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Meandering Bits of Criminal Minds Meta
Behind the cut is a long ramble about why I just don't feel the extra-team romances, technical necessities, and fun-house mirrors. Also about whether Haley has ever been out of the fridge since Season 1. Mostly about the mirrors, though, one way or another.
Earlier today, when I was driving home, I tried to figure out just why I dislike all of the series's extra-team relationships. The fast and easy answer is, "The series focuses on the BAU, so romantic interaction with someone outside the BAU feels weirdly developed and flat." So then I decided: well, I also always get a feeling of fridging with the extra-team romances, which is weird for CM.
But the more I think about that last one, the more I doubt that it's true.
Here's the thing. The depiction of the relationships themselves aren't all that flat. Reid's got a couple of one-ep girlfriendy people who don't really seem all that interesting, but the other extra-team romances (Garcia/Kevin, Hotch/Haley, JJ/Will, Gideon/Sara) all show multiple emotional points over the course of the series. Garcia and Kevin start off adorable and also kinda belligerent (and mostly end up as adorable). Hotch and Haley ran the gamut from "fairytale happy" to "marital problems few could even pick up on" to "one of us is cheating on the other with our job, the other is ambiguously cheating with an actual person, and oh hey here are some divorce papers." And Will and JJ started out professional, showed some negotiating, showed them happy, and is now implying Problems with a capital P.
Flat romances would not be able to carry that kind of emotional variety.
So why can't I find them engaging?
I think it's less a case of "two-dimensional" and more a case of: these relationships are either lenses (Hotch/Haley) or written-by-RL-developmens (the reason behind the JJ pregnancy storyline). Sometimes they get worked into the series thematically (Hotch's distance from Haley and her subsequent death), sometimes they don't -- but they always, always serve a purpose. And I'm not talking about an artistic purpose. Even though these relationships are themselves an embellishment to the series, they're rooted in the layer underneath the artistic.
Essentially, these romances serve a really nitty-gritty, nuts-and-bolts, technical need of the overall story. In the early seasons, the viewer needed a lens to see other sides to Hotch; if we didn't step outside the BAu and into his home life, we would only have gotten hints at anything beyond the stoic side. Without that view, his struggle to balance his priorities would have been harder to see. Easier to deny.
And it's hard to engage with a puppet when the strings are not only visible but day-glo fuschia.
So that's the "underneath" reason.
Now let's go underneath the underneath.Maker's breath I am wandering all over the place. Somebody stop me!
I think what makes us notice the technical elements necessitating the relationships is one simple fact: the technical elements necessitating the relationship. Early series Haley/Hotch was like a hidden camera, showing us who else Hotch could be. It was being used to systematically dismantle the stoic persona Hotch wore and introduce us to a complex person (Haley's own complexity is not an argument I'm touching at all). The relationship's collapse was a continuation of and a window into Hotch's conflict of priorities. And Haley's death was the culmination of the idea that Hotch pays a price for placing duty to humanity in general above duty to her family -- and every view of her we saw, in the episodes surrounding her death, really seemed to point that out.
But here's the fucked up thing: after I watched season five, I went back and watched season one. Look at how happy Hotch and Haley were! God, it's adorable and heartbreaking. It was hard not to watch and either think: Look at what he's going to lose or Look at what he's giving up/waking away from. Either way, I couldn't help but see their earlier context as a backdrop for their later context.
So then I found myself asking: Has Haley been living in the damned fridge this whole time?
And I'm really not sure what the answer is. The fact that the reason the series ever puts her on the screen is as a lens into Hotch would argue 'yes.' But her complexity, and the series writers' ability to make her both sympathetic and, to an extent, antagonistic, would argue 'no.' I'm not so sure that the person whispering Look what he's going to lose is the writer -- maybe that person is me, all me, deliberately drawing connections between Season 1 and Season 5 that weren't intended to be there.
In the end, I feel like it's entirely possible that we fridge Haley ourselves every time we re-watch. Or maybe I'm fridging her all by myself, and nobody else gets the echoes of her death when they watch her before her marriage fell apart.
Looking back at the series, I'm left with the impression of a whole person. But I'm also not sure that it's not just a series of still lifes shaded to look 3D.
Either way, the sensation that Haley and Will are fun-house mirrors, reflecting and distorting and deconstructing, but never ever outright hiding Hotch and JJ, is probably what turns me off the most. Both Haley and Will seem to blur the very fine lines between "technical necessity" and "fridging."
And here I could go off on a tangent about the fun-house mirror/reflection effect, and why one character revolving around another will inevitably sour me on the central character. Also how thin the line between "seeing just enough of this character" and "augh too much too much" is, and why a character getting too much screentime can make it harder for me to like them. But really, those are long rambles for another day.
Earlier today, when I was driving home, I tried to figure out just why I dislike all of the series's extra-team relationships. The fast and easy answer is, "The series focuses on the BAU, so romantic interaction with someone outside the BAU feels weirdly developed and flat." So then I decided: well, I also always get a feeling of fridging with the extra-team romances, which is weird for CM.
But the more I think about that last one, the more I doubt that it's true.
Here's the thing. The depiction of the relationships themselves aren't all that flat. Reid's got a couple of one-ep girlfriendy people who don't really seem all that interesting, but the other extra-team romances (Garcia/Kevin, Hotch/Haley, JJ/Will, Gideon/Sara) all show multiple emotional points over the course of the series. Garcia and Kevin start off adorable and also kinda belligerent (and mostly end up as adorable). Hotch and Haley ran the gamut from "fairytale happy" to "marital problems few could even pick up on" to "one of us is cheating on the other with our job, the other is ambiguously cheating with an actual person, and oh hey here are some divorce papers." And Will and JJ started out professional, showed some negotiating, showed them happy, and is now implying Problems with a capital P.
Flat romances would not be able to carry that kind of emotional variety.
So why can't I find them engaging?
I think it's less a case of "two-dimensional" and more a case of: these relationships are either lenses (Hotch/Haley) or written-by-RL-developmens (the reason behind the JJ pregnancy storyline). Sometimes they get worked into the series thematically (Hotch's distance from Haley and her subsequent death), sometimes they don't -- but they always, always serve a purpose. And I'm not talking about an artistic purpose. Even though these relationships are themselves an embellishment to the series, they're rooted in the layer underneath the artistic.
Essentially, these romances serve a really nitty-gritty, nuts-and-bolts, technical need of the overall story. In the early seasons, the viewer needed a lens to see other sides to Hotch; if we didn't step outside the BAu and into his home life, we would only have gotten hints at anything beyond the stoic side. Without that view, his struggle to balance his priorities would have been harder to see. Easier to deny.
And it's hard to engage with a puppet when the strings are not only visible but day-glo fuschia.
So that's the "underneath" reason.
Now let's go underneath the underneath.
I think what makes us notice the technical elements necessitating the relationships is one simple fact: the technical elements necessitating the relationship. Early series Haley/Hotch was like a hidden camera, showing us who else Hotch could be. It was being used to systematically dismantle the stoic persona Hotch wore and introduce us to a complex person (Haley's own complexity is not an argument I'm touching at all). The relationship's collapse was a continuation of and a window into Hotch's conflict of priorities. And Haley's death was the culmination of the idea that Hotch pays a price for placing duty to humanity in general above duty to her family -- and every view of her we saw, in the episodes surrounding her death, really seemed to point that out.
But here's the fucked up thing: after I watched season five, I went back and watched season one. Look at how happy Hotch and Haley were! God, it's adorable and heartbreaking. It was hard not to watch and either think: Look at what he's going to lose or Look at what he's giving up/waking away from. Either way, I couldn't help but see their earlier context as a backdrop for their later context.
So then I found myself asking: Has Haley been living in the damned fridge this whole time?
And I'm really not sure what the answer is. The fact that the reason the series ever puts her on the screen is as a lens into Hotch would argue 'yes.' But her complexity, and the series writers' ability to make her both sympathetic and, to an extent, antagonistic, would argue 'no.' I'm not so sure that the person whispering Look what he's going to lose is the writer -- maybe that person is me, all me, deliberately drawing connections between Season 1 and Season 5 that weren't intended to be there.
In the end, I feel like it's entirely possible that we fridge Haley ourselves every time we re-watch. Or maybe I'm fridging her all by myself, and nobody else gets the echoes of her death when they watch her before her marriage fell apart.
Looking back at the series, I'm left with the impression of a whole person. But I'm also not sure that it's not just a series of still lifes shaded to look 3D.
Either way, the sensation that Haley and Will are fun-house mirrors, reflecting and distorting and deconstructing, but never ever outright hiding Hotch and JJ, is probably what turns me off the most. Both Haley and Will seem to blur the very fine lines between "technical necessity" and "fridging."
And here I could go off on a tangent about the fun-house mirror/reflection effect, and why one character revolving around another will inevitably sour me on the central character. Also how thin the line between "seeing just enough of this character" and "augh too much too much" is, and why a character getting too much screentime can make it harder for me to like them. But really, those are long rambles for another day.
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