Criminal Minds season 13, episode 3 review: Daniel Henney’s Matt Simmons takes the lead

The last episode of Criminal Minds put the spotlight on Spencer Reid as we learned that he is cleared to go back to work, but he has conditions on his return. For every 100 days that he’s on the job he then has to take 30 days off. This of course is making Spencer feel like he isn’t fully reinstated, but after a talk with Prentiss he’s trying to look at it as a chance to recharge and maybe do some teaching during that time so he’s not at home watching day time television (there’s only so much Maury Povich baby drama one can take).

Speaking of Spencer’s teaching gig, he has been trying to get his material together for his first seminar, but his brilliant mind is making it difficult for him to get material together that isn’t going to go over everyone’s heads. Luke and Garcia try to rein him in a bit, but can you really rein in a mind like Spencer’s and even more so should you? We would happily take a seminar that had a mind like Spencer’s as a teacher.

We haven’t had a chance to see a lot of Matt’s personal life on Criminal Minds yet since most of this season so far has involved tying up the Mr. Scratch story, but we kicked off this episode with Matt and his wife of 10 years. It’s nice to see him in a happy marriage, and he’s clearly still madly in love with his wife! The case of the week tested Matt’s marriage a little as we saw him on protective detail with a beautiful woman who’s job was to be an escort to married men, but as we suspected, Matt didn’t waver no matter how much she flirted with him. In a show as dark as Criminal Minds, it’s nice to see a few happy moments like this, especially with tonight’s case being a gruesome as it was.

CarterMatt overall thoughts

We loved Daniel Henney on Criminal Minds: Beyond Boarders and was really excited when we learned that he was going to be coming over to Criminal Minds proper, but with all of the loose storylines the show had left to tie up we haven’t had a chance to really see a lot of him on the show (at least not as much as we would like to). Tonight gave us a bit more of an opportunity to do that, not only with his personal life, but also with working on the case of the week. Also, can we give a shout out to the writers for finally giving Garcia a moment where she was her normal fun, flirty self on the phone with Luke!? We don’t expect her to have a relationship with him (or anyone) like she had with Morgan, but we’ve always disliked the “Garcia hates Luke for no reason” storyline.

What did you think of tonight’s episode of Criminal Minds? Leave us a comment in the box below with your thoughts. If you want to get some scoop on what’s coming up on the next new episode of Criminal Minds then check out the preview at the link here. Also, if you want to keep up to date on all of our Criminal Minds scoop the best way to do that is to join our CarterMatt Facebook group at the link here. (Photo: CBS)