Let me get this straight: The FBI determines the DNA protocols for the New York City crime lab? Since when? When, pray tell, did NYC become a protectorate of the federal government? I'm not saying that the FBI doesn't have an influence over DNA protocols in New York; my knowledge of criminology and criminal procedure begins and ends with the dubious realism of television crime dramas. I'm just wondering why this fact has never been mentioned before over the course of five seasons. Not even as a minor aside. You'd think, were this nugget of information true, that TPTB would've set a precedent for its later appearance in this angst-a-thon. If DNA must meet certain quality standards, why haven't three hundred sleazy defense attorneys besieged the crime lab with challenges to their findings? In episodes past, any DNA match was sufficient evidence, no matter how degraded the sample or compromised the chain of custody. I can imagine that a thirty-year-old bloodstained t-shirt stuffed into Mac's luggage--luggage handled by roughly nine million baggage handlers before it was returned, you'll recall--would fail the admissibility test, yet Mac blithely tests it himself and enters the results into evidence in the 333 case. Why, halo thar, double standard. I can't say I missed your ugly face around these parts.
I agree with Mac in principle, but once again, I loathe his methods. Mac is absolutely right to be upset that Sheldon failed to disclose his relationship with a previous victim of the Gramercy Park Rapist. He is also right to point out that any defense lawyer worth his salt would demolish those findings as tainted evidence and junk science. But his maddening, cavalier dismissal of the human element behind an investigation makes me want to choke a fictional bitch. Since Mac deludes himself into believing that his emotions and specific moral rubric never color his investigations, he believes that each of his investigators should behave likewise, and when they don't, he reacts by leaping astride his high horse and drubbing his hapless victim into the ground with infuriating lectures on scientific propriety. Mac refuses to acknowledge the essential humanity of his team, and when a team member dares to behave in a way that contradicts Mac's rigid concept of How Things Should Be, Mac becomes, well, a self-important asshole.
I don't think Mac means to be such a callous ass in these situations. I think it's an instinctive reaction in the face of an imminent threat to his lab and the pursuit of justice. He's so fixated on ensuring that the evidence is above reproach that he forgets to acknowledge the internal struggle of the people who process it because in his mind, that struggle is irrelevant to the final outcome, which is justice for the victims. He wants to help Hawkes, but the only way he knows how to do so is to catch the rapist with unimpeachable proof. It's honorable and noble, and his heart's in right place, but his obtuseness in the face of another's personal anguish is infuriating. He should've prefaced his tirade with the promise that he later issued outside the nightclub. Then, his rant would've been nothing more than a good boss trying to do the right thing for everyone. As it was, since the promise to "get this guy another way" came after Stella gently hinted that he might've been a jerk, it came off as belated ass covering by the writers and lacked genuine warmth.
Also, Mac? Hawkes ordered Adam to run the sweat before you removed him from the case, so your seething butthurt at his alleged defiance of your authority moves me not a jot. Shut the hell up with your thundering outrage. That schtick got old three years ago and now causes me to clench my ass cheeks so tightly that I'm in danger of shitting coal, if not a ten-carat diamond.
Hawkes, though, had warmth in spades, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing him display a more vulnerable side, though I was disappointed that he and his ex-girlfriend had no scenes together. His self-recrimination in his final scene with Mac was a wonderful contrast to Mac's sinless stoicism, and Hill was right to be proud of those scenes. They made the episode.
Aside from Hawkes' outstanding verve, however, the episode was rather bland. I didn't buy into the fortuitous coincidence of the first victim recognizing a piece of jewelery that was stolen ten years ago at a glance and deciding to get it back by any means necessary. Why would seeing that inspire a homicidal rage? Did she think the woman was secretly her rapist, a dildo-packing pervert who got her jollies shtupping her victims with a Rubbermaid wiener? Sorry to disappoint, dear, but the Criminal Minds auditions were last week.
A humdrum case saved by Hill Harper's outstanding acting fu.
B-
