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bibliothekaraOr, alternately, Why It Totally Would NOT Have Been Awesome If Hotch had beaten Chester Hardwicke to a Bloody Pulp near the end of CM 3x14, Damaged. (In a related note, I finished Night Watch on Thursday and....yeah. Completely as fantastic as everybody says it is.) Essay reposted from its origins on the Television Without Pity CM Thread.
What Hotch did to Foyet is not something that he should, or would be able to do on a regular basis (or even more than once.) He'd lose his soul pretty quickly if he was like that. To bring up an oft-used but nevertheless true comparison, it's like Cmdr. Sam Vimes in the Discworld books.
Vimes's creator, Terry Pratchett, personifies that kind of rage, gives it a name, calls it the Beast. The force present inside most of us that, in certain situations, wants violence for its own sake, to hit only to cause more pain, wants to beat things/suspects past the point of not moving. But the thing about men like Vimes and Hotch, versus Foyet and Hardwicke and the rest of the people they hunt, is that the former have the Beast chained. They can call it up, and then chain it back at their will.
And Hotch usually can. Hunting the Tribe with John Blackwolf; shooting Ethan at the end of A Real Rain; shooting that guy off the train at the end of Catching Out. See:The clarity, the physical coordination, and the lack of hesitation in those actions, because they were in immediate defence of someone else. All of those situations, plus most Hotchalanches one might care to name, those were and are brief glimpses of the Beast. In 3x14, if he had let it control him, if he had let himself do what the writing was implying he wanted to do to Hardwicke? Yes, it might have been at some level, "satisfying." Maybe even somewhat justified, as it also would have been in defence of an team member/loved one.
But in my opinion , it would have lessened the dramatic impact of what happened at the end of 100. For someone like Hotch, that is the kind of thing you spend the rest of your life atoning for, despite its intrinsic justifications. Because, how we chain the Beast, how we lock it down with the Law and Rules and Ethics, that's what keeps us different, keeps us apart from men like Foyet. And on a dramatic level, it is the kind of thing that the writers break out once a series, because it affects and informs everything that comes after. Plus? As tense and wound up as he was in Damaged, they added on two more years and a lot more trauma, and then, they let him do it. They "earned" what they had Hotch do in 100 in a way I feel would not have been true had he beat down Chester Hardwicke.
The Beast serves them, they do not serve it.
What Hotch did to Foyet is not something that he should, or would be able to do on a regular basis (or even more than once.) He'd lose his soul pretty quickly if he was like that. To bring up an oft-used but nevertheless true comparison, it's like Cmdr. Sam Vimes in the Discworld books.
Vimes's creator, Terry Pratchett, personifies that kind of rage, gives it a name, calls it the Beast. The force present inside most of us that, in certain situations, wants violence for its own sake, to hit only to cause more pain, wants to beat things/suspects past the point of not moving. But the thing about men like Vimes and Hotch, versus Foyet and Hardwicke and the rest of the people they hunt, is that the former have the Beast chained. They can call it up, and then chain it back at their will.
And Hotch usually can. Hunting the Tribe with John Blackwolf; shooting Ethan at the end of A Real Rain; shooting that guy off the train at the end of Catching Out. See:The clarity, the physical coordination, and the lack of hesitation in those actions, because they were in immediate defence of someone else. All of those situations, plus most Hotchalanches one might care to name, those were and are brief glimpses of the Beast. In 3x14, if he had let it control him, if he had let himself do what the writing was implying he wanted to do to Hardwicke? Yes, it might have been at some level, "satisfying." Maybe even somewhat justified, as it also would have been in defence of an team member/loved one.
But in my opinion , it would have lessened the dramatic impact of what happened at the end of 100. For someone like Hotch, that is the kind of thing you spend the rest of your life atoning for, despite its intrinsic justifications. Because, how we chain the Beast, how we lock it down with the Law and Rules and Ethics, that's what keeps us different, keeps us apart from men like Foyet. And on a dramatic level, it is the kind of thing that the writers break out once a series, because it affects and informs everything that comes after. Plus? As tense and wound up as he was in Damaged, they added on two more years and a lot more trauma, and then, they let him do it. They "earned" what they had Hotch do in 100 in a way I feel would not have been true had he beat down Chester Hardwicke.
The Beast serves them, they do not serve it.
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Date: 2010-03-07 06:17 pm (UTC)(But until you brought it up, I hadn't really thought about it, so I'm glad you did!)