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innerslytherinI am breaking up with Criminal Minds. The emotional blackmail of this last episode, combined with the sloppy storylines and decrease in actual profiling, has combined to end my love.
Also, I avoided this for as long as possible, but it's clear I need a Loki icon or six. Because Loki. Probably at least one Cap/Coulson icon, too. Or Stark/Coulson. Because yum.
Also, I avoided this for as long as possible, but it's clear I need a Loki icon or six. Because Loki. Probably at least one Cap/Coulson icon, too. Or Stark/Coulson. Because yum.
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Date: 2013-01-18 12:32 pm (UTC)If I hadn't already broken up with it, I would. In fact, I might get back together with it, and THEN break up with it once more. I'm watching the older seasons and the difference in quality is embarrassing.
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Date: 2013-01-19 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-01-18 01:55 pm (UTC)I know that whenever I see the recent crop of promos I get a little nauseated--they seem to have gone right into ick factor nine.
I would love to hear about this emotional blackmail if you're up for it. ;) I'm always interested in how a show lets down a fan.
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Date: 2013-01-19 12:54 am (UTC)Then last season, one of those said actresses, Paget Brewster, decided she was done being jerked around, and while I can't blame her for that, I also thought it was sort of a slap in the face to the fans who worked so hard to get her job back for her. So anyway, they wrote her out at the end of last season, and I planned to keep watching anyway, despite that she had been my favorite character. They said they weren't going to replace her. Of course, a few weeks later, they did just that.
Jeanne Triplehorn is a fine actress, and she's the one who replaced my favorite. She's done a good job with what they gave her, so I don't care one way or the other about her. But this season... Well, the writing has been going downhill, in my opinion, over the past season. The cases are more out there, and the focus isn't nearly as zoomed in on the profiling aspect. In addition there have been a lot of "Oh, come on!" moments for me, just little things that I could overlook in the beginning, but they began to pile up.
SO. All that was leading up to last night's breakup, but that was just basically making me feel restless and discontent and cynical. Last night was what pushed me over the edge.
Reid is probably the single most damaged character on the show. Genius who graduated high school at 12, was bullied and has actually been killed once, during season 2. His heart stopped, the good personality of the multiple personality kidnapper did CPR, he came back from the dead. During his subsequent PTSD he started using drugs. His schizophrenic mother has inadvertently sicced a delusional psychopath on him once, and also helped cover up the murder of a local child molester when Reid was a kid. His father disappeared when he was like 7 and only showed up again when he was almost 30. There are probably other issues I'm entirely forgetting. But anyway. Reid.
So for most of this season so far, Reid has had a telephone girlfriend. They "met" 10 months ago (in show time) when she wrote him a fan letter (he's got all these PhDs and she liked his work), then they talked on the phone, etc., but they never met. She had a stalker who was dangerous, so they talked in code and he paged her from payphones and all kinds of crazy stuff. This week, Reid got a call from a disguised voice that used a chess term to taunt him. Turned out the GF had disappeared, and the team went to save her.
Long story short, we've had a huge buildup this season about when Reid and the phone GF would meet, why she was so scared to meet him, etc.... and last night they found the stalker, tried to talk her down (the stalker was a thwarted doctoral candidate, which I actually thought was clever), and failed. The stalker shot herself in the head while she stood next to the GF, so they both died. The show faded to black with Reid in tears.
And... the thing is, I don't care about the GF. I think it's shoddy writing with cheap emotional manipulation to do it the way they did. I also found it incredibly predictable, since so far on the show, the team leader's wife divorced him and then was brutally murdered by a serial killer fixated on the leader; another profiler's wife asked him to help her kill herself because she had a terminal illness; another profiler's woman friend was brutally murdered by a serial killer fixated on that profiler...
So you see where I'm going here. I knew the romance wouldn't work out. We've only ever seen that happen once in 8 years of the show. So I hadn't bothered to invest in the GF in the first place. Maybe that's why I was a step removed and felt no emotional engagement when they killed her. But to me, it all felt overdone and manipulative. So I'm done with CM.
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Date: 2013-01-19 02:02 pm (UTC)Oh wow! That's pretty amazing that the fans got her back.
But this season... Well, the writing has been going downhill, in my opinion, over the past season. The cases are more out there, and the focus isn't nearly as zoomed in on the profiling aspect. In addition there have been a lot of "Oh, come on!" moments for me, just little things that I could overlook in the beginning, but they began to pile up.
*nodnod* I get it. My own experience with watching TV shows has been similar; at some point the quality starts to really diminish for many shows. I'm watching Hawaii 5-0 and it's had a couple eps this season where I absolutely rolled my eyes--they keep doing "stunts" for rating like involving Victoria's Secret models in a really skimpy plotline. lol.
His heart stopped, the good personality of the multiple personality kidnapper did CPR, he came back from the dead.
Right there I'm already thinking, um, what? *blinks*
I think it's shoddy writing with cheap emotional manipulation to do it the way they did. I also found it incredibly predictable, since so far on the show, the team leader's wife divorced him and then was brutally murdered by a serial killer fixated on the leader; another profiler's wife asked him to help her kill herself because she had a terminal illness; another profiler's woman friend was brutally murdered by a serial killer fixated on that profiler...
That's why I finally stopped watching CSI. Over and over again we would see similar plotlines until I finally couldn't take it.
I used to watch it nearly religiously, and then there was one episode with Katie Segal that was my camel-back-breaking-straw. It was so badly done, the show was trying to have a "funny" episode, to the point of having one of the characters walking around with a handcuffed clown in the beginning scenes. And it just got worse and worse, and I was cringing, and when the ep ended, I turned to G and said, "Okay, that's it, I'm done. No more." And i haven't watched since.
*hugs* Thanks so much for the explanation--I found it fascinating!!
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Date: 2013-01-18 07:31 pm (UTC)This past Wednesday? I haven't seen it yet---guess I will go see. Is it that bad? I have had a REALLY bad week, so I am not up to par with anything. :/
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Date: 2013-01-19 12:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-19 10:04 pm (UTC)Oh, my. That did rather suck. :/ I'm a tad interested, though, in how they plan to redeem themselves. Gosh.
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Date: 2013-01-20 01:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-19 02:17 am (UTC)I figured as soon as Reid had a girlfriend that Things Would End Badly. (And I'm a Leverage fan, so kept waiting for the g/f to do an awesome Parker move--then I'd be like, oh, yeah. Not Parker.) I was hoping that the stalker was a red herring...that maybe she was making it up, something like that, but alas, no. Although I suppose they thought they were being clever with that kill shot, but honestly? No.
And ffs, Reid's gonna be joining his mama very soon if they keep this up. (Er, though it did make me think of the massive h/c fic ops. Yeah, slasher through and through.)
I am to the point where I generally don't watch it on TV and wait to d/l it--though I was lucky with this one, it aired in Canada a day before, so I was able to d/l it early.
I think the change of showrunner really screwed CM up--that and losing some of their best writers. It's always sad when a show goes downhill...and no one at the show or network seems to notice.
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Date: 2013-01-19 03:06 am (UTC)When we started hearing about the girlfriend, and she was scared of some mysterious "him", I thought she had some connection to the unsub who was season-long stalking the team. I thought it would be a clever twist if said unsub had recruited a girl to lure one of the team members into complacency...or even if he had just started victimizing her to get her to reach out to one of the profilers and distract him.
Either way, I guess I was giving the writers too much credit. *sigh* Too bad.
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Date: 2013-01-19 03:48 am (UTC)So, not sure where that's going. Also, they're apparently doing a Profiler, Profiled part deux. Not sure if it's Morgan related or someone else. Also noises about a "Hotch ep". *sigh* It probably won't be what I'd like, which is more about his past. I do have to say it's rather odd, reading all these spoilery bits.
Cus I remember when I had more of an inside track. *snicker*
I hope you do have another show/shows to help fill the void....
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Date: 2013-01-19 04:44 am (UTC)I've been pretty madly addicted to Chicago Fire, actually. It doesn't hurt that I've always thought Jesse Spencer is pretty, and he's even prettier without the Chase-hair, and I really like the hot lesbian character and her best friends, one of whom is a pretty man-whore and the other of whom is a tough Latina chick who is head over heels for her best friend.
And Revenge is my guilty pleasure. I'm sort of in love with the skinny, sexually ambiguous computer genius, who also happens to be one of the few people on that show with a moral compass that mostly points north. *G*
But I am not going to write fic. I am concentrating on my novel. *firm nod*
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Date: 2013-01-25 07:32 pm (UTC)On the other hand, I can highly recommend "Person of Interest" . Excellent actors, well-written stories and plot twists that you can't see coming a mile away!
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Date: 2013-01-26 11:51 pm (UTC)I know Personal of Interst previews look interesting, but I'm hooked on Chicago Fire and Revenge, and if I added any more shows I think I wouldn't be able to keep up! :)
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