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POLL : What did you think of Criminal Minds - The Lesson?

6 Dec 2012

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14 comments:

  1. nellymendezcolon6 December 2012 at 05:15

    ..very complex episode.but the BIG surprise the actress of LEVERAGE THE THIEF..love interest of spencer ...wooow so cool and awesome

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  2. Topaz6 December 2012 at 06:55

    Even by the standards of this show this episode was pretty disgusting. I have my qualms about how focussed this show is on violence against women, but by and large the characters and drama are compelling enough that I can deal with this and accept that that is not the only purpose of the show. However, the lingering shots this week over what was being done to the female victim really were totally unnecessary, especially when they barely paid attention to the male victims who seemed to come and go without more than a few seconds of camera time each. The torture was so convoluted and extreme it was in no way plausible from a character we're supposed to believe has the mind of a child and most of what was being shown added nothing to our understanding of the story. Most of it could have happened out of shot and we would have still been able to follow. It was just being presented for the sake of it. In fact the shots actively seemed to revel in the whole thing. Did we really need to see the entire process of a woman's shoulders being forcefully dislocated in all its gory detail? Did we then later need to see the unsub pulling at her shoulder several times while she screamed in pain? It went beyond the bounds of thriller and into full on torture porn. It was offensive. The hypocrisy of showing something like this on primetime network TV when they balk at showing any sex or swearing beggars belief.


    I dragged myself through to the end of the episode because I was interested in what would happen with Reid and his girlfriend, but if there's another episode like that I'm not going to be able to stomach watching it again.

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  3. Bri Brit6 December 2012 at 14:23

    When it comes to violence against women the show is simply being realistic, serial killers prefered targets are women. Btw the writer of this episode is a woman Janine Sherman Barrois. The showrunner is a woman Erica Messer, half of the writing staff are women, Sharron Lee Watson, Kim Harrison, Barrois and Messer. If the show is misogynist then blame women because they are in charge on CM.


    As for the violence and torture on primetime tv, we see very violent acts on The walking Dead, Homeland, Game of Thrones, Sons of Anarchy, American Horror Story, Dexter. I rarely see anyone complaining about the level of violence and torture on those shows.

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  4. Nicole Mallon6 December 2012 at 17:10

    at least this time they credit Beth Riesgraf

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  5. Topaz6 December 2012 at 22:02

    If you want to see a sensitive, unsensationalist, moving and thought-provoking depiction of the violence done to women by serial killers, you should watch the British drama Five Women. Focussing unnecessarily on the actual violence committed and only paying attention to the life and personality of the perpetrator to the exclusion of the victims risks romanticising, fetishising and even excusing their actions. This is compounded in this show by the structure of the storytelling, which never shows the aftermath of the crimes and the impact on those affected in any detail.

    The fact that the show is made by a large number of women is irrelevant to whether it's capable of being misogynist in its execution. Though in any case I never said it was misogynist - that was your word - and I never blamed men for the structure of the show. I mostly just found this episode distasteful.

    I also didn't say that violence should never be depicted on television. I said it was hypocritical the way that major networks claim that swearing and sex is inappropriate but revelling in extreme gore and violence is totally fine. It implies a rather bizarre set of priorities.

    The Walking Dead, Dexter and Game of Thrones are serialised, character-based dramas in which the violence is offset by extended exploration of how this affects the psyches of both perpetrators and victims. TWD and GoT are also both fantasies that merely speculate as to how people might react to a very different world, where violence is a necessary facet of survival. In the case of Dexter it is obviously supposed to be subversive in that it asks us to identify with the serial killer character, and we are expected to be troubled by this. They also balance this by surrounding him with empathetic characters who react with disgust and distress to the violence he treats as normal, and who in some circumstances are traumatised by the results of it across several seasons. They have also introduced characters like Lumen who dealt with the emotional impact of the torture she experienced across an entire season.

    CM clearly also tries to offset the violence by having a core of relatable characters who are, at times, affected by the work they do. I just think they are less successful in this because of the case-of-the-week structure, which limits the amount of time that can be spent on emotional exploration of those surrounding the unsub.

    Of course, we could discuss whether those other shows also seem to revel in violence and particularly torture for the sake of it and whether this is problematic, and I doubt any of them would get off scot free, but of course this is a discussion of CM, which is why I didn't see the need to bring them up. I can't comment on SoA or AHS as I've never seen them.

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  6. NemisEvilTwin6 December 2012 at 22:42

    Fantastic episode! Whenever it's an episode directed by Matthew Gray Gubler, I'm never disappointed. They're always amazing!

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  7. Abby7 December 2012 at 00:17

    I can honestly say that I am through with Criminal Minds. The misogyny displayed in "The Lesson" was truly evil and I hold the writers, producers, network and the cast responsible for it. And so what if the episode was written by a woman. She is clearly a self-hating woman who enjoys watching other women suffer. MGG is also a misogynist and I don't care how sweet he appears. CBS really needs to end this trash of a show now!

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  8. Chanelle Montpetit8 December 2012 at 02:16

    I think they pushed the torture a little bit to far this week. I've been rewatching the season all week and seriously this week was freaking gross.

    So yeah that was to much for me.

    And I'm disapointed that we dont really know more about Reid's mistery woman, yeah now we know what she look like but thats not a lot ahha.

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  9. Topaz8 December 2012 at 04:51

    It's several days later and I'm still feeling actively traumatised by the some of the imagery in the episode. It's keeping me awake at night and I feel physically sick when I think about it. To be honest I can't believe they aired the final edit of it.

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  10. Chanelle Montpetit8 December 2012 at 05:07

    I know, and btw I love everything you said in your 2 comments. well said haha I speak like a 12 year old so I tend to stay away from big post but yeah. agreed


    And about the show the other person mention... we can't forget that MC airs on CBS not Showtime or TrueBlood. It's cable. And like you said they can't say fuck, or show a sex scene (or for gay couple, touching hands sometimes haha) but THIS was okay? I mean to me this should have been 18+ with warnings. (and really I watch all of these show and it's not the same. I've never seen torture like this. Maybe in movies like Saw, but it's terror movies not Police thriller) anyway..



    My mind actually blocked it, I went on here to watch the next promo and saw "what dyou think ..." and when I saw your post I remembered but like I had 0 memory if the episode and I watched it yesterday. So yeah, to much. (though I dont blame the actors, they dont see the "end" result before shooting (obviously lol))

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  11. Topaz8 December 2012 at 05:53

    The actors are on a contract - they couldn't just walk away from the show. I mainly question MGG's judgement in shooting the scenes the way he did and all the people around him that let him create such a nasty episode, plus the producers and network for giving it the okay to air.

    I've seen things that distressed me more. The torture in Saló was horrific. But the point with Saló was that I accepted that I was deeply upset by what I saw because it made me spend several days after seeing the film reflecting on the horrors of life under Fascism and gaining a new appreciation of what Fascism really is at its heart. So my distress had a purpose.

    What was the purpose of me seeing a woman get her arms torn out of her sockets in a trashy case-of-the-week crime drama that exists solely for entertainment? To get a new appreciation of what it might be like to have dislocated shoulders? Or did MGG just really want people watching to go "Oh Jesus Christ that is unbelievably gross"? Or perhaps to feel ill every time they look at someone's shoulder from now on? Because I mean wow. That. Is. Deep.

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  12. prpleight8 December 2012 at 09:44

    I have long loved Brad Dourif's work. And I think his talent helped make this one of the more disturbing episodes of this show ever. {shiver} I was feeling extremely protective of Ried during this episode. I do not want that woman to be a villain or a figment of a Reid illness (which I think the hostess put to rest.) I want Reid to actually have a real love interest that doesn't disappear or become a victim.

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  13. angel star9 December 2012 at 22:50

    i can't believe it was Parker from leverage as Reid girlfriend i never even recognized her voice i now love Reid girlfriend. at first i wasn't keen on her but knowing that it's Parker from leverage good chose. Reid well done

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  14. MDK22420 .17 May 2015 at 17:37

    lol, fucking morons complaining about the whole point of the show. Don't fucking watch Criminal Minds if you're not into weird ass, freaky, fucked up shit. BTW, media, etc. sensationalizes the perpetrator rather than the victim because that's what more people are interested in. Blame popular demand or society.

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