I'm making my way through my stack of newly-purchased Criminal Minds dvds. Just got finished with "Profiler, Profiled," the Morgan ep where we learn about The Damage In His Past, and boy, does Shemar knock it out of the park. And that little beat when Hotch and Gideon are discussing Morgan's previously-unknown juvie record, and Hotch slips and calls him a suspect, which Gideon immediately points out to Hotch--ouch.

In one of the eps I watched last night (can't remember which), there's a great little bit where someone (JJ and Gideon, I think?) are talking in the foreground at a police station, and Reid is fiddling with something while sitting in the background. It took me a while to figure out that Reid is using a pencil to pick the lock on a pair of handcuffs! Nothing is said about this, but he's just doing his usual Reid thing and constantly moving/twitching/doing something with his hands while others are talking and he's listening. Wonder if it was a directorial decision, or something MGG came up with.

True Night: Morgan and Reid arriving at the crime scene in a conversation about traffic, Reid is reciting information from Government reports and getting on Morgan's last nerve until he gets fed up and says "Don't make me smack you in front of all these people."

And then at the end of the episode Morgan does smack Reid while they're on the plane, and JJ says, "Boys, don't make me ground you."

CM did a better job of filming a Frank Miller style comic than Sin City did.

Just finished watching erailed and The Popular Kids. Good Reid eps - he plays a key role in the arrest of both perpetrators, and gets some good lines in each of them. Also, while neither of them are light-hearted, the crimes in each of them are really pretty straghtforward - not particularly gruesome, disturbing or horrific.

I suspect the next eps will be different, given they're entitled "Blood Hungry" and "What Fresh Hell?".

Ok, just started on "What Fresh Hell?". OPening scene has a girls' soccer coach training her team bickering with her daughter. I'm having trouble not picturing her shouting "You think this is hard? Try being waterboarded, that's hard!"

More CM. I'm getting the Gideon dislike from "Blood Hungry", where he takes over Garcia's office and treats her as his girl Friday. As Garcia is a bit awesome, this is inexcusable.

Meanwhile, in "Poison", Elle has just helpfully explained to the rest fo the team that Rohypnol is a date rape drug also known as roofies. I know it's audience exposition, but seriously, it's credible that Reid, Gideon, Hotch and Morgan need this spelled out to them?

Mom was waaay ahead of me. I figured I'd introduce her to Criminal Minds (in exchange for her introducting me to NCIS last fall), and when she was settled on my couch tonight and we were done chatting, I told her that I'd get her hooked on this show I'd been watching for a few months now. "Oh, I love Criminal Minds!!" she says. So much for introducting her! I did show her Seven Seconds, which she hadn't seen before, and we started to watch Elephant's Memory and Derailed when she realized she'd already seen both of those. Then she fell asleep during Minimal Loss and woke up to watch most of tonight's A&E rerun of Haunted.

I asked her who was her favorite character, and she said, "I like the girl." Yes, Garcia grabbed another fan. (She can never remember character names, however, other than Reid. She just called Hotch "the really serious guy.")

Man, Haunted is just gut wrenching. Between the main storyline and then the team trying to tiptoe around Hotch and figure out how he is and how to relate to him. Gah.

Haunted is yet another instance of the guest star just knocking it out of the park. Sean Patrick Flanery was amazing.

Also, the child who plays the young version of the unsub is equally good. And I loved the older survivor and how they wrote his lifelong issues with surviving something so traumatic.