On Friday I cleaned my office. Then, over the weekend, I forgot. Today, the clean office was not only a more pleasant work environment, but a welcomed (and much needed) Monday morning surprise. Here’s to proactivity and forgetfulness, a powerful pair when combined 
I’m kind of an “any kind of mystery show” junkie. My favorites are House and The Closer but I also watch a fair share of CSI, Law & Order…you name it. I only DVR the first two and I rarely sit down to watch TV for a full hour, and even more rarely is that full hour a 8-9, 9-10, (etc) block, so the others are very rarely viewed.
Last night I got in bed early and noticed it was just a couple minutes after 9pm. I was sure some mystery/suspense drama must have been starting on one of the major channels and when I turned to CBS there was some sort of distraught detective, so I camped. As it turns out, three girls had been kidnapped in a small town, blah blah blah, but of course I kept watching and the storyline perplexed me, so when Brian came up I hid the remote and told him we HAD to watch the end (because I HAD to know what happened). I will admit, I’ve seen some disturbing crimes and plots emerge in these shows, but this had to be the absolute worst.
I now know that this show is called Criminal Minds and I like to think if I’d known that I might not have watched it (who am I kidding, I probably still would have). This particular criminal had kidnapped these three best friends and put them in an underground shelter. No torture, no abuse, no nothing. But also, no food, no water, no nothing. Sensory deprivation was bound to run its course and the girls were aware, but of course there was a catch. The criminal would allow the girls to leave if they chose one to die.
It gets worse. Really. There’s a mean girl and a weak girl, and when the weak girl gets sick after a prolonged but unknown period of time, the mean girl tries to convince the third friend to give up the sick girl to the criminal. She was going to die anyways, and why should all three of them die when only one one could? And, it gets worse once again. Once the mean girl announces to the criminal by yelling up out of their “cage” that they’ve picked which one will die, the door opens, two hammers are thrown into the room, and the door slams shut. The third friend cries out in horror “He wants us to do it.”
I am embarassed to say that it might not have disturbed me as much if Brian hadn’t been sitting shocked beside me (he may or may not have had nighmares). I guess I have become so desensitized by these shows that I don’t really realize how sick and twisted they are, but last night kind of brought me back to reality. Honestly, who thinks up that plot?
The girls weren’t rescued before it was too late, and they do show one of the girls killing the other one (the big twist was that the sick girl knew all along and ended up turning on the mean one and killing her before she could do the same). The show ends with this criminal saying he never touched them, he just put them in a situation that showed what they were really capable of. True, it’s perplexing and horrifying and I can’t imagine what it would be like to be in that situation. But it’s also morbid and disturbing (as well as disgusting since they showed everything) and it makes me wonder…where do we draw the line?
