Criminal Minds season 13 episode 11 review: Max Adler guest stars, Matthew Gray Gubler returns

Criminal Minds season 13 has had some nice moments with our main cast and has moved back to the procedural set up that most fans of the show love (not everyone liked the Spencer Reid arc taking over most of last season). For us, we still feel like this season is really lacking something. While we do love the story of the week set up of this show since it allows Criminal Minds to become this brilliant TV comfort food where viewers can dip in and dip out at their leisure without missing some major plotline, we haven’t been as engaged in the Unsubs as we have been in the past, or even earlier this season. The one Unsub that still stand out to us is Jamie Kennedy’s cannibal Floyd Feylinn Ferell, but outside of him we have had a hard time getting sucked into episodes like we normally do.

Last week we had an Unsub who wanted to be a pirate and was harboring some childhood issues with a fellow friend who also wanted to be a pirate… wasn’t their strongest outing as far as Unsubs go, but we did have Lou Diamond Phillips as a guest star and he was outstanding. Speaking of great guest stars, Max Adler (from Glee fame) was a guest star tonight and we have to say that Criminals Minds has really upped their guest star game this year! Jamie Kennedy, Lou Diamond Phillips and now Max Adler. He was great as he always is, but we lost his character half way through the episode by the Unsub.

Related – Check out what’s coming up on episode 12!

Outside of the case of the week we had a little bit of personal information about the team. Before being interrupted with a new case, Garcia was bus planning the team’s yearly MHM (missed holiday meal) together. We love the idea of the team meeting up after the holidays to share some food, drinks and unwind a bit from work so it was wonderful to see it all come together after the case of the week. We also saw Garcia flirt for the first time with Luke over the phone! We know that no one will replace Morgan, but we would love to see some kind of fun relationship develop for these two that can be fun and flirty but different.

CarterMatt’s Overall Thoughts

This was the second episode in a row where Matthew Gray Gubler was missing in action (at least for the first half of the episode) to the disappointment of many fans out there. He is still teaching his seminars as part of his condition on his return to work, but he showed up for the last half of the episode. We will take what we can get – this show is very different without him as part of the crew.

One of the main plot points tonight was focusing on the prescription drug problem going on in America and how it affects so many families (1 in 6 families!). We have always loved that Criminal Minds uses it’s platform to help bring awareness to very real issues that many can related to as well as to people who might not have any experience with something like this.

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