Aaron Hotchner is an absolutely tragic figure in this series. His dedication to the job broke up his marriage. He obviously is a very broken man, with many major conflicts that he has struggled to resolve. First his struggles in his marriage... then a divorce... and now this? He is a candidate for some serious therapy in the future!
Essentially, Hotch has been given a series of awful choices, been forced to make those choices, always tried to make the BEST choice out of an array of terrible options, and he just keeps on being given worse and worse choices to make, with no clean or easy way out of the situation. How do you choose between "let this person die at the hands of a serial killer" versus "maybe make your wife mad enough to leave you"?
That said, Hotch has a definite "hero complex". "I am the only person in the world who can solve this problem, so I have to be the one to do it, even if it means maybe sacrificing my marriage and relationship with my wife and son." This is how Hotch produces such a horrible array of choices.
This episode was done so well, with the dramatic management of the timeline. Showing the very end first, without revealing who died, then giving the story of how we came to that ending, and revealing the tragedy in the final moments.
Woven through all of this is the overlapping drama of this lady who is nothing but a politician and bureaucrat, callously judging from the outside looking in, and seemingly trying to end Hotch's career, break up the team, and otherwise make everyone miserable, all to make some sort of name for herself, or cover her own butt.
In the end, you are taken on a ride, where you feel such empathy for all of these characters, that you can become overwhelmed with the grief they all feel. It's like each member of the team has their emotions pouring in to you, concentrating it and distilling it, so that you feel it all at once. In the end, if you're not crying like a baby, you may not have a soul.
Essentially, Hotch has been given a series of awful choices, been forced to make those choices, always tried to make the BEST choice out of an array of terrible options, and he just keeps on being given worse and worse choices to make, with no clean or easy way out of the situation. How do you choose between "let this person die at the hands of a serial killer" versus "maybe make your wife mad enough to leave you"?
That said, Hotch has a definite "hero complex". "I am the only person in the world who can solve this problem, so I have to be the one to do it, even if it means maybe sacrificing my marriage and relationship with my wife and son." This is how Hotch produces such a horrible array of choices.
This episode was done so well, with the dramatic management of the timeline. Showing the very end first, without revealing who died, then giving the story of how we came to that ending, and revealing the tragedy in the final moments.
Woven through all of this is the overlapping drama of this lady who is nothing but a politician and bureaucrat, callously judging from the outside looking in, and seemingly trying to end Hotch's career, break up the team, and otherwise make everyone miserable, all to make some sort of name for herself, or cover her own butt.
In the end, you are taken on a ride, where you feel such empathy for all of these characters, that you can become overwhelmed with the grief they all feel. It's like each member of the team has their emotions pouring in to you, concentrating it and distilling it, so that you feel it all at once. In the end, if you're not crying like a baby, you may not have a soul.