Wednesday April 12, 2006
119
The BAU travels to Mexico to aid in the capture of a serial killer who has targeted elderly women.
Read Full Recap » (warning: possible spoilers!)How to spend weekend.. hide show
Oh - I cannot say it was not good storyline - the story has its message and very strong way of telling it but it was a message inside a cultural limits and maybe it makes sense when seeing it in America, but here in Europe it just felt like a distance as we do not have that problem. Ok.. the episode - scenery change. And the story before the case about Hotchner - that will get interesting, I am sure.
The case itself had some turns but again, I think they have had episode what concentrated more on the profile than this.. That seemed to be another char story, like last one, this time giving Greenaway a change to shine.
Every time this show takes a case into Mexico I feel like Im watching the same episode over and over again. The writers continue to make reference to how in Mexico things often relate to family or some weird Mexican tradition that we cannot relate to. Once again (for the second episode in a row) the profile was incorrect for most of the episode. I didnt mind how it was wrong in "Everyones Watching" but that was because I was more into the plot. This storyline just seems recycled. If they plan to go out of the country - stop picking the same old desert scenes of Mexico and using the Mexican tradition as the baseline of the episode. I dont think I was going to like any episode that followed the blockbuster of the one before this one, but this episode was one of the worst of the first season.
The BAU, and the CM writers, concentrate attention on the victims. Just as they should. hide show
The title of the episode is somewhat misleading. Literally, “A strong or exaggerated sense of masculinity stressing attributes such as physical courage, virility, domination of women, and aggressiveness.” The exaggerated feelings of domination over women did not lead Pablo Vargas to rape and kill – as Captain Navarro himself said, Vargas lacked machismo of any kind. He lived his life dominated by women – his boss, and probably his mother before her death. He could not respond as other Latin men do – with aggressiveness and courage right out there in the open, he could only take out his anger on helpless women in the dark desert night where he was still concerned about “how he did.” It was his lack of machismo, and how people may have perceived him because of that lack, that informed his actions, not the cultural expectations.
What a powerful story. I appreciated the showcase for the rape victims – we didn’t have to go to Mexico to find members of law enforcement, and of the community itself, who ignore these women. Milagros was a wonderful spokeswoman for the victims – faceless, nameless women who hover in the shadows, afraid to speak about what has been done to them. She brings them, and their stories, into the light at the police station, and having Elle and JJ as the BAU members most responsible for their emergence was profoundly satisfying.
And it was an empowering story. A woman holds the power as the District Attorney General, even if she is somewhat stereotyped as the “woman boss” who all the men make fun of behind her back. The woman factory-owner who did not tolerate any victimization of the women in her employ was a great character. And the ultimate punishment was doled out to the rapist and killer. While I’m not condoning vigilante-ism, the reaction of the not-helpless-anymore women confronting their attacker was the perfect “let the punishment fit the crime” moment. While this episode was nominally about catching the serial killer, it felt more like an acknowledgement of women – and how many cultures, including our own, are not ready to see that women are as valuable as men.
Even Hotch’s minimal sub-plot spoke to this theme. He is going to have to address his absence from his family, and the huge burden this puts upon Haley. We can expect the stress between his dedication to his job - his BAU family - and his actual family will haunt him. As the Mexican proverb states: “The house does not rest upon the ground, but upon a woman.”
Good overall episode hide show
This epidsode had a good plot and storyline, i liked the way it built up to a different conclusion, like every episode does that.
I liked the language barrier in the show which called for some improvisations and subtitles, which was also helped by one of the team speaking spanish!
I liked the ending and the way the woman who were victims actually solved the crimes.
Es muy bien!
I\'m from Argentina. That is, I speak Spanish. This means I pay special attention when the characters of an american series speak Spanish or has something to do with Latinoamerica.
And this episode sucked in that area.
For starters, the name of the town (Allende del Sol) is absurd: \"Beyond the sun\". I accept that towns might not have the most logical names but this is ridiculous.
In the very first minutes there\'s a big big goof that ruined all my credibility in the episode: When Elle is handed the newspaper, the headlines are in a lousy spanish and said something different of what she translates.
The headlines read:
\"Una asesina serial mayor de edad aterroriza a los pueblos locales. El procurador general y las autoridades mueven lentamente\" which means \"A 18+ female serial killer terrorizes local towns. The general attorney and the authorities move slowly\". The correct headline should have been:
\"Un asesino serial de mujeres mayores siembra el terror en los pueblos vecinos. La procuradora general y las autoridades policiales se mueven lentamente.\"
And then we had to buy that in a rural town from Mexico all the inhabitants are fluent in English (and quite fluent!) while all but one of the agents (including the boy genius Dr Reid) can\'t speak more than a few common words. Please!
I understand that people in the US can\'t read subtitles and that making all the episode spoken in Spanish and Elle translating would have been boring, but... but Don\'t make an episode in Mexico if you don\'t want Spanish be the language spoken by Mexicans!
Language considerations aside, the episode is in the verge of involuntary racism. I know that wasn\'t the intention of the people in the show to show cultural superiority from the americans over the mexicans and most of the times they show a greater knowledge and respect for latino cultures than other american shows, but at times I felt that the mexican character were shown as \"ignorant beaners\", if you know what I mean.
And the story was very poor, the discovery of the serial killer was an obscene Deus ex machina and, please!, a serial killer in drags that lives with the corpse of his mother? Haven\'t I seen this before? Mmmmm... yup... I think his name was Mormon Boots... I mean, Normal Baits... I mean, Norman Bates...
Is a shame that a well produced show like Criminal Minds issued a lousy episode like Machismo.
phf3947
Editor
layle1
Trusted
Finnegan77
Trusted
sammy2333
Retired
Angelwomyn
marymoss71
flame_tiger86
