My heart bleeded, girl

As in, CM fridged Haley and SPN did *not* fridge Ellen and Jo.

Let me start by saying that Haley was never my favorite character. She punished Hotch for doing his job and doing it well. I've never liked that trope where law enforcement/military types/doctors/whatevers' spouses bitch because the person is dedicated to their jobs. Some jobs require more dedication than others, and if you're going to marry an analyst for the BAU, you should know what you're getting yourself into.

I can say that as a person who's spent the past 30 years married to a surgeon. Before Larry changed jobs last year, he ran an entire department, (trauma) an entire program (burns) and his own trauma/burn/critical care unit. There were years when he was the second-in-command to the guy who ran the whole department of surgery. He worked insane hours, and he worked insanely hard. When he was home, he was tired and not particularly involved with things around here. The politics of his job frustrated him and made him...difficult to live with occasionally. I felt like a single parent a good part of the time, and the kids missed him. There are certainly times we all, Larry included, wish things had been different.

We didn't like it, but it never occurred to me to ask him not to do his job to the best of his ability. Peoples' lives were involved, what he was doing was important, and he was good at it. We didn't like it, but we didn't resent it and we didn't make him feel guilty for doing his job, a job I knew all about when I married him. Well, okay, he was a first year resident when I married him, but I worked in an ICU. I knew what it was going to be like.

So, Haley bugged the crap out of me. Hotch didn't deserve her leaving him because of how he did his job. And if she left because of how the job changed him, well, how helpful was that?

This season the show's writers made it All About Hotch. I loved the storyline, loved how we saw how it affected the different members of the team, how they all dealt with it. And I get that Haley dying was the logical conclusion. Like Foyet killing a busload of people and attacking/raping Hotch in his apartment weren't enough to break him, but whatever.

And I thought the way Haley died was well done. She was brave and loving and didn't give Foyet the satisfaction of letting him get off on her fear. She saved her son and trusted Hotch to at least see her through her death.

But she was killed solely to hurt Hotch, to increase his pain. The fallout for the whole team will be meaningful and interesting, but the only reason they killed her was for the affect on Hotch.

Ellen and Jo, otoh, didn't die to increase Sam and Dean's angst and pain. Their deaths will hurt them, certainly, but in the overall scheme of things, they were just two more deaths among many. Sam and Dean lose everyone eventually, I think that's been well-established. And it is the apocalypse, after all. There are bound to be some casualties.

Also, Ellen and Jo died doing the same job as Sam and Dean, they weren't killed just to *affect* Sam and Dean, they weren't damsels in distress that Sam and Dean failed to save. Ellen and Jo died on equal footing to Sam and Dean, with choice and agency.

This post was prompted by me thinking about which deaths affected me the most, and by a comment I saw saying that while they weren't pleased with Haley's death, they'd take it over what happened on Supernatural any day, and I just have a problem with that.

Haley's death was horrible and traumatic, but it was also a common plot device. CM is usually above that stuff, and I'm giving them a pass on this, but I don't mistake it for anything other than what it was.

Ellen and Jo died heroes, on equal footing with the nominal heroes of the show, and that's another thing entirely.

At least that's the way it feels to me.