Actually even more than the snapping at Garcia, when he said to Hotch, "She really needs to be more professional," or something like that - I could see him being short with someone way easier than him being backbitey and talking behind their back that way.

Exactly. In fact, if they'd left it at the sniping at Garcia directly and then the apology I probably wouldn't have felt a need to comment about it.

The writing was incredibly uneven. It was superficial; I understand the focus can't been on every character every show, but they usually do a much better job of integrating the team members into the story. If Joe Mantegna didn't already have his SAG card, he sure as hell wouldn't have earned it last night.

Hell, they used Gubler more when he was trapped on crutches than they did last night.

And Hotch didn't do much more than look Hotchly. It was the JJ/Morgan show, and it felt rushed, like we had to get as much of JJ in before she disappears.

I read some of the twitter responses to Joe and they're all positive with lot's of similar "JJ/Morgan show" and "I'm going to miss JJ" embedded in them. I suddenly remembered AJ has twitter so I let her know how marvelous I thought she was last night because she did give a wonderful performance.

In the midst of all that was wrong with the ep, I must say I enjoyed Ellie. All of her responses and fighting and undermining the bad guy. I always wonder whether people couldn't be doing more fighting for themselves while under the bad guy's control, so I really appreciated that - especially from a cop's daughter. My cop friend has tried to give me tips (largely about fighting dirty), so I have no problem believing a cop's kid would be a little proactive.

Can I rail some more against CBS?

CBS won the night overall, thanks to a very strong start for Criminal Minds (14.1 million viewers)

It had a higher viewership than its lead in (Survivor- 12 million viewers) and in fact, had the highest viewership of the night over all, even with the premiere of Modern Family (12.6 million viewers)

Where Modern Family won was in highest viewership in the 18-49 demographic, but still. Highest viewership overall for CM.

Maybe the numbers'll drop off as JJ and Prentiss begin to disappear?

Last night, Ion had "The Angelmaker," which I was surprised to realize (after rewatching for the first time in a while) was a good example of an all-team quality episode. It had an interesting case (copycat killing women a year after the serial killer was executed), some interesting locals (I like the ME and the creepy prison guard was fun to watch), and nice little moment for almost the entire cast.

Hotch is still recovering from the car bomb in "Mayhem," yet in his Hotch-ly way, insists on getting back into the field way too early. Morgan interviews the guard and then rescues the last targeted victim at the end. Garcia tracks down the serial killer memorabilia ("This portion of the Garcia show is brought to you by the letter 'i' for 'icky!'") and then narrows down the unsub via birth records ("Oh, your baby daddy is a 3rd grade teacher? Well, mine poked people in the stomach with a screwdriver!"). Prentiss tosses the guard's place, finding the Viagra, and then talks to the unsub to distract her while Morgan saves her last victim. JJ doesn't have too much to do here, but Rossi's author side is offended by the badly written letters from the killer to the unsub, which makes Reid realize there's a code. ("What do you need to crack it?" "The ability to clone myself and a year's supply of Adderol?" "I'll put on the coffee.") And, of course, Reid does crack it. ("It was just easier to do it longhand." [Prentiss touches his cheek in mock-fascination.] "He's so lifelike!") He even gets to drive at the end ("Sweet!").

A fun episode, all around. They tend to do that in the beginning of the season--I hope that, once JJ is gone (sob!!), they'll give us at least one of these quality team eps again.