...and two more losses in a row. Though this week, at least they saved a life.

"The Big Wheel" was really a disappointment for me, I'm afraid. I usually love Simon Mirren's episodes, but this one felt manipulative and cheap. I kind of wonder if the network is leaning on the creative team for more freakshow.

I do not have a terrible lot to say about it, other than Morgan and orphaned kids remains a constant. Hello, my name is Derek Morgan. My Damage, Let Me Show You It.

I am, however, very happy with "Roadkill."

Penelope has Facebook! (Notice she's Penelope in the first scene and Garcia in the last...)

Also, I adore Reid, driver of a Volvo older than he is, siding with the girls on Boys And Phallic Cars. And Rossi FTW! <3

Hello, Spencer's awful sweatervest. Hello, Prentiss' painted-on shirt. Charge of the bad shirt brigade! (JJ, I note, is wearing an UNSUB shirt today. Hello, cleavage.)

stalker!Reid: "That's a pretty serious time commitment."

My Reidloff is *huge* this episode. "So much for the vehicular rape theory."

Also, Rossi: "You ever smoke?" Prentiss: "Used to do a lot of things." Oh, the implied character backstory. Oh, the continuity porn. My show! Damn, I am going to miss Dan and Jay. :-(

That reminds me of so many things: Prentiss telling Hotch about teenage girls sneaking out of movies to smoke. Prentiss on Matthew in "Demonology." Prentiss bulldogging Reid when Reid was using, or thinking about using.

I love my show. They can wait two years to explain why she was running interventions on Reid. And then never actually, you know, say it out loud.

(mmm Garcia's glasses. mmm Garcia.) "Rossi gets a fruit cup with lunch."

Also, Rossi and Morgan with the nitrile gloves in unison: there is not enough love in the world. That so needs an icon

(Bet that's the CM MS bike ride team.)

Hello, PIT maneuver. Aww. My show allows its superheroes to be rattled in a car crash. (I love Rossi, Garcia, and Reid quietly solving the case in the background this ep while everybody else runs around action heroing.)

I also love Morgan following orders, even when he wants to stop and check on Hotch. (What is it with cars and hallucinations this season?)

Also, Hotch is FINE. We're all FINE here. We're FINE. (Is it time again? I think it is.

Hotch: FINE. No, FINE. Really FINE.
Morgan: FINE. I'm FINE.
Garcia: SO FINE NO PROBLEMS HERE.
Prentiss: FINE. FINE.
JJ: ALSO FINE.
Rossi and Reid... may actually be fine. Well, except for Rossi's Anger Management issues, but those are pretty much endemic, and the fact that Reid was having audiovisual hallucinations the last time we checked. But I'm sure that's nothing.

Ongoing CM theme: men give up their careers for women, and if they don't, the women leave them:

[23:18] beatriceeagle: (JJ and Will aren't married, are they?)
[23:19] matociquala: We have not seen them get married.
[23:19] beatriceeagle: And she doesn't wear a ring.
[23:19] matociquala: JJ has a ring.
[23:19] matociquala: But it's not a wedding band.
[23:19] beatriceeagle: Not that I saw.  She has the birthstone ring.
[23:20] beatriceeagle: And when they did the close-up of that, I think I remember checking.
[23:20] matociquala: not everybody wears a traditional wedding ring.
[23:22] matociquala: I think, this being CM, we cannot assume.
[23:23] matociquala: I'm going to guess that Eddie's intentionally leaving it ambiguous because in character, JJ is unlikely to marry, but it's not worth arguing with the network about. *g*
[23:23] matociquala: So he has Will offer and JJ demur and then leaves it hanging.
[23:23] matociquala: And maybe there will be a plot thread later.
[23:24] beatriceeagle: Hee.  That's what really made me suspicious in the first place.
[23:24] beatriceeagle: JJ's "Will," when he talks about it.
[23:24] matociquala: Just like it's not worth actually fighting with them to make it explicit that Emily had a habit as a teenager.
[23:24] matociquala: We can figure it out.
[23:25] matociquala: He trusts us.

Interesting to have Reid and JJ talking about the fallibility of memory and repression. What other show would have the eidetic pointing out that human memory is a construct?

[23:28] beatriceeagle: Well, Reid gets a lot of thematic work with memory.
[23:29] beatriceeagle: And it's almost always centered around forgetting rather than remembering.
[23:29] matociquala: He does. He *is* Memory, from a certain standpoint.
[23:29] matociquala: the way Hotch is Justice.