Criminal Minds

Season 13

Episode 22: Believer

Once again, I have been delayed in writing up my thoughts on Criminal Minds, so here are my thoughts (from what I remember) from season 13. The opening episode was a tension-filled resolution of the Mr Scratch storyline from previous seasons - finally someone caught up with him! Disappointing to see Walker being killed off-screen but AM has always had actor ’issues’ and always has a creative way to write characters out. One of the best parts of the spin-off, Matt Simmons returns to the screen as a decent replacement, although his character feels very similar to that of Alvez, so we’ll see how that goes in future seasons... The crimes and quality of cases were still pretty good this season, lots of relevant current themes being woven in which is always a nice touch. The main story arc of the remaining two-thirds of the season involved some BAU politics where Barnes tries to take over the team and restructure (very realistically it must be said). Thankfully the team manage to outsmart and out-manoeuvre Barnes after a few tense episodes where the team are split up! Most characters have some small character arcs this season, Alvez has one about balancing dating and work, we meet another one of Rossi’s ex-wives who has a problem for him to sort and Prentiss and JJ have some big leadership decisions to make. All fairly standard police procedural plot lines but I did enjoy learning a bit more backstory about the whole team. Stand out episodes for me include the opener where Mr Scratch is finally caught, the finale with a dramatic cliffhanger ending, and a tense hostage situation episode near the end of the season. A surprising edge of the seat episode where Simmons’s wife Kristy is one of the hostages, cue Simmons on edge and the rest of the team slightly more involved to help him through it. Thankfully, Kristy manages to help the BAU with some quick thinking and turns the episode into one of the most memorable of the series. Hopefully season 14 resolves the season finale cliffhanger, without Reid becoming even more traumatised (#givereidahappystoryline) and Garcia isn’t just used as convenient bait. Curious to see the impact of episode 300 which is the series opener as episodes 100 and 200 have been BIG. Even after 299 episodes, Criminal Minds is still finding some inventive storylines and even I didn’t quite spot the twist in the season finale, so for now, I’ll happily take on another season of BAU excitement!

This episode was great! Among the most tense and thrilling ones in this show.