Criminal Minds/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

• In a two-part episode in Season Two, Reid is kidnapped by a religious fanatic with three separate personalities: his own personality, his father's personality, and a personality that believes himself to be an infallible archangel. It takes a second or two to realize the significance of having this deeply religious killer be three people in one- the father, the son, and a holy spirit.
  • Also from that episode: while the father beats Reid savagely and the angel plays Russian Roulette with him, it is scared, meek Tobias who actually causes Reid the most agony and suffering by giving him the drugs... and he did it all while trying to help.
  • Yet again from that episode: Charles' line "There's only one bullet in that gun" at the end of "Revelations" makes sense when you remember the personalities, while aware of each other, were unaware of the fact that they co-existed in the same body, as alluded to earlier ("Do I look like Raphael to you?") What Charles was essentially saying was "There's only one bullet in that gun, and there's three of us." - unsigned entry moved from main CM page
• And then there's the episode, "The Performer," which involves a Marilyn Manson doppelganger promoting a new album called "The Liar". It seems like an odd name for an album at first. Then, you see the scene in which the desperate, drug-addicted rock star's manager promises him that things will get better, hear the rock star say, "Look, you may be the only friend I've got left, but you're a crappy liar," and realize who the album is named after.
• The episode "True Night" can be looked at as a Deconstruction of Dark Age comic books. The unsub, Jonny, a comic book artist, creates a new character, Night, who appears to be a Nineties Anti-Hero given his use of deadly force, and all Night's kills are subconsciously based on murders the unsub has been committing in real life. Jonny's manager is shocked by the violence of this art compared to Johnny's previous work. Furthermore, examine what caused Jonny's psychotic break: his girlfriend getting murdered in front of him by a street gang. Yes, she was Stuffed Into the Fridge. His response was to essentially become a Nineties anti-hero himself, hunting down the gang members and killing them, like many a Dark Age "hero". However, this isn't portrayed as "EXTREEEEMEEE", but as a horrifying symptom of major mental illness. The scenes where he kills the victims are beautifully stylized in Sin City-esque fashion, but when you see them realistically afterwards (though you don't see much), they're stomach-churning. Jonny is what a Nineties anti-hero would be in real life: seriously disturbed and tragic, not Badass. It's a meditation on how what is "cool" in comics is not very cool in reality.
  • I caught that on first viewing, but I didn't realize the Stuffed Into the Fridge bit until I read that. Wow.
• In the episode "Lauren", Prentiss' headstone reads "Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity" Put those together and what do you get? F.B.I.
  • For good reason: "Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity" is the FBI's official motto.
  • Also, in the same episode, upon receiving news of Prentiss' death, Reid attempts to leave the room, stopped by JJ, to whom he says "I didn't get to say goodbye." Now think back to episode "Scared to Death", when Reid finds the letter Gideon left for him. He complains about abandonment and how his father (and father-figure) left without forewarning. And to who? Emily. Now, doesn't that feel familiar? I thought so.
• Prentiss' origin as an Interpol agent seems to be an Ass Pull... but go back to the episodes in which she first appears. She really does seem to come out of nowhere, claiming to have worked in the FBI for ten years without Hotch ever seeing her. His initial mistrust of her is a natural reaction. Being in the FBI is a sort of witness protection for her--since she won't be leaving the country for assignments, she has less of a chance of running into anyone who knew her as Lauren.
  • Also in "Revelations" both JJ and Hotch point out that she is completely calm even though a co-worker and friend has been kidnapped by an insane serial killer and nothing she has seen up to that point has made her lose focus despite apparently having a desk job until recently. But it makes perfect sense when you learn about her past.
  • In "52 Pickup," Prentiss says that she's dated guys worse than Viper. Well, that's probably the most innocuous way anybody could describe Ian Doyle...
• It always seemed a little weird to me that when Prentiss goes into Hotch's apartment in "Nameless, Faceless", she sees the pool of blood and instantly reaches for his address book, of all things. Yes, it's out on the table and near at hand, but she doesn't even look in the other rooms first. Then it occurred to me: the last time an UNSUB was in someone's home, it was Frank. Where did they find the key to his next target?
• One of the most interesting character interactions (to this troper, anyway) is between Hotch and Strauss. One is a major Badass Iron Woobie that does everything in his power to keep his team safe and get the unsub. The other is an Obstructive Bureaucrat that does everything in her power to control the political/bureaucratic ramifications of the BAU's actions. At times the two become a rivalry, with Hotch proving time and again that he is capable and happy where he is and Strauss doing everything she can to keep her job (since Hotch has proven that he could easily do it himself). Their relationship (though favoring Hotch from the audience's perspective) is played up as a rivalry. What's one way to reinforce a rivalry? With Name's the Same: both are named Aaron/Erin.

Fridge Horror

• The unsub from "Normal" killed his wife and daughters while they slept, blocked out the memory of doing so, and continually hallucinated his family was still alive. He never moved the bodies, so its safe to assume he had been unknowingly sleeping next to his wife's corpse for days.
• At the end of "The Fox" the team find a box that contains 8 wedding rings collected by the unsub after he killed the families he lived with for five days. Counting the 3 families the team knew about, and possibly allowing another for the unsub's own failed marriage, that still means he did that to 4 other families at least before the team knew about it.
• Most of the dead in "Amplification" were probably children.
• The Reaper's attack on Hotch, leaving aside seculation Hotch is a profiler who was haunted by the Reaper for over 10 years and then there was their last incounter. Poor Hotch has probaly put himself in the Reaper's shoes hundreds of times and then there is Reaper on top of him, stabbing him and he can't think or do anything that the Reaper brushes of or ignors all the while enduring his taunts and stabs and worst of all can guess what is in the Reaper mind and how much he is enjoying it.
• Jeremy, the teenage budding pychopath In "Safe Haven" is described by Garcia as having a disterbingly long rap sheet. A Freeze-Frame Bonus shows us that one of his crimes is sexual assualt. Likely meaning that when he was younger he molested an even younger child than himself at the time. Add that to his creepy interest in a young girl in that episode and it seems that Jeremy is also a pedophile.
• Killing children does absolutely nothing for Frank, as he himself knows with complete certainy. But if he is completely certain that killing children doesn't work for him, that likely means he's tried it just to see if it does.

Fridge Logic

• In "Bloodline", what happens if the families have a daughter, instead of a son?
  • They kill her, probably.
• Henry Grace mentions in "Masterpiece" that he's been working on his elaborate revenge scheme for five years. Rossi was still retired then.
• "The Fight": A guy with a criminal record, and who even spent time in prison, is somehow a member of a BAU team?
• "Psychodrama": Can Haley really just walk into the FBI without Hotch being notified/asked if it's OK for her to be there? Either that or the FBI has less security than the Googleplex or most other large companies that require employees to notify security if family members will be entering the campus.
  • Well, Ellie Spicer manages it in "Safe Haven", though it may be justified in her case, since she's eleven.
• When, exactly, did Hotch "liaise" with Kate Joyner? He married Haley right out of high school, and it would be incredibly out of character for him to cheat. It's not like the episode forgot about Haley, either, as Kate's similarity to her is remarked upon.
  • He himself gives no indication that he's ever done anything with her; the team jumps to that conclusion. It's possible they were just good friends, and rumors started.