innerslytherin | CM 6x03 - Remembrance of Things Past (SPOILERY)

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CM 6x03 - Remembrance of Things Past (SPOILERY)

I'm viewing this last episode of CM through a very personal lens. The short story is, I found the concept unbelievable, even though I loved watching Hotch, Rossi, & Prentiss in particular.

I've been thinking about the latest installment of CM, and though I adore Rossi and thought Em was seriously smokin' in this episode, I didn't care for the actual case.

I'm speaking not as a fan here, but as a woman who has seen dementia up close and personal. I just can't see that the episode writer (whoever it was) could have had personal experience with Alzheimer's. I don't believe it's Travanti's acting I have trouble with, but maybe it's that.

Or maybe it's the spoilers/episode promo stuff that was posted.

I was expecting an old, ailing man who killed on impulse. A man who experienced moments of lucidity where he was covered in blood and had no idea how he'd gotten that way. I was expecting a man like Gedna (my Grandma Edna), who wrote incomprehensible letters and called my dad to ask what my last name and address was (the same as her last name, by the way). And those weren't in the advanced stages of her dementia. She forgot birthdays, or sometimes remembered the birthday but forgot that she'd sent a card, so she sent two. She randomly spoke aloud to my grandpa, who died in 1999. She once, in fact, forgot that he'd been dead for several years. She got up from her recliner, went to the garage, and came back, then told my dad, "I can't imagine what's taking Bob so long."

I wasn't expecting a guy who was having some trouble remembering what he did on Tuesday (I have trouble with that, folks) and who coerced his son into helping him abduct, torture, rape, and murder women. First of all, we've already recently had one guy (Spicer) who was traumatized as a child and didn't remember; so wtf is up with having another person traumatized as a kid and not remembering it? Second of all, WTF?

I will admit that the children of dementia patients experience denial. My dad and his brother didn't realize--didn't admit--how bad Gedna was getting. They didn't take her keys away until she'd been packing up the car for road trips and driving aimlessly around town. They let her live on her own (except for a few weeks that I stayed with her following an illness, which was my own brand of hell on earth) until her sisters told Dad she needed care.

In fact, in a sense, the inaction of my dad and his brother was probably partially responsible for their uncle's death. We live an hour from where she lived, so we couldn't be with her all the time. My Great-Uncle Ed took care of her with such tenderness and patience it was amazing. He was our rock. He called us when he thought she needed things that only Dad could provide. He looked in on her several times a week and got her sisters and sisters-in-law to look in on her too. And a couple of years ago he got in the car, ready to go somewhere with his wife, and died.

Just like that. No warning, no heatlh conditions. I suspect he was just worn out and under too much stress. And part of that was Gedna, and the fact that my dad and his brother couldn't admit that their mom was mentally gone. It was after Ed's death that the aunts (Gedna's four older sisters) sat Dad down and told him that she needed to be in assisted living. Dad started the process, because in case y'all didn't know, there's a LOT of red tape that goes into having a senior citizen mentally incompetent and having her unwillingly committed to care. And damn, was she unwilling.

Of course, she also didn't really understand what was going on. Dad was just taking her to doctor's appointments, because every time he tried to talk to her about it, she forgot. Every time he tried to make her see she needed some help, she denied it. (I'll give the writers of the episode this: they definitely got that stubbornness and denial on the part of the patient down right.) So one day we just showed up at her house with the truck and moved her into an assisted living apartment.

It sucked. A lot. And let me tell you, the burden of guilt in the child of a dementia patient is incredible. My dad is still struggling with guilt and depression over that, just as much as the grief of losing his mother. He took away her freedom. He locked her up. He removed her from all that was familiar because it just wasn't safe anymore, not even with the benefits that routine & the familiar provide to dementia patients.

But in my experience, the children of adults with Alzheimer's sin through omission, not commission. That is, they are paralyzed by uncertainty, grief, fear, sadness, guilt. They aren't motivated to do things like, oh, abduct and torture women. They don't do things like buying the Alzheimer's patient a new car to go cruising forgetfully around in.

Wow, that's a lot of tl;dr and a lot of personal crap. And I know it's just my own experience. But I've done a lot of talking with other people in the same position as my dad, and my experience is common among the three of us. If you guys have had experience in this, I'd be interested to hear it. Maybe there's an angle I'm not seeing.

On a different aspect of the episode, did anyone see the Weed Eater Gube got his head caught in? Because I think some lawn care professional must be missing it. >.>

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Having personal experience with dementia - both grandmothers had it - I agree with you 100%. Whoever wrote this ep has never experienced anything like dementia. Not every dementia patient acts the same, but forgetting what day it is is the first step of the disease. The labeling of everything was right, but the UnSub was still clearly capable of working a television and knowing what time it was and what tools he used for killing and what kind of victims he preferred. He really wasn't nearly that advanced, which was what I was expecting, and more importantly, something that I would have had an easier time garnering sympathy for.

Because there was a lot of talk around the internets about how he was more of a Sympathetic Villain type. How "degenerated" his mind was, and how he "didn't know what he was doing", and um, no. He was still functioning, and even if he weren't, that doesn't give him a pass on being a sadistic killer with a whole SLEW of women issues (eurgh, making the girls say they "enjoyed it", NOT. ON.).

Okay, so it's not just me and Mom who felt this way. She and I didn't talk about it much, but she didn't like the way it was done either.

I agree 100% about not feeling sympathetic towards him, and how a more advanced stage of dementia would have successfully made him a more sympathetic villain. I mean, you & I haven't known each other long enough for you to know this, but Gedna and I never had a very cordial relationship. I felt dutiful at best towards her. And it still was horrible to see how she wasn't the same person I grew up knowing. She wasn't much of a person at all. In the last few months of her life, she was like a bewildered, frightened child. She broke my heart.

If the unsub had been even half as bewildered and frightened as she was, I could have felt much more sympathetic to him. As it was, even though the "I'm scared" line was delivered wonderfully, it didn't ring true because he didn't come across that way for most of the episode.

And yeah, I'm not sure I would have felt too bad for him in the end anyway, because if he was advanced enough to have absolutely no clue/enjoyment in what he was doing...well, he wouldn't have been capable of doing it, probably. :/

I completely understand your feelings towards your Gedna towards the end. My paternal grandmother (Mom Mom) had severe dementia-developing-into-Alzheimer's, and it was excruciating at times. The way she'd call my mother (not my father, because she was never really close to him, and had also convinced herself that he wasn't there) seventeen times a night, because she didn't think things were done, bills weren't paid, she didn't have food. Screaming and crying and having panic attacks because she didn't know what she was "supposed" to do tomorrow, even if her schedule was sitting in front of her (get up, put on "Monday clothes", make cereal and fruit for breakfast according to the directions in the kitchen, go to senior center for activities, call for a ride home, etc).

It's just so unbelievably hard to deal with, even if you're not the primary caregiver. There's such a mix of pity and anger and denial and guilt going on, and I thought they got that right, at least. But they really fell down on the patient aspects.

If the unsub had been even half as bewildered and frightened as she was, I could have felt much more sympathetic to him. As it was, even though the "I'm scared" line was delivered wonderfully, it didn't ring true because he didn't come across that way for most of the episode.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, you've got a good point. They really did get the caregiver emotions portrayed well.

ITA! I personally thought the entire ep was a little over the top. Rossi's lines tended toward the melodramatic at times. And the explanation of him killing again because he couldn't remember the last one was hollow and bordering on ridiculous.

My grandfather had Parkinsons and dementia. I've seen what it can do. In the early stages he remembered more than he forgot - maybe that's what the writers were going for. I think we could debate this for a long time and never come to a satisfactory conclusion. It is hard to watch someone you love suffer and to see it depicted in such a manner is disturbing.

I think that the episode was supposed to be more about Rossi and his reactions than The Butcher. At least that's what I'm going with.

Oh, you have a good point about the early stages -- maybe he was aware of all he was going to forget, and he wanted to cling to them? But it still didn't at all make him a sympathetic villain the way "True Night" or "Tabula Rasa" depicted more sympathetic unsubs. :P

I agree with you, though, that focusing on Rossi and his dealing with the case was great. And I personally loved Hotch's show of faith in Dave that, even though they didn't hold back what they thought was the profile, he still told Dave to pursue his gut feeling. I ♥ their friendship.

What you describe of your Grandmother is what I consider as true Alzheimer. What the CM character had was dementia.

My father was diagnosed as having Alzheimer and was medicated for it. This may have greatly helped him...but I would have considered it a miracle. Because after researching Alzheimer I never saw any sign even the slightest for my father. He only had a mild form of dementia....something I myself would have....forgetfulness in simple things, such as names. NOT life skills.

I seriously don't think anyone including the doctors have a clear picture of aging, Alzheimer, and dementia.

The funny thing is, the doctors went back and forth on whether she actually had Alzheimer's or if it was non-Alzheimer's dementia. We got both diagnoses on various occasions. She did take Aricept, which helped her for a while. But it's really discouraging and sad and scary to see any memory failings happen in seniors. :(

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.

DragonLady

Edited 2010-10-10 07:01 (UTC)

It's been really interesting to me to hear other people's reactions to the episode. Obviously CM hit on an emotional topic for a lot of us, even if we don't think they really dealt well with it. I'm actually glad people are sharing their own experiences with dementia and related issues.

I can't imagine how hard it would be to watch someone you were so close to failing mentally like that. I didn't have a close relationship with Gedna, but watching that was hard enough. :(

You're so right about the long history of medical-research fail. I keep trying to get

resolucidity to start writing her reactions to each episode as a medical professional (she's an oncology nurse but has worked in other fields of nursing as well). So far she hasn't given in, but I definitely think it would be interesting. She had a lot to say to me privately about Hotch's injuries from the Foyet attack, and I think she could shed another angle of light on the episodes.

I think the writers really need to better balance what is true/correct for medical purposes better with "what makes a more compelling storyline." And this goes for all television writers (producers too), not just the CM crew.

In one of the first episodes of CSI, Warrick makes a "plaster cast mold" of a victims stab wound to get the shape of the weapon used to stab the victim. He does this by using what is essentially a caulking gun to squirt the plaster into the track made by the murder knife. A jump cut later and he is pulling out a perfect mold of the murder knife.

THAT IS FREAKING IMPOSSIBLE!

And you know what, their real life CSI advisor told them this. Told them that it couldn't happen. It wasn't medically possible. Would never ever ever happen in real life. They told her that it made for a more compelling show and that they were leaving it in.

Bottom line: I'm really not sure if someone told them what errors they made in the writing of the last CM episode. I'm sure that someone probably brought up the inconsistencies, especially since a great deal of the care giver's struggles were portrayed well. Hell, there were portions when the UNSUB had similar behavior to my friend's grandmother (she had dementia and schizophrenia).

I don't think the episode was one of the better ones. I think that the reason the viewers would have sympathy is because, as a culture, it is very hard for us to see older people declining in their later years. I admit, I felt a twinge of sympathy when he wet his pants. Just because I've seen it happen in gas stations when the person assisting the elderly person just wasn't fast enough to help them get to a bathroom.

In the end, it wasn't enough for me to feel actual sympathy for the elderly man. I felt more sympathy for his son, and even then, it was more of the type of sympathy I felt for Henkel. And that was more of a "wow, your dad REALLY fucked you up."

Hey, sorry I didn't respond earlier!

As someone who writes, I can totally understand getting something wrong in your first draft. But what I can't understand is not checking with someone who is an expert before you go to press/film the episode/etc. That's how I really got to know

resolucidity, for example -- I posted to my flist that I needed someone who had first-hand knowledge of cancer to ask some questions for a fic. She responded, and there was nothing that we put in "Last Best Days" that she didn't okay, from the perspective of an oncology expert. Of course any mistakes were mine & Severity's, but we definitely made a point to check stuff with her.

I definitely did feel a twinge of sympathy for him in that moment that he wet his pants. I felt a twinge when he said he was scared. But taken as a whole, those things didn't necessarily ring true. Gedna was way more advanced in her dementia before she started needing Depends, for instance.

So yeah.

I agree wholeheartedly with you. I cared for my mother who had Alzheimer's, and now my aunt. I found the entire episode disturbing at best, however good the actual acting was. I suppose those who have never had up-close-and-personal experience with dementia will buy this improbable scenario; those of us (and that number unfortunately is growing) who deal/have dealt with this won't buy it.

This is definitely NOT an episode I'll re-watch. I'm actually surprised TPTB approved the script at all.

You have a really tough job, and having been through it once with my grandmother, I'm scared to go through it with my dad when he gets older (even though I probably will, considering his genetics).

My best friend, who only knows what I've told her about Gedna, said the episode didn't bother her at all. So you're right, I do think that people that haven't dealt with dementia will take the episode at face value. But based on the comments I've gotten to this post, you're right about the fact that the number of us who have seen it first-hand is growing. :(

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CM 6x03 - Remembrance of Things Past (SPOILERY)

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