"There's No Place Like Home" is yet another example of 'Criminal Minds' doing something differently, and while changes of paces for the show have varied in execution this is a case of it not working. It is also another case of 'Criminal Minds' being strange and mostly bungling it.
As far as Season 7 episodes go, "There's No Place Like Home" is one of the weaker ones, with "I Love You Tommy Brown" being the season's low-point. The season started well and "Painless" is certainly memorable for Reid and Morgan's hilarious prank war, but too many of the episodes have ranged from middle-of-the-road average to not being much to write home about.
It isn't an awful episode by all means. The highlight is Reid's explanation of the correlation between air turbulence and plane crashes. It was a wonderful laugh-out-loud moment, and the great dialogue in this scene was made even funnier by Reid's hilariously deadpan delivery and Rossi's every bit as priceless reaction. Garcia also shines with some fun one-liners and her sensitivity. "There's No Place Like Home" scores very highly in the production values as ever, with a lot of style, class and atmosphere. The episode is also hauntingly and melancholically scored, and the acting from the leads is very good, Matthew Gray Gubler and Joe Mantegna being particularly strong while AJ Cook makes the most of JJ's subplot.
However, the story just didn't really connect with me and indicates that the writers ran out of ideas and creativity. JJ's marital strife subplot had potential and it is a situation that many can relate to, but it is a subplot that has been done much better before in the show with Hotch. Here with JJ, it felt like a re-hash, but, while it was brilliantly and powerfully done with Hotch and felt really genuine, here it had a try-too-hard vibe and didn't feel as powerful or as genuine, partly also because it felt both skimmed over and stretched. This said, Cook does do a very good job and Henry is adorable. Josh Stewart as Will however just felt like background, real potential for the character to grow but there was not much to him. Absolutely get that this is character development and that it's necessary to stop the characters from being human robots at work, but it definitely could have been done better than this.
As for the case itself, it was rather weak. Profiling is barely there and neither is the suspense. Instead it has a thinly sketched unsub (a big problem for one revealed early on and with reasonable prominence), and a very strange mix of Frankenstein-trying-to-bring-to-life and a premise for a slightly more polished SyFy Channel horror, both lacking in tension, suspense or any kind of atmosphere and it just got silly and ridiculous. Got nothing out of Alex Weed's acting either, the character exudes little development or menace and Weed just felt too bland and also on the camp side. The script has its moments but generally is just too muddled.
Overall, a few good moments, high production values and as ever solid performances from the leads saves "There's No Place Like Home" from doom. But not quite enough to save an episode that's strange, silly and muddled, with a case and unsub that just didn't connect and a main character subplot that was too much like a much less effective re-hash of a previously beautifully done one from earlier on in the show's run.
4/10 Bethany Cox
