearing voices saying that "he's so tired" at the end), but this time the unsub doesn't survive the standoff.

It's weird, I've seen some episodes several times but there are still huge gaps in continuity. I'm glad ION is running things in order. A&E just confuses me.

This piece on Mad Men includes video of the opening sequence (I think) of Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Last night, I decided to finally watch all of CM's "100" on YouTube (after watching bits and pieces of it in the past). Great ep, gutwrenching, and Gibson broke my heart. Also, I loved that they went with nothing on the soundtrack other than Hotch's breathing when he was clearing the house before finding Haley's body.

Question: We've not seen them do that Reid-recites-a-conversation-from-memory thing before, have we? It's obvious how he's doing it--since's he's a visual eidetic, he's converting the phone conversation between Hotch and Foyet into a transcript and visualizing that in his head--but that's something new I don't remember seeing on the show.

No, they've never made any previous reference to him having an above-average recall of the spoken word. But it was too perfect in this episode, and it seemed apparent in his delivery that he wasn't hearing it to repeat it.

In fact, they have made the point that he remembers what he reads, not everything he hears.

it seemed apparent in his delivery that he wasn't hearing it to repeat it.

During the conversation, they cut to a reaction shot of Reid, and he's obviously concentrating, with his eyes moving back and forth like he's reading the words while they're bein spoken. A very cool way for a visually-oriented person to remember the spoken word, I thought!

not everything he hears

"What's the new tech's name?
"Gomez, I think."

It's possible, even likely, that there was a transcript made of the conversation that he read. That was my hand wave.

Last night's Ion rerun was "P911," the child-being-put-up-for-sale ep from S2. The throwaway line Reid has when he asks Elle which soap opera she was going to watch made me remember this fic, which is hilarious (and was prompted by that ep).

A Real Rain is the CM on A & E right now and it features one of my favorite team scenes from the Gideon eps. It's the extended meal in a Chinese restaurant, where we learn that Reid has no idea how to eat with chop sticks and compares it to foraging for food with #2 pencils, and he marvels that millions of Chinese people stay alive that way.