Season 2 of a personal favourite show of mine is one of the stronger seasons overall of 'Criminal Minds'.
Mostly, in fact for almost the whole duration of the episode, "No Way Out" is one of the season's best in a list that includes "The Boogeyman", "North Mammon", "Revelations", "No Way Out II: The Evilution of Frank", while the underwhelming "Honor Among Thieves" is a rare disappointment from the season.
As ever with 'Criminal Minds' "No Way Out" is made impeccably, stylish yet gritty without being schlocky. The music is haunting while never being melodramatic, too much of one tempo or mood or intrusive. The script is very taut, with intrigue, mystery, suspense and tension aplenty. Reid also has a hilarious line regarding a psycho with a whistle not being that weird.
The storytelling is similarly edge of your seat stuff with no scenes feeling irrelevant or like filler, while also brilliantly executing a story device very different, for then in the show's run, from usual, with the unsub already cornered and being told in flashback structure reconstructing the previous events. Frank Breitkopf is one of the show's most prolific and frightening serial killers for a reason, his dialogue sends chills up the spine and in a way that's fairly subtle but still scary and his way of killing his victims is horrifying, one of the most horrific MOs of any unsub on 'Criminal Minds'.
Uniformly good also is the acting, Keith Carradine is brilliantly scary as Frank while his chemistry with Mandy Patinkin's authoritative Gideon (with a riveting "battle of the minds" chemistry with Carradine's Frank) and Amy Madigan as Jane, a character almost as nuts as he is but in a different way.
It is just such a shame that "No Way Out" falters at the end, especially as the rest of the episode was so mind-blowingly. It just came over as very irrational, if there was an unsub who deserved to be apprehended and should have been it was Breitkopf and it felt like a cop out for him to escape, and especially with not so much of a trace. It also felt very open-ended and crying out for a follow-up, which did happen later on in the season and it was every bit as great an episode (though like this episode, but not quite as infuriatingly the ending also was a let-down).
Overall, a scintillating episode and one of the best of the season that falters only, and frustratingly, at the end. 9/10 Bethany Cox
Mostly, in fact for almost the whole duration of the episode, "No Way Out" is one of the season's best in a list that includes "The Boogeyman", "North Mammon", "Revelations", "No Way Out II: The Evilution of Frank", while the underwhelming "Honor Among Thieves" is a rare disappointment from the season.
As ever with 'Criminal Minds' "No Way Out" is made impeccably, stylish yet gritty without being schlocky. The music is haunting while never being melodramatic, too much of one tempo or mood or intrusive. The script is very taut, with intrigue, mystery, suspense and tension aplenty. Reid also has a hilarious line regarding a psycho with a whistle not being that weird.
The storytelling is similarly edge of your seat stuff with no scenes feeling irrelevant or like filler, while also brilliantly executing a story device very different, for then in the show's run, from usual, with the unsub already cornered and being told in flashback structure reconstructing the previous events. Frank Breitkopf is one of the show's most prolific and frightening serial killers for a reason, his dialogue sends chills up the spine and in a way that's fairly subtle but still scary and his way of killing his victims is horrifying, one of the most horrific MOs of any unsub on 'Criminal Minds'.
Uniformly good also is the acting, Keith Carradine is brilliantly scary as Frank while his chemistry with Mandy Patinkin's authoritative Gideon (with a riveting "battle of the minds" chemistry with Carradine's Frank) and Amy Madigan as Jane, a character almost as nuts as he is but in a different way.
It is just such a shame that "No Way Out" falters at the end, especially as the rest of the episode was so mind-blowingly. It just came over as very irrational, if there was an unsub who deserved to be apprehended and should have been it was Breitkopf and it felt like a cop out for him to escape, and especially with not so much of a trace. It also felt very open-ended and crying out for a follow-up, which did happen later on in the season and it was every bit as great an episode (though like this episode, but not quite as infuriatingly the ending also was a let-down).
Overall, a scintillating episode and one of the best of the season that falters only, and frustratingly, at the end. 9/10 Bethany Cox