‘Criminal Minds’ season 11, episode 12 review: ‘Drive’ ultimately a predictable ride

It has been a long time since we’ve had Spencer Reid on “Criminal Minds” as his character went off for a while to take care of his mother, but he was back last week in one of the best episodes of the season. Matthew Gray Gubler is clearly a force on this show and his presence has been missed by fans everywhere so we hope that will be the end of his absence for a while. Also we saw the “Dirty Dozen” case wrapped up and Garcia is happy to be able to go back to her apartment! We are sure that she won’t be missing those hot plate omelets any time soon.

Now, it’s too bad that the show didn’t choose to keep up some of that momentum, or to tell many of the same stories as last time. More than likely as a symptom of having to do so many episodes over the course of a single season, this show just inevitably ends up with some boring, forgettable episodes. We’re not going to say with confidence that “Drive” was completely a snoozer, but it didn’t really do much that was original, either.

The main premise of the hour was that the BAU was forced to investigate a series of killings that were happening in a rather brutal fashion, as the UnSub (a ride-share driver who may you very afraid of taking an Uber in the near future) decapitated many people using a guillotine that he deemed were immoral. This, of course, was a symptom of his own problems in the past.

Character-wise, we had some great moments for Morgan and Garcia, and of course it was nice to have a traditional “Criminal Minds” episode with Reid at the center of it once more. It’s just a shame that we’re probably not going to remember a single thing that happened here a month or so from now. Episode grade: C+.

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