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Foundation; s7 ep18; Mar 21, 2012
Topic Started: Mar 12 2012, 11:18 PM (387 Views)
suceress
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Season 7 episode 18

Title: Foundation

Director: Dermott Downs

Writer: Jim Clemente

Airdate: March 21, 2012

Synopsis: When a scared, emaciated young boy is found in the Arizona desert and another boy winds up missing, the BAU begins searching for the kidnapper as Morgan, reaching into his own scarred past, tries to bond with the found child.

Guest Cast: Garrett M. Brown, Jackson Pace

This one should actually have profiling since it is written by the real former BAU agent. Like "Seven Seconds" this one involves children since Mr. Clemente was in the Crimes Against Children division of the BAU.

Info from http://criminalmindsroundtable.blogspot.com/2012/03/criminal-minds-press-release-for.html
Edited by suceress, Mar 12 2012, 11:19 PM.
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suceress
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I have to say that episode felt like the old CM. Reid wasn't in it much and disappeared again, but it really felt like each team member contributed something and the dialog reflected their personalities and experience.

Only nitpick was JJ suddenly knowing Spanish-- but its possible she could have learned some Spanish for work or for her own edification.
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BABruin
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They need to put Jim Clemente on the writing staff, pronto!! Yeah, this is how it should be, suspense without making it obvious who the unsub is from the begininng.
The team gets to do some profiling and I like that they show hesitation in nailing the Dad. In real life, it is always not so obvious and clear-cut who the real monsters are.
The scenes between Morgan and Angel were nicely written and very touching. My only nitpick was when Morgan said language didn't matter when he won't speak anyway. I think he really would say language does matter when the mind has retreated from reality. With old people when they get confused, they revert back to the original language of their childhood, kinda a comfort thing. Angel might have responded better to the language of his childhood as a comfort thing to draw him out. :shrug:
Reid disappears but that happens with episodes close to his directorial one where he gets busy with casting and scouting locations.
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suceress
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I agree!
I liked the music at the beginning and I found it entertaining how the father got out of the car and was goofing off in front of his wife and kids to wake himself up. And then he hid for a long time and popped up-- sort of making you think something might have happened, but it was all for fun. Then the car not starting-- but that was a joke too. LOL. It seemed like realistic actions and was humorous. Then all of a sudden the boy was right there.

I did think for a moment that the doctor at the hospital was the unsub because of the looks he and the boy exchanged. I wonder if we were supposed to suspect that. I thought that maybe a doctor had been the one that the girl saw leaving with a boy chained up and that maybe a doctor was there in the woman's memory because he had access to the house to make calls to visit the sick mother. I didn't even think about the fact that he was probably too young for that.

I loved how the woman was so confused because she didn't know if she could trust her memory and didn't want to believe her father could be so awful.

I loved that Rossi was reluctant to trust the woman's memory because of his experiences with therapists unintentionally (I hope in most cases it was unintentional) brainwashing patients into thinking they were abused and actually causing them to remember the abuse and fully believe it happened. Prentiss didn't have that same hangup and sort of had a gut feeling and went with it. Rossi cautioned her, but there was no outright defiance.

Everyone was professional. Even though Morgan got angry and punched the unsub at the end, there was a built to it and it made sense. A lot of law enforcement agents would have wanted to beat the hell out of that guy and used excessive force. This was the first time in the past two seasons where I actually cared about Morgan's personal drama and saw that it played into the case naturally. I love how he got through to the boy with the coin. I really felt like that was something that Jim was drawing on from personal experience (if he hadn't done that trick or something similar himself, maybe another agent that he knew did that).

When the parents of the most recent boy were talking to Hotch you could really get a sense of their angst and how worried they were about what awful things could be happening to their kid, and you could tell that Hotch sympathized. You could see it in his eyes that he worried that something like that could happen to Jack. I also like that they brought up how some children who are raised to be polite and helpful are sometimes prime targets for predators. It's nobody's fault but the predators'.

I loved that the baseball glove (catcher's mitt) was the thing the daughter used as an excuse to get into the basement and the twist that it was a trophy from one of the kidnapped children.

It was chilling to think that every new house in that original neighborhood was probably used to bury one of the guy's victims.

Some people complained that we didn't know what the unsub did to the boy, but given the bite marks and his reluctance to talk about it-- I'd say it was obvious. I'm glad they didn't go into great detail about it.

The episode had subtlety, the team being awesome, good profiling, great character moments, victimology, not too much reliance on Garcia for a change, sympathetic characters, and an overall suspenseful story.

Another complaint I heard was that we didn't hear why the unsub was doing this or what his upbringing was like. Frankly, I didn't care. That wasn't necessary. Besides, the unsub in the last story didn't have any explanation for her obsession with teenage boys. Many of the unsubs this season have been shown but we still know very little about their motivations.

This one was just done so much better. It was like old CM again. It was a relief after last week's episode. I think that if last week's ep had aired after this one it would have been even more of a downer.

The other writers need to take pointers from Jim Clemente on how to write.

The only thing that would have made this better would have been if there was more Reid.
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Lola
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Definitely better this time! But I have to say I'm one of those who would have liked to know more about the motivation of the unsub. I think it's kind of relevant. :shrug:
And yes, where was Reid? Singing karaoke in Japan? :D
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Mirri
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I guess I'm alone in thinking that this episode was just ok. I loved the scenes before the opening credits, with the family in the car and with the team on the plane. I thought that the boy in the back seat was the one going to be kidnapped. The team were off duty so they went directly to the plane and had the briefing there. It's always nice to see Hotch in casual clothes.
It was nice to have some decent profiling and that Emily and Rossi had differing opinions on the case but I just didn't find the episode to be all that exciting. I got distracted after the opening credits and screwed up on the recording so I did miss a few minutes of the episode early on so maybe that is why I don't love this ep like many people seem to.
I too would have liked to know more about the unsubs motivation other than Hotch saying Allen had a psychiatric disorder. That seems to be the easy explanation these days.
I found SM's, PB's and AJC's performances to be a bit off.
There was hardly any Reid this episode and he even had a couple of scenes where he had no lines :( . Maybe MGG was doing prep for Heathridge Manor (although one of the crew on twitter, I'm thinking Anne Fleiner, said that episode 7.18 was shot before 7.17 for a reason she did not know).
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suceress
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I think someone timed it and from 9:30 to 9:55pm, Reid only had 3 lines and they were all at once near the end. I'm thinking Matthew might not have been available.

I didn't notice anyting off with PB, AJ, or SM.

Compared to seasons 1-4 I guess this one would be average, but compared to the rest of the episodes this season, this one was fantastic IMO. If the other writers would just take a clue on the profiling and format of this one. I hope they realize that this one was good despite the lack of Reid and not because of it.

At the chat the writer just said that the unsub was a sexual sadist. He was probably a pedophile and felt compelled to abuse boys but he also got off on their suffering. I liked that he just seemed like the affable guy next door type instead of the creepy over-the-top unsub we've been seeing lately.
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