Reviewed: A Single Blade of Grass

Contributor: ZeusFaber

A truly horrendous episode with no redeeming features of any kind. Frank is transplanted to New York where Catherine, Jordan, and any sense of the existing series is nowhere to be found. The plot, such as it is, twists Native American beliefs and practices beyond all recognition, and worryingly represents them as freakish weirdoes who go around killing each other in their crazy ceremonies. The dialogue, particularly for the local cop and the archaeologist, smacks of typical bad TV writing from beginning to end.

But the biggest sin the episode commits, the real whopper, is transforming Frank's profiling skills into surreal dreams and visions filled with Freudian symbolism and outright clues that are totally baseless in any semblance of reality. Frank even talks about accessing another plane and has the archaeologist interpret his flashes of coyotes and Iroquois longhouses in one painfully misguided scene. He also gets spontaneous inspiration that leads him to inexplicably run straight for the hideout in the hotel basement. It's all one step removed from Frank having a vision of a handwritten note declaring: “THE BUTLER DID IT!”

We also have more awful attempts at making Frank hip, gambling and winning on his first roll and revelling in the Squirrel Nut Zippers. What's more, it's terminally boring, with little to no action of any kind, and features one of the most ludicrous endings ever conceived. This should be stricken from the record and archived at the Museum of Television and Radio as an example of not only how to write a thoroughly dreadful script, but also completely FUBAR the series you're writing for at the same time.