photo: cbs

Original Air Date: Jan 13, 2010

JD – Associate Staff Writer
jd@thetwocentscorp.com

Hi, guys! It’s been a while. But just in time for the show’s holiday hiatus to end, my own TwoCents hiatus is ending. Did you miss me? I hope my absence wasn’t too traumatic for you.

So! Here’s the run down of what’s happened this season while I was gone: Hotch and Foyet (AKA The Reaper) played Operation. Hotch lost. In a real-life-affecting-screen-life twist, Reid was shot in the leg and gimpified (though he’s all better now!). Morgan got to play boss and got his own shiny office as Hotch fell apart. Haley got her first redeeming moment since the implication that she cheated on Hotch, making a lot of us like her again just before she went six feet under. Hotch beat Foyet to death like a crazed caveman to save his son, and surprisingly, the wicked witch of the west–er, I mean Strauss–had a moment of redemption when she didn’t come down on Hotch for it.

So that’s the scoop on the season so far. Let’s get down to business on The Uncanny Valley.

We start with one of the only truly creepy scenes in the episode. A security guard is searching and empty building filled with carnival rides. He keeps hearing noises, and suddenly the carousel turns on, lights shining and music playing. Creepy, huh? Except it turns out to be one of the other employees playing a joke. The security guard actually has the decency not to shoot the guy for the scare, but then catches sight of something on the carousel. It turns out to be a young woman. She’s heavily made up and dressed up. Oh, and she’s dead. Without that last part, we wouldn’t have much of an episode, would we?

So of course, the BAU team is called in–also a necessity for each episode. There’s another victim, and like the first, she is heavily made up and dressed up. The only link between the two other than that, though, is that both victims had a drug in their systems that essentially paralyzed them. They remained conscious, but were unable to move. On the jet, the team decides the unsub must have medical training, and Garcia (with shiny new red hair!) tells them the dresses the victims were wearing when they were found fit them perfectly, like they’d been tailored. Prentiss also points out that the unsub is more than likely a woman, based on the care taken with the women.

Back on the ground, Prentiss and Morgan talk to the families. The clothes are not recognized by either family. Hotch and Rossi visit the disposal sites, the carnival and a park, and determine the only way the unsub could have disposed of the bodies in such public places would be if the unsub had them in a wheelchair. They get Garcia on pulling records for vans with handicapped registrations.

Meanwhile, two more girls are kidnapped. They went missing the day before the other bodies were dumped. The unsub apparently never lets a body go until she has a replacement, making her a collector.

Cut to our unsub fumbling with a wheelchair outside of a dry cleaners. She gets the attention of a young woman who decides to help her get the chair into the back of her van. Her kindness is repaid with a taser to her stomach. But at least the unsub compliments her beauty as she’s lying on the ground unconscious! How sweet!

This episode was really not as creepy as I thought it could have been. The sorts of dolls the victims were dressed up as? Creepy. Serial killers? Creepy. This episode? Not so much. There were little things in it that were creepy (the dream sequence, the opening scene, the wigs sewn to the scalps of victims), but overall the preview was creepier than the actual episode.

I just didn’t get that hair on the back of your neck standing up feeling. I’m not entirely sure why the creep out factor fell flat for me, but otherwise I thought it was a solid episode, and definitely a creative one. I loved the whole idea of it, and the execution of it was just as good. It was a great episode to come home to after what felt like a too long break. I weep when my show leaves me.

Okay, not really, but you get the picture.

Seeing Hotch back in his role as the leader was great. It was a return to, as Garcia quoted Whitman in one episode, ‘O captain! My captain!’ He is the center of the team, the rock which everyone stands on. It was painful to watch him go through what he did this season, so it’s wonderful to see him in control again. That on top of Reid healing? I feel like balance is returning to my show.

So what did you guys think? Are you going to throw out every doll you may have? Jump for joy over Hotch’s return to himself? Never assist a strange person who needs help again? Did you love it? Hate it? Something in between? Give me your Two Cents!