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Reviews
Criminal Minds: 100 (2009)
Any story that can make me bawl like a baby...
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.
Criminal Minds: Scared to Death (2007)
One of the worst episodes thus far in the series.
I have been binge watching Criminal Minds from S1:E1, and I have to say that this episode is absolutely the worst one thus far. With Gideon gone, you lack his brooding expertise and intellectualism. The unsub is not really unknown to the audience at all, so there's no mystery to who is doing the crimes. The only mystery is how many people he'll be able to kill in real time during the episode before he's caught, and whether his current victim will be the one rescued, or if they'll simply die before the team can catch him.
The "buried alive" woman is especially troubling. All she would have to do to survive and escape is to climb up on the dirt being poured on her ever-so-slowly. There's actually an old parable about a farmer whose donkey fell in a well... they couldn't get the donkey out with a rope, so the farmer decided to just bury the donkey in the well. He shoveled dirt in, and was amazed to see the donkey shake off the dirt, and then step up on the dirt as it continued to fill in the hole. Eventually the donkey was able to simply step out of the well. The parable is one of "using the things in your life that would bury you as a step up to overcome your difficulties"...
Overall the writing was poor. Seriously, the faulty elevator was so contrived...
Bo on the GO! (2007)
Vapid, boring, annoying
The first and most important thing to know about this show is that each and every episode is exactly the same. The formula they use is not just loosely repetitive; it is almost exactly the same each episode with only the most minor of changes.
It starts with a problem. Then they have to summon "wizard" (requiring some stupid physical activity) to tell them what they must do to solve the problem. He ALWAYS tells them they must enter the chamber of doors.
So to get the chamber of doors to appear, more physical activity is required. Bo is like this little energy vampire that leeches off the viewer... it's actually quite creepy.
They have to open the first two doors for no discernible reason other than the door that solves the problem is always the third door, so I suppose two diversions are always required.
Throughout all of this are trite rhymes, horrible and annoying voice acting, and ridiculous "solutions" to problems.
When I say horrible and annoying voice acting, I mean it.
Bo's voice is one of the most annoying I have ever heard. This is especially when she says things like:
"As high as you CAAAAN, reach out your HAAANDS"... the inflection on those words is annoying as can be.
Then there's the odd way she says "Will ya help me?"
And when she says "when you move with me you give me energy", she pronounces "energy" like "En-er-chi" (like Chi, that mystic energy of eastern religions)
And the dinosaur, oh my god that dinosaur... whoever voiced him has the worst voice ever. It's raspy, too loud, and monosyllabic.
"A DOOR!" "ANIMOVES!" "BO ZONE!!!"
He's always YELLING his words.
It's not shocking why this show only had one season.
The ONLY redeeming value of this show is that it attempts to get kids to move and exercise.
The Lorax (2012)
Typical left-wing liberal Hollywood anti-corporate BS.
The animation is great. The story line is actually pretty cool. I don't care about how closely it resembles the original Seuss book, like most people seem to.
The voice acting is great. They were well-directed when doing their lines, which can be difficult.
My problem with this movie is the very in-your-face "all manufacturing corporate operations are evil" message. This movie is kinda like the entire Captain Planet series condensed down to a single movie. Where all corporate entities are TRYING to destroy the environment for profit.
As a college educated economist, I can tell you with quite a bit of authority that any corporation that relies on natural resources for the creation of their product (ie: logging) will NOT be so stupid as to destroy the very thing that keeps their business going! As an example, did you know that in the USA there are now MORE acres of forested land than when we originally settled it? Yeah, that's because paper and lumber companies that chop down trees to provide a product actually plant more than they chop down, to keep their product flowing! You wouldn't know this if The Lorax movie was your source of information.