Criminal Minds Review: Mixed Signals/Believer (Season 13 Episodes 21-22)

I’ll tell you right now that I am muting all of those scene in Criminal Minds Season 13 Episode 21, “Mixed Signals.” I don’t know why we have to see so many people get holes drilled in their heads, but I don’t need to hear it, too.

This winds up being something of a filler episode, albeit one that’s as cringe-y as possible. That’s fairly typical for a season’s penultimate episode, so it may actually benefit from the double header approach.

I can sympathize with the unsub a little. I have a pretty significant sensitivity to noise. But I’ve also never been pushed to kill anyone, especially not with a freaking power drill.

Then again, I’ve also never watched a spouse slowly lose their mind due to never-ending noise, eventually dying at the hands of the drill they used to make it stop before starting to experience that same ceaseless phenomenon myself.

The number of people Caleb winds up killing, though, seems ratcheted up mostly to be as terrible to witness as possible. To be fair, it succeeds quite well in that goal, but it’s not exactly one I need the show to reach.

The team doesn’t get much to do on a personal level, save for brief scenes talking about Alvez and his girlfriend of a few months– and the revelation that Lewis has an ex-husband and a marriage slowly broken by his addiction.

Still, we get the most emotional impact when Caleb barges into the home of a young, expectant couple. Such a beautiful house, and now they’ll probably never want to live it again.

Given what Caleb is going through, I’m very surprised Lewis is able to talk him down without him committing suicide. But, of course, she’s very good at her job.

As you’d imagine, actual season finale Criminal Minds Season 13 Episode 22, “Believer,” is considerably more dramatic. And by “considerably more dramatic,” I mean “completely insane.”

Props to the show, by the way. To the best of my recollection, we’ve never opened an episode with an ex-agent being assumed dead in a freezer, waking up, and then nearly killing a police officer and himself.

True, this is an extremely specific type of opening scene, but still. It should be a sign.

The first half of the episode is strange but comparatively tame. We spend the majority of it not knowing if Quinn is a killer and exquisite liar, or the victim of an extremely twisted form of kidnapping.

It is cool to see Reid come back from another round of teaching with his cognitive interview skills ready to go. The scenes where he enters Quinn’s own flashback sequences are creepy but strangely fascinating.

From there, the episode delves into…I’m not even sure what to say about it. There’s a definite psychological thriller element to parents holding a man while living normal lives and hosting horrors in their basement. But this is completely bewildering.

Our next debate is whether their son is a murdering psychopath or a damaged victim. Him killing his crazy parents and two random men on a subway argues one way, but Theo, who has sympathized with Quinn is…well, a member of a cult.

No, really. Not only a cult, but a cult of men in black suits who burn off their fingertips and has orchestrated everything. Why? I have no idea. This is about the point where I give up trying to make sense of anything.

See, if we just have a finger-burning cult that turns out to be a single “messiah” with just a few followers, that could be a pretty typical episode. But with everything else…well, at the very least, I certainly see why it was saved for the season’s biggest episode.

But wait! There’s more!

By the time Rossi offers the team a night off and some wine, to, as Prentiss puts it, “decompress”, I’m more than willing to take him up on his offer. This is about the point where I remember the cliffhanger we’ve been expecting.

Because Quinn is actually a part of the cult after all! Or no! Now we have a new unsub in a completely random woman who used to work with him! And she’s kidnapped Garcia to force Reid to do the messiah’s bidding!

This is where we end, and where I officially plan to completely lose my mind if this show is not renewed. Because we can absolutely not end a thirteen-year series there.

I haven’t included a great deal of commentary on the second half of this episode , but I’m honestly not sure what to say. Many of my thoughts amount watching these things happening and wondering if I’ve accidentally misplaced my brain.

One note of criticism: Maybe this could work stretched over two episodes that are actually connected. But at this pace, it’s just…well. Keep your fingers crossed for a renewal, everyone. I’m going to go find my brain.

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

Reviewer Rating:

User Rating:

 

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

Follow us on Twitter @telltaleTV_

Want more from Tell-Tale TV? Subscribe to our newsletter here!