Criminal Minds (TV Series) A Badge and a Gun (2016) User Reviews

A decent episode

[LoveIsAStateOfMind · 8/10 · 29 February 2016]

It's very hard to get me excited about a Criminal Minds episode nowadays. It seems that the spark has gotten out of the show the past couple of seasons and there have been barely any cases which have kept me sitting at the edge of my seat.

Thankfully, courtesy of a piece of inspired guest-star casting and a cliffhanger ending, this episode was somewhat thrilling.

I haven't seen Carmine Giovinazzo in anything since CSI:NY ended and in typical Criminal Minds fashion they made him into a really believable bad guy and erased all of the good cop Danny Messer about him.

Interesting setup of having him pretending to be law enforcement. It's scary how natural it would be to let someone in your house if you believed they were a cop.

As to the ending? Wow, poor Derek. I've heard rumours that Shemar might be leaving the show? I hope not. Anyway, I can't wait to find out why the gang of men attacked him. Usually with big character episodes like this, there is some sort of build-up and moments laying the groundwork but this time there's been nothing.

Middling 'Criminal Minds' episode

[TheLittleSongbird · 6/10 · 10 February 2017]

Despite being a big fan of 'Criminal Minds', Season 11 was largely underwhelming for reasons too numerous to list, including too much unsub and not enough team, lack of profiling and psychology, too much emphasis on the personal lives and not enough tension and suspense.

As far as Season 11 goes, "A Badge and a Gun" is towards the top end (seeing as it doesn't commit as many glaring mistakes as most of the episodes from the season) without being one of the very best ones. It is not as good as "The Job", "Hostage", "The Witness" and especially "Entropy" (also found "A Beautiful Disaster" better than given credit for, though generally Morgan's exit arc should have been better handled).

But at the same time it is much better than the likes of "Till Death Do Us Part", "The Bond", "Future Perfect", "Awake", "Inner Beauty", "Internal Affairs", "Outlaw" and "Drive".

Starting with the good points, "A Badge and a Gun" looks slick and stylish. The music is appropriately moody, in both the haunting and melancholic sense. The direction is quick-paced yet sympathetic, and there are some interesting touches such as the ambitious ruse that could have gone so badly wrong and the whole location stuff with the unsub. The acting is very good, all the leads are reliably strong and Carmine Giovinazzo nails his creepy unsub role.

There is more detective work and profiling than most episodes of the season and it makes sense, the unsub with his very bleak past is better developed than most of the unsubs from Season 11 (and while he is shown early on other episodes have done far worse in how much they use their unsubs, here his murder of Patricia was pretty horrifying). Garcia is more adult and more professional than she tended to be in the later seasons too. The cliff-hanger ending is suitably ominous.

However, wasn't really all that invested in the whole subplot with Morgan and Savannah, it didn't dominate the episode thankfully but before this point the relationship was too sketchy and too lacking in chemistry and Savannah too dull a character to really feel anything. The case generally is competent but pretty routine with potentially interesting areas not explored enough (like the significance of Andrew's looks) and apart from the ruse, the murder of Patricia and the ending suspense was lacking.

Occasionally the writing gets a tad confused, with a couple of parts such as the aftermath of the realisation of the occupation of the unsub somewhat extraneous as well.

In summary, in the better half of Season 11 but middling 'Criminal Minds' in general. 6/10 Bethany Cox

A great episode

[gjenevieve · 9/10 · 9 March 2016]

This episode took guest star Carmine Giovinazzo and made him into the bad guy. I watched CSI: NY all the time and his character was one that I liked watching. So, when they started off showing him as an FBI agent I was not surprised. However, he was actually the UnSub and at first I was skeptical about him being believable in the bad guy role. He pulled it off perfectly. The writing for his character was very good and he executed his part flawlessly. I was on the edge of my seat a few times and even found myself holding my breath a time or two. I was glad that they were able to explain what had happened to turn him into this type of person. I always like it when they reveal what had happened in the person's past that caused them to devolve and start committing crimes.

This episode ended with a cliffhanger leading into the next episode. Derek Morgan had been concerned from the beginning of the show that his girlfriend was going to leave him. When he finally gets back in town after wrapping up this case, he finds that she is not wanting to break up and he is at the store buying food for them to share once he gets back to the house. However, he is suddenly accosted by a group of men who are beating on him for reasons we don't yet know. I am very much looking forward to the next episode so that we can find out what that was all about and I am desperately hoping that they are not trying to get rid of the Derek Morgan character. One of the things I have always liked about Criminal Minds is the way Derek Morgan and Penelope interact with one another. If he is no longer on the show, a big piece will be missing.