The 35th Precinct

I wrote this in response to faylinn_drake's post on the topic, but since I'm lazy and soon to be busy with academic reading(oh, joy), I thought it would double nicely as daily post fodder. So, without further ado:


( Why CM Is Losing Fewer Viewers Than CSI:NY )

And that's my treatise on why CM outperforms CSI:NY.

So, I've been meaning to talk about Reid and Prentiss' conversation about Gideon's letter in "Scared to Death". It's a short conversation, but it perfectly encapsulates their respective personalities and approaches to life. Reid is the analytic Hermione Granger in a tie, searching for answers in syntax and grammar and etymology; Prentiss is more concerned with the spaces between the words, the truth Gideon wanted told but couldn't say.

For all their collective intelligence, Prentiss and Reid still suffer from miscommunication. When Prentiss tells Reid to reread Gideon's letter, he mistakenly assumes she's questioning his ability to understand the literal meaning of the letter. He says, "I've read it over and over, and I've got an eidetic memory." He doesn't need to reread the letter because it's all in his head.

But Prentiss isn't concerned with the what of the letter so much as the why. Gideon abandoned the team as a whole, yet he left a letter only for Reid. Why? Prentiss might not know why, but she knows it's important, and she knows that Reid needs to answer that question before he can truly understand the letter. But Reid has his Nerd Genius goggles so firmly attached that he can't see that yet, and might never see.

But despite her formidable profiler fu, Prentiss isn't seeing the whole picture, either. Reid succinctly spells out the root of his problem when he independently raises the subject of his father's abandonment when he was ten. Anyone with a firing synapse can see that he's conflating that trauma and Gideon's unceremonious exit from his life. First the father, and now the surrogate father. Reid has Abandonment Issues, and as a profiler, Prentiss should know that intellectual understanding of a hurt seldom heals the wound from which it springs.

Reid can read that letter and have Eureka Moments all day long and twice on Masturbation Sunday, but they won't change the underlying truth that he feels abandoned by Gideon, who, if his weenie apologia is anything to go by, knew exactly how badly this second desertion would affect him, especially on the heels of his ordeal with Tobias. Try as you might, you can't logic your way past hurt, and Prentiss should've known that.


Tomorrow will be another dollop of pop culture meta, this one concerning Jack Malone and his selective morality. In the meantime, I'm going to futz around the Interwebs and maybe scritch a bunny.

Thoughts on the reaction to CSI:NY:

( CSI:NY 401 Redux: Victim of Unrealistic Expectations )

Thoughts on Criminal Minds 301--"Doubt"

( Criminal Minds 301-Doubt--Minor SPOILERS )

Thoughts on CSI 801:

( CSI 801--MAJOR SPOILERS )

Miscellanea:

For those who skipped my last entry, Haunted is now being aired on SciFi at 10PM Eastern, and the last two episodes will feature a young Eddie Cahill in the role of Nick Trenton, a young lawyer possessed by a demon.

I'm going to try once more to get my all_hallows_fic to the finish line tonight, and if I can't, I'm going to set it aside and work on Et Tu Part III. My Flack doll needs to get his angst on, and so do I.

Hello, mbnola. I hope you like it here and aren't put off by long rambles and oodles of Flack crackfic that often involves crossovers with HP. I write canonfic, too, which is denoted by an author's note and an "N/A" in the pairing slot of my fic header info.

A few days ago, Joanne the Anonymouse asked how the house-hunt was going. Right now, it's at a standstill. I'm still enthralled with Albany, Georgia, and rather than gracefully concede defeat and help me look in the area in which I have repeatedly expressed interest, my mother continues to insist that I move to within one hour of her and sends me listings in northern Georgia, far from where I want to be.

Mind, I've been looking at listings on my own and have found two properties I like, but without her to drive me there, I've no way to look at them. I've considered contacting a realtor, but I know nothing of their commission fees and such. Anyway, without a means of personally evaluating the property, I doubt a realtor would do much good.

On the fandom front, my board seems to be going well. It's weensy, but people are posting, so at least I'm not screaming down a well.

( Criminal Minds 217-Distress--SPOILERS )


No Supernatural for the next month, so it's CSI tonight. Yahoo.

Does anyone know if CBS' Innertube works on dial-up?  I have a hankering to watch Catherine Willows make an ass of herself.

Danse Macabre Part V is rolling.  I'm negotiating with the plotmonkeys to keep the fic between 15 and 20 chapters because the last thing I need is another Summon the Lambs to Slaughter, with 3 ,000 subplots to resolve by story's end.

If you've wanted to watch Criminal Minds, but never have, give it a try tonight.  "North Mammon" is creepy as hell, and it has a definite Saw vibe.  For some reason, the meeting in the conference room between the townsfolk reminds me of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery", though I can't put my finger on why.

Criminal Minds: For goddess_loki

-This show improved exponentially from its first few episodes until now. I tried to watch it when it debuted and was so disgusted by its terrorist mania that I gave up. I gave it another go at mid-season and fell in love. Once they moved away from the "There's an Al-Qaeda operative under every pot" formula, they hit their stride and created some of the most fascinating characters on TV.

-Hotch is one of those aforementioned fascinating characters. He's endlessly ambitious, as evinced by the fact that he worked beaucoup hours while his pregnant wife was confined to the hospital with gestational diabetes and pre-eclampsia. In fact, I found his drive distasteful. He has to pay the bills, yes, and it would've been unrealistic of him to quit working altogether, but he showed precious little concern for someone he promised to love, honor, and cherish. I see dangerous waters ahead. Just once, I want to see a cop or an FBI agent in a stable, loving, functional relationship.

-The Derek Morgan Was Molested Angle, I could happily have done without. It was sensationalist and gratuitous, and I wish Bruckheimer wouldn't insist on shoehorning it into his shows. He tried with Nick on CSI until Eads balked, they've implied Sara was assaulted, and over on Cold Case, both Lily Rush and Scotty Valens' older brother have been victimized. It's his favorite angst point, and the frequency with which he employs it is dimly alarming.

LJ surreptitiously attempted to change my skin from Xcolibur to Horizon this morning, never mind that I opted out of the change back in September. Classy move, SixApart. I know my own mind, you dim-witted, corporate nabobs, and if I tell you I want Xcolibur, then that's the one I want. Please don't do me the indignity of treating me as if I were a mildly retarded child who only needed to be shown the wonders of your cool, new features. I use Xcolibur because it's sleek and functional, and besides, the drop-down menus on Horizon don't work on my antiquated, Civil War-era browser. In short, leave my settings alone.

( Criminal Minds-Spoilers for Last Week's Episode and Speculation on Tonight )

I'm about to embark on my first assignment for my summer class, which is reading the poems of Han Shan, choosing one, and writing a one-page paper on my favorite. Thrilling. I suspect, after all his lecture on the subject yesterday, that he is hoping for a modicum of discourse on the subject of the sacred and the profane. All right, then. I can do custom bullshit as well as the next savvy student.

On the leisure reading front, I've nearly finished Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, and I am in love with Iris and Ruth. I even empathized with Marguerite until her greed drowned all pretense of hardihood and survival of the fittest and revealed her to be a calculating bitch. Maguire's greatest gift is to impart unto even the blackest of villains a shade of grey, and it is a trait that I have tried to emulate, as I find it truer than stark blacks and pristine whites. As soon as I make a dent in my mountain of to-be-read books, which is teetering dangerously and spilling over into closets and plastic storage bins, I'm going back for the rest of his works.

( The Wangst Tides of Sweeps: Spoilers for CSI, CSI:Miami, CSI:NY, NCIS, Cold Case, Criminal Minds, and Numb3rs. Read at Your Own Risk )