Criminal Minds -- The Face Cards

This episode starts out a bit differently then the usual episode. It shows all the members of the team on their day off.

JJ and Will are shown waking up in bed with their son Henry. It's not Will's day off, so he gets dressed and heads off to work, while JJ and Henry bid him goodbye at the door.

Prentiss and Morgan are looking at the house she's thinking of purchasing, but she's already trying to find excuses to back-out of purchasing it, even though she felt like she was coming home when she first walked through the door. Later in the day Prentiss will get a job offer from her ex-Interpol boss offering her the chance to run Interpol in London. It's a job offer she'll eventually decide to take.

Hotch is playing forts with Jack when Beth arrives. Jack seems to have really taken to Beth and even asks her to come and live with them.

Reid and Garcia go to some convention with Reid dressed as Doctor Who. It looked like he was dressed as Tom Baker Dr. Who, who I've always thought was the best Dr. Who. They run into Kevin and he's got a new girlfriend. Garcia insists they leave, and they run into Rossi. When they see Director Strauss come out of a building a few minutes later, they wonder if there's something going on between Strauss and Rossi.

Will is out on patrol with his partner when they hear a bank robbery is in progress. They go there to intercede. Inside the bank robbery gang known as The Face Cards are robbing the bank. The Queen shoots a security guard. It's a part of their MO. She always shoots someone during each robbery, making the group not only bank robbers but serial killers.

As the King and Jack are trying to escape they come face-to-face with Will and his partner. The King shoots Will's partner in the head and Will shoots The Jack. The King drags The Jack back into the bank and The Face Cards take everyone in the bank hostage.

The team is called in. The King and The Jack are brothers. He demands a medic be sent in to save his brother. When Rossi refuses to do it, The King looks like he's going to shoot a child, but shoots her father instead. To stop The King from killing anymore hostages, which he vows he'll do, they send in agent pretending to be a medic. However, when The Jack dies, agent gets killed when he tries to get a drop on the robbers.

The team discovers The Queen seems to be playing a different game of her own that The King isn't privy to. She texted the police so they'd catch them trying to rob the bank and she's allowing live feeds by media outlets so they can see everything going on in the bank. As it turns out, her real partner is playing hostage inside the bank. We'll call him The Joker.

The King's next demand is that Will come in. JJ is adamantly against that. She has to be held back as Will enters the bank. The King shoots him for shooting his brother, The Jack. Then The Joker gets Will to make a move against The Queen and The King so he can smuggle some of the hostages out of the bank. While The Joker makes his escape from the bank, The Queen, The King and Will go to the basement where there's a vault tunnel and The Queen blows up the bank.

The Queen and King escape with Will as their hostage in a car that has government plates on it. The Queen insists they get a paramedic to patch up Will and then they kill him. When The King wants to know why they're keeping Will alive, she shoots The King and instructs him to start driving. They meet up with The Joker and they all go to Will's house. While The Queen keeps Young Henry hostage, Will and The Joker will head to the train station.

It turns out The Queen was an assassin in Chad named Lady X. The team figures out something significant happened for The Queen and The Joker in Chad in 2008 and they've staged this whole thing to celebrate their anniversary, basically. In 2008 in Chad there was several explosions at a train station and the team figures out that's what their plan is. The Joker needed a cop to get him through the police barricade at the train station.

The Joker chains Will up and straps a bomb to him. Prentiss finds him and has to deactivate the bomb while Hotch kills The Joker to save Morgan from him. Meanwhile, JJ takes down The Queen and saves Henry. Once JJ and Will are reunited he asks her to marry him, and she agrees.

Rossi decides to throw a surprise wedding for the couple, complete with JJ's mother bringing her her wedding gown to wear for the wedding. Garcia is upset Kevin shows up at the wedding with a date, but she only has herself to blame. She's the one who refused to marry him.

I kind of thought this episode and last week's were kind of weak compared to some of the intense and compelling episodes that have happened throughout the season. This whole bank robbing saga just wasn't that interesting. It was nice to see JJ and Will get married, but that was kind of it.

In regards to Paget Brewster leaving again, maybe they should have locked her in to a two year contract. Having her return in the season premiere and leave in the finale makes it all seem much ado about nothing.

I know the whole bank robbing thing with Will taken hostage was to provide the impetus for JJ and Will to get married, but overall it wasn't my favorite episode this season.