criminal minds

[cimorene]

actually an embarrassing title perfectly fit because it was an embarrassingly cliché-drenched episode, full of cliché morgan being appealingly emo, yet in a manly fashion. this show has really invested almost all of its manliness in him, which is why, i think, it is so very concerned with conserving it appropriately. of course he is manly but sensitive, and i think his tragic past of clichéd childhood sexual abuse and clawing his way up out of the hood fits admirably in with that aim. so good show, guys.

not so much of a good show with the dialogue, though. that was more of a mediocre show, and i think the actor's abilities were straining a little - completely unnecessarily, since all of the long speeches that strained suspension of disbelief could have benefited radically from trimming.

there was remarkably little garcia for a morgan episode, but what there was of her i approved of; it had appropriate tone and content. i can't help wondering if the original plot was longer and they ended up trimming out garcia-relevant scenes, or whether they conversely went back to stuff the garcia bits in because they felt the episode was too light on garcia.

of course usually a history of childhood sexual abuse would mean nothing more nor less than a very simple prescription: Healing Cock (commonly known as the Healing Cock of the Scottish Highlands after its most common wielder. although i might be wrong - is it possible that qui-gon's cock is more frequently put to healing use than macleod's?).  "luckily," said wax, "there are no scottish characters on this show." luckily indeed.

i'm not really sure what the prescribed het procedure for past sexual abuse is, either. i mean, romance novels will tell you it is healing cock, but they will also tell you that it is only ever women who have a history of sexual abuse. so what's a het writer to do with a smart, hot computer nerd and a charmingly roguish manly man with a history of sexual abuse? (hypothetically, i mean.) on the other hand, it's not like he's afraid to be touched or anything, so the healing (whatever) in this instance would, i suppose, be more aimed at getting him to trust again or to. uh. let people help him or... maybe his Clichéd Emotional Malfunction is an artificial divide between sex and emotion that he has to maintain to keep himself sane, or else he gets really insecure and terrified and stuff. i'm kind of making myself a little green just thinking about the appropriate clichés, so perhaps i will just abandon this line of thought for the moment.

Comments

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

What saved this from cliche for me is that, at least in the media, childhood sexual abuse has been largely depicted as a White problem. And I sort of liked that they were able to use economics as a rationale for why Morgan didn't talk (rather than some of the usual "fear of not being believed" or "risk to manhood" or threat of death). And it did seem reasonable that Morgan would then go into law enforcement as a way of restoring his sense of control (and even though I guessed his secret pretty early on, I sort of felt for him in his panic over having anyone on his team find out something he's kept to himself for all those years and apparently hasn't even gone into therapy about).

I mean, yeah, the whole "the cop gets arrested" thing is a cliche, and it wasn't at all surprising to see that it was Morgan they chose for that plot, and that it was racism that seemed, at least superficially, to be the motivation for his harrassment and arrest (which is more realism than cliche, actually). But I did think it was interesting that, in the end, the gangbanger had nothing at all to do with it (and that Morgan's problem with him was just a vestige of childhood hostility carried over into immature, posturing adulthood).

Anyway, I may be just too forgiving of this show, as its plotting is still way the hell above that on Numb3rs, and I continue to find both Garcia and Reid adorable in the extreme. Plus, I have a soft spot for Mandy.

But as for your i>really important question of what Garcia can do for him in the way of a manly man's cure... Sadly, in that respect, I think that TPTB are still being overly idiotic in only flirting with Garcia as a real love interest for Morgan. Though my hope is that deciding to have Morgan be biracial was the beginning of opening up and approaching the possibility of his dating Garcia (which, gah, is a horrible thought to have, but I do think that there's still a prohibition in place that they're butting their heads up against).

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Oh, you know, I wasn't thinking of it in that way, but you make an excellent point about the racial element to the plot. And I think you're right that that's really good, because Morgan was right that the abuser had a perfect situation there, with the economic element keeping the children indebted to him and reinforcing the power imbalance - it was almost Machiavellian. That element is also usually missing from the stereotypical way you think about this situation, which is more with little league coaches and the like - a distinctly middle class pastime. I definitely think you're right about biracial relationships on television, too. There are a lot more people of color in television, but they're still moving out of tokenism and the race dimension isn't quite invisible enough yet (which is actually one of the things I love about Garcia/Morgan - race is not problematised at all between them. I hadn't even guessed that he wasn't middle class, in fact, his behaviour's so far from stereotypes).

And yeah, this episode annoyed me more than they usually do because I don't really like ones where the cops get arrested, but this is still one of my two favourite shows of the moment. I'm willing to forgive it a lot, and I do think that there's a lot that it's doing right (JJ's character's much more dimensional and interesting than you'd expect, for example, and I love everything I've seen about Garcia so far. Hotch's family concerns are a little tired, but his clash with the new girl introduced a more interesting personal problem for him. And obviously Reid is fantastic).

As for Garcia and Morgan... oh, I really want to believe that there are serious plans for the plot with them in the long term, but I suspect they're trying to keep their options open for the time being, not committing one way or the other, or else that they plan to stretch it out a long time before significantly developing the romance between them. (There are a few things I've taken as evidence to support the latter theory, but the relative lack of Garcia in this last episode seems to undermine that.)