"Criminal Minds" Damaged (2008)

Director:

Edward Allen Bernero

Writers:

Jeff Davis (creator)
Edward Allen Bernero (written by)

TV Series:

"Criminal Minds" (2005)

Original Air Date:

2 April 2008 (Season 3, Episode 14)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Mystery | Thriller

Plot:

Rossi determines that the case that haunts him has gone unsolved too long on its 20th anniversary, and the team horns in on his investigation despite his displeasure. Elsewhere, Reid and Hotchner interview a manipulative death-row convict.

Plot Keywords:

FBI Profiler | Serial Killer

Cast

  (Episode Cast overview, first billed only)

Joe Mantegna	...	David Rossi
Paget Brewster	...	Emily Prentiss
Shemar Moore	...	Derek Morgan
Matthew Gray Gubler	...	Dr. Spencer Reid
A.J. Cook	...	Jennifer 'JJ' Jareau
Kirsten Vangsness	...	Penelope Garcia
Thomas Gibson	...	Aaron 'Hotch' Hotchner
Nicholas Brendon	...	Kevin Lynch
Michael Shamus Wiles	...	Chester Hardwick
Nicholle Tom	...	Connie Galen
Dennis Christopher	...	Abner Merriman
E.J. Callahan	...	Landon
David Tom	...	Georgie Galen
John Gloria	...	Detective Willis
Scout Raskin	...	Alicia Galen (as Jessica Raskin)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Company:

Mark Gordon Company, The

Trivia:

Real life (twin) brother and sister, David Tom and Nicholle Tom play siblings Georgie and Connie Galen.

Goofs:

Continuity: In the season three episode "Birthright," Rossi tells retired sheriff John Caulfield that this case has haunted him for 21 years. Caulfield replies by telling him not to let it become 22 years. However, in this episode, Rossi claims that this is the 20th year anniversary of that incident.

Quotes:

Penelope Garcia: [mortified that Kevin will talk with Rossi about their relationship] If you get within a hundred feet of Agent Rossi, I will unleash an unrecoverable virus onto your personal computer system that will reduce your electronic world into something between a Commodore 64, and a block of government cheese.

Soundtrack:

Gary Louris

Headed towards the bottom of the barrel now...

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Damn, I suspected that after "3rd Life" (Episode 3.12), the series would face an inevitable batch of episodes of lower quality, but the drop during the past two episodes has been shocking. The previous one was still your basic, well done, if not noteworthy episode, but "Damaged" really is what it's name says. The episode is a sorry mess: three story lines, which immediately makes one suspect that the writers did not have enough main story to fill an entire episode. And guess what - it proves to be true. Since a single-story line episode is really hard to pull off, most of TV episodes tend to fall on the tried and trusted Plot A / Plot B approach, which works just fine. But to pull off an A/B/C structure, you need to keep all the story lines competing from the viewer's attention in a tight leash. Here, it looks like they did not even bother to try. The A Plot line of the unresolved murder plods lazily on until the B Plot (Hotch's) is resolved somewhere after the midpoint of the episode. It then looks like the writers realized they had maybe a third of the episode left to actually get the A Plot going, so it gets rushed through in less than fifteen minutes (excluding commercials). What's that you say? C Plot? Oh, there was some room for comic relief and they needed something for Garcia too, so they use a couple of minutes on her. And guess what. It's not funny. Even though it features Nicholas Brandon from Buffy. A sad state of affairs.