IT WASN'T JUST ME. Thank you so much for this post, hon. I was starting to think I was being over-sensitive because no one else had said anything, so I just kept quiet.
My dad had lung cancer that wasn't diagnosed until it was already Stage 4 and metastasized throughout the entire body (incompetent doctor), which ended up leading to hypoxia of the brain. Hypoxia of the brain acts like dementia in a lot of ways. At no point during the downward mental spiral was his disability consistent with what was on that episode.
My father was a skilled craftsman: he had his Master certification in electrical, plumbing, automobile mechanics, and carpentry. When I was a child I spent most of my time not at school watching him work on whatever project suited his fancy: restoring an old discarded Jeep, building and wiring himself a dream shop, repairing the sinks, installing a water purification system. When I was old enough, my job was to hand him whatever tool he asked for. I knew the organizational scheme for his tools like I knew the Library filing system: like the back of my hand.
By the time Dad was bad enough he couldn't stay home anymore, he only had a few months left to live and he was so out of it he didn't even know where he was. He would routinely think that his oxygen tube was an electrical line or fuel line he was splicing. He kept trying to send me out for whatever tool he thought he needed for the job he thought he was doing. The worst part was that he always asked for the correct tool, every single time: proof that the skilled craftsman was still in there, somewhere. Dad was never violent in his illness -- he'd never been a violent man, the occasional bar fight when he was young non-withstanding -- but if he'd confused one of us or the staff with a burglar or what have you, I'm sure he could have been violent. However, at that point his blood-oxygen was so low I don't think he would have had the physical strength to actually hurt anyone. He wasn't lucid enough even to realize his requests were unreasonable, much less play headgames to compel us to obey. The closest to compelling he ever got were things like, "Can't you see I need a pair of needle-nose pliers right now? I don't have all day to hold this thing!"
Dad still remembered how to do his job and what tools he needed to do them, so the unsub remembering his preference and how to kill is possible. And if the son had been an eager (or at least enjoying) partner in the killings, yes, I could see the son going along with the suggestion/request to kill. And if headgaming his son into killing was how he expressed the intent to kill before, yeah, okay, he'd keep doing it that way, possibly. Forgetting that he'd already killed, yes. All consistent with hypoxia of the brain. But all that and being able to compel a completely unwilling caretaker, to only miss one when quizzed on kidnapping sites, and to get all wannabe with Rossi? No. Even more importantly, the brain is the body's first priority for oxygenation. By the time the hypoxia is bad enough for mental functions to get that fuzzy, the body had been terribly weakened for a very long time. The unsub may have wanted or even tried to "hunt," but he wouldn't have been able to even so much as stab someone girl once, much less kill her. More importantly, there was no mention of advanced lung disease of any kind. He had the (relative) physical vigor of dementia with the mental symptoms of hypoxia of the brain... which does not happen. Ever. Nor did they give the son the prerequisite enjoyment to make HIS behavior make sense.
I know that Criminal Minds has a long history of medical-research fail and writing out their ass whatever sounds good (Reid's drug addiction, the list of meds Foyet was supposedly taking). However, this ep didn't seem to me like just an epic lack of research. It felt like playing the situation of caring a mentally handicapped parent for cheap sympathy. I wasn't offended in the sense of being angry, but I did think it was a crap thing to do. I'm somewhere between unimpressed and faintly disgusted.
Sorry for going all tl;dr on you with personal stuff. Though it seems from the comments that this ep made your journal the Survivors of Parents with Age-Related Mental Illness Support Group.
no subject
My dad had lung cancer that wasn't diagnosed until it was already Stage 4 and metastasized throughout the entire body (incompetent doctor), which ended up leading to hypoxia of the brain. Hypoxia of the brain acts like dementia in a lot of ways. At no point during the downward mental spiral was his disability consistent with what was on that episode.
My father was a skilled craftsman: he had his Master certification in electrical, plumbing, automobile mechanics, and carpentry. When I was a child I spent most of my time not at school watching him work on whatever project suited his fancy: restoring an old discarded Jeep, building and wiring himself a dream shop, repairing the sinks, installing a water purification system. When I was old enough, my job was to hand him whatever tool he asked for. I knew the organizational scheme for his tools like I knew the Library filing system: like the back of my hand.
By the time Dad was bad enough he couldn't stay home anymore, he only had a few months left to live and he was so out of it he didn't even know where he was. He would routinely think that his oxygen tube was an electrical line or fuel line he was splicing. He kept trying to send me out for whatever tool he thought he needed for the job he thought he was doing. The worst part was that he always asked for the correct tool, every single time: proof that the skilled craftsman was still in there, somewhere. Dad was never violent in his illness -- he'd never been a violent man, the occasional bar fight when he was young non-withstanding -- but if he'd confused one of us or the staff with a burglar or what have you, I'm sure he could have been violent. However, at that point his blood-oxygen was so low I don't think he would have had the physical strength to actually hurt anyone. He wasn't lucid enough even to realize his requests were unreasonable, much less play headgames to compel us to obey. The closest to compelling he ever got were things like, "Can't you see I need a pair of needle-nose pliers right now? I don't have all day to hold this thing!"
Dad still remembered how to do his job and what tools he needed to do them, so the unsub remembering his preference and how to kill is possible. And if the son had been an eager (or at least enjoying) partner in the killings, yes, I could see the son going along with the suggestion/request to kill. And if headgaming his son into killing was how he expressed the intent to kill before, yeah, okay, he'd keep doing it that way, possibly. Forgetting that he'd already killed, yes. All consistent with hypoxia of the brain. But all that and being able to compel a completely unwilling caretaker, to only miss one when quizzed on kidnapping sites, and to get all wannabe with Rossi? No. Even more importantly, the brain is the body's first priority for oxygenation. By the time the hypoxia is bad enough for mental functions to get that fuzzy, the body had been terribly weakened for a very long time. The unsub may have wanted or even tried to "hunt," but he wouldn't have been able to even so much as stab someone girl once, much less kill her. More importantly, there was no mention of advanced lung disease of any kind. He had the (relative) physical vigor of dementia with the mental symptoms of hypoxia of the brain... which does not happen. Ever. Nor did they give the son the prerequisite enjoyment to make HIS behavior make sense.
I know that Criminal Minds has a long history of medical-research fail and writing out their ass whatever sounds good (Reid's drug addiction, the list of meds Foyet was supposedly taking). However, this ep didn't seem to me like just an epic lack of research. It felt like playing the situation of caring a mentally handicapped parent for cheap sympathy. I wasn't offended in the sense of being angry, but I did think it was a crap thing to do. I'm somewhere between unimpressed and faintly disgusted.
Sorry for going all tl;dr on you with personal stuff. Though it seems from the comments that this ep made your journal the Survivors of Parents with Age-Related Mental Illness Support Group.
DragonLady