Criminal Minds Review: Submerged (Season 13 Episode 10)

Hello fans! I have just taken up reviews for this beloved and long-running show as it comes back from its holiday break with Criminal Minds Season 13 Episode 10, “Submerged”—an episode that, in a nutshell, is simply weird, even by the standards the show sets.

Yes, there are lots of episodes with horrific twists. There are the kinds of things that make you wonder just what disturbing psych textbooks the writers must page through. But this is just plain odd.

Don’t get me wrong. We still get plenty of horrific stuff (all of which plays out on screen, of course). That includes the aforementioned drownings and eye-chemical interactions, another guy being stabbed in the eye, and bodies floating out of a lake. All those things, though, are just there as minor detail points to the main plot.

It’s not that the plot is bad, exactly. It’s just that it’s hard to follow, with several points that are seemingly red herrings. (The unsub targets pools during a drought? Is he an angry eco warrior?)

And when things do come together, they do so quickly and loosely. It’s like someone taking an intriguing idea and breaking it into puzzle pieces, expecting the whole picture to be as clear to the audience as it is to them. That doesn’t necessarily happen.

PIRATES. (No, Really. Pirates.)

Yes, the intriguing idea is our unsub’s fully-engaged pirate fantasy. Because of the games he remembers from being a child, he makes his victims “walk a plank” (diving board), takes whatever “treasure” (coins and bowling trophies) he wants, and assaults eyes for the sake of wearing an eye patch.

There’s also that one random guy who we think is supposed to be his father. This is a character who is partially developed– just enough to add yet another confusing element — but not fully so.

He creeps us out by smiling when he thinks his son is a murderer, which would mean the man is alive. He is awkwardly depressed when he finds out his kid is dead after all, with the true unsub being a friend who uses the death as a long-repressed trigger. Oh, and he has a criminal history that gets all of 30 seconds of focus. Then he walks away.

So, again—yes, pirates. It’s emotionally stimulating, but not so logical; at least not with what we’re given.

Kids are Dumb.

This episode’s “victim the unsub does not immediately kill to keep us emotionally involved” is a young boy. It’s already distressing when the kid walks right up to the man and engages him in conversation. It gets even more distressing when he agrees to spend a night camping out as pirates with the guy. This kid has no survival instinct whatsoever.

It’s not like the signs aren’t there. The man burns out his own eye with bleach. He’s obsessed with the dead bodies coming out of the lake. He wants his new friend to get his hand cut open to seal a pirate pact. Our young hero thinks that all sounds spectacular. Get it together, kid.

Sure enough, he winds up in a boat, about to meet the same gruesome fate as adults we only got a few seconds to care about, but who at least didn’t eagerly walk straight to our unsub’s shack. Things look pretty dismal for him until the last possible moment.

Matt Simmons is a Big Damn Hero

…And possibly also a magician. Because after being shot twice (!!) in his bulletproof vest and watching the unsub toss his young, weighted-down, victim overboard, he abandons his protection, leaps after the kid, unties him from that very heavy brick, and brings him to the surface.

That was a lot of knots, Matt. How did you do that before you both got dragged a watery death?

He’s much too late for the unsub himself, who ties yet one more brick to himself before leaping into the lake. He’s trying to reunite himself with that old friend, and I’d suppose you’d say he’s successful.

What isn’t really acknowledged is how all this weighs on Simmons’s conscience. Being shot, even in a vest, watching a child almost die, and seeing somebody speed away to commit suicide are all traumatic things. Yet the ending is only meant to be uplifting.

So Bring On The Raaaaaain

Everything is wrapped up as neatly as something that involves at least ten human bodies (both the unsub’s victims and those who’d previously drowned) and a motive that assembles itself in a sudden rush can.

The kid is reunited with his parents. A sudden rainstorm ends the drought. Cheers, everyone — no more moldy skeletons floating in your aquatic recreation area!

I remain torn about whether I actually like this episode. Some aspects of the unsub’s motive are emotionally stimulating, and the ending certainly is. Still, the randomness and confusion of basically everything remains something of a roadblock.

I am looking forward to Reid coming back in the next installment. They even acknowledge his continued existence, which is something so often ignored in his absences.

Okay, sometimes my standards are too low. But the episode is called “Full-Tilt Boogie.” How can that not be worth watching?

What did you think of this episode of Criminal Minds? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

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Criminal Minds airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on CBS.

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