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I find that I do some of my best work under intense terror.—Reid in "Damaged"
Dr. Spencer "Spence" Reid is a Supervisory Special Agent with the BAU. He is hailed as a genius and an autodidact.
He was portrayed by Matthew Gray Gubler who also voiced Simon Seville in the Alvin and the Chipmunk films and Jimmy Olsen in All-Star Superman.
Biography[]
Spencer Reid was born on October 12, 1981 to William Reid and Diana Reid. He graduated from high school at the age of twelve. In his youth, his father left him and his mother as he could no longer deal with her paranoid schizophrenia, among other things. Reid once mentioned that he was a victim of bullying in school where he was stripped naked and tied to a goalpost in front of other students. After waiting for all the other teenagers to leave, he walked home, only to find that his mother had not noticed he was so late to return because she had been having one of her schizophrenic episodes ("Elephant's Memory"). Reid grew up learning nearly everything he knows from books, with his mother (a college professor of 15th-century literature) often reading to him. Still, Reid knew that the way his mother was living wasn't healthy.
When he was eighteen, he had Diana placed in a mental institution. Until Season Twelve, she resided in that same mental institution and Reid had stated that he sent letters to Diana every day because of the guilt he felt for not visiting her. Reid is also worried about the fact that his mother's illness can be passed on genetically; he once told Morgan that "I know what it's like to be afraid of your own mind".
Reid has an eidetic memory, meaning that he can remember an exceedingly large amount of information with extraordinary detail. This, however, only definitely applies to information gathered visually (especially things he's read, as implied with the word eidetic). However, his ability to retain auditory information has been rather inconsistent, as evident when he once noted he could not remember Garcia's name ("Tabula Rasa"). Despite that, he has been able to perfectly recite speech he hears, even when it was in a completely different language of which he didn't speak a word ("Corazón").
Personality[]
Reid is noted for his social awkwardness and prodigal brilliance, which draws on his analytical way of thinking and establishes him as the encyclopedic brainiac of the group. He has an affinity for words - from reading and scrutinizing texts at an astounding 20,000 words per minute (an average American adult reads text at 200–300 words per minute) and his rambling of long explanations and tangents (prompting Morgan and other team members to have to tell him to be quiet). He tends to miss social cues at times (for example, unknowingly changing the subject of a conversation).
Reid also had a hard time feeling empathy, among other emotions, until after the events of season two, stating that he could understand what the victims felt before they died to Morgan in "Fear and Loathing". Matthew Gray Gubler has also commented on the differences between Reid and similarly odd character Garcia: "She represents everything he is not, she is very tech oriented and I would like to imagine he is more like 1920s smart, books and reading etc." Reid is a technophobe and does not use either email or the new iPads. Gubler tweeted that Reid is also germaphobic.
On par with bring an eccentric genius with trouble at conforming to social behavior, the show has hinted at symptoms correlated with schizophrenia, (minor) autism, and Asperger's Syndrome, as evident by his bursts of long-winded commentary, his impressive academic history (three PhDs in Mathematics, Chemistry, and Engineering) in a short amount of time, and adverse reactions when touched by strangers. It is speculated that he may also have slight obsessive-compulsive disorder, particularly from a scene in "Out of the Light" where Morgan slightly moves an item in the home of Marcus Talbot (who suffers from it), and Reid immediately places it back to its previous spot. Despite his odd demeanor, and his family's history of mental illness, he has never been diagnosed with an official condition.
Trivia[]
- It is unknown if Reid has epilepsy, as the subject was never brought up by any doctor or team member. Though he had at least 3 seizures, they stemmed from the trauma he sustained with the explosion and being tortured. Based on the later episodes, Reid does not seem to suffer any after-effects.
- His sidearm was a Glock 17. Since the Season Four episode, "The Angel Maker", he carries a Smith & Wesson Model 65 revolver with a three-inch barrel and wood-colored grips. He keeps his sidearms in an unusual appendix-carry, which was noted by a militia member, who said that the way Reid was carrying the gun, he was "just begging someone to take it off him" ("Identity"). The Season Fourteen episode "Truth or Dare" reveals that he now also carries an ankle-holstered backup, a Smith & Wesson Model 10-5 M&P snub-nosed revolver, and has done so since the events of Season Twelve. Aside from the aforementioned trait, this gun appears to share similar traits to his S&W 65.
- However, he is occasionally seen carrying his weapons holstered in the standard hip style, such as in "Plain Sight", "Penelope" (despite being seen carrying his Glock holstered in his usual style earlier in that episode) and "Zugzwang" with his S&W Model 65.
- He has also used revolvers taken from two unsubs: he took Maggie Lowe's Harrington & Richardson Model 929 and held her at gunpoint with it in "Somebody's Watching" and later killed Tobias Hankel with his own Smith & Wesson Military & Police revolver in "Revelations".
- In "Masterpiece", it is revealed that he holds PhDs in Mathematics, Chemistry, and Engineering and BAs in Psychology and Sociology. He was working on receiving a BA in Philosophy and may have gotten it by now. In "Big Sea", he also displays expert knowledge of forensic anthropology, being able to determine the sex and race of the skeletal remains. He showed knowledge of skeletal remains as early as Season One when he was able to identify the gender of a body based on the pelvic structure in "The Popular Kids".
- He considered studying the classics (literature) but had previously read all of the course material so he opted to go to Caltech and study Mathematics instead (according to an article on William Reid's computer in "Memoriam"). In "Painless", he also mentions graduating from MIT.
- Reid has an IQ of 187, an eidetic memory, and can read 20,000 words per minute. ("Extreme Aggressor")
- He is an expert on historical serial killers, statistics, geographic profiling, graphology, and body language. He also seems to display fast counting skills, possibly related to his card counting skills, both of which skills have been observed in multiple occasions.
- Despite not being able to pronounce Spanish words in "Machismo" and showing no knowledge of the Russian language in "Honor Among Thieves", it seems he is able to read in some foreign languages (although they were never specified). Over the years, he improved his Russian comprehensive skills and understands it well enough to watch a five-hour movie in the language and can speak it. ("Sense Memory", "Fate", "Rock Creek Park") He is also capable of reading in Russian now. ("Fatal") He is shown in "Rock Creek Park" to get by with Yoruba (a language spoken in West Africa and most prominently Southwestern Nigeria), enough to understand what a woman is saying in this language.
- Like many "brainiac" types, Reid tends to ramble on when the conversation leads to a subject with which he is very familiar. This tendency is somewhat annoying to his peers and they often verbally shush him or respond to him with blank stares. This is also a trait of autism called information dumping or info dumping.
- He is the only main character to appear in the opening sequence of every episode of the original fifteen seasons.
- He went to public school in Las Vegas and was frequently bullied. In one incident, he was ambushed by the entire football team; they stripped him naked, tied him to a goalpost, and tormented him in front of half the school until they grew bored and left. He never spoke of it until he told Morgan in "Elephant's Memory".
- It was implied that he may have asked for extra-credit work and offered to clean classrooms for teachers (being on extra good behavior) to compensate for his father's absence and mother's mental instability. ("In Name and Blood")
- His mother was a professor of 15th-century literature and read many things to him, including some of the earliest Valentine's poems (Chaucer's Parlement of Foules, mentioned in "The Fisher King, Part 1"). Garcia's response upon hearing this was: "Hello therapy."
- His father is an attorney who works longer hours than the BAU team and has "a very sick cat".
- Reid claimed to have improved his social status in school by "coaching" the basketball team. He used mathematics to figure out plays and advise the team, which led to them winning more. ("Painless")
- He had an uncle named Daniel, who died when Reid was young. ("Memoriam") He also has another uncle named Gordon who lives in Las Vegas. ("Surface Tension") In addition, he has/had an uncle who used to take testosterone; it is unknown if it was Daniel, Gordon, or a different uncle. ("Strange Fruit")
- He has an aunt named Ethel, who thinks his hair is too long. ("The Lesson")
- Yale was his backup school.
- He is an avid Star Trek, Star Wars, and Doctor Who fan.
- He dressed as the Fourth Doctor from Doctor Who while going to a convention with Garcia. He knitted his own scarf for the costume. ("Hit")
- He likes soap operas ("P911").
- He is a skilled illusionist ("Derailed", "52 Pickup", "Run", "The Storm", "Saturday").
- In Season Two, his car appeared to be a horizon blue Volvo Amazon P130 122S circa 1965 with D.C. license plate WG S654. However, in Season Ten, the car resembled a pearl-white version of the same model circa 1966 with Virginia license plate 478 591.
- He dislikes creamed spinach but likes Indian food (in one of the episodes, he tried to invite his team members to try a new Indian restaurant he found; he also invites them to an Indian restaurant in "Supply and Demand," stating that the restaurant is out of the way but has very good chicken tandoori).
- He is an avid coffee drinker. His mother thinks that is why he is so skinny. In "A Rite of Passage", he stated that if the coffee was to be cut, he'd quit the BAU (Rossi claimed, possibly jokingly, he spends at least $50 a week on it). In Season Six, he seemed to drink less coffee and instead was seen drinking green tea, likely in response to his headaches. He may have continued drinking it even after his headaches subsided since, during a personal crisis, he brought a cup of green tea to Morgan instead of coffee so it wouldn't "make him as jittery". However, by Season Twelve, he had started drinking coffee regularly again.
- He has trouble using chopsticks and says using them is like trying to forage for food with a pair of number two pencils. ("A Real Rain")
- He is good at playing cards and won over $2,000 while playing on a machine in Las Vegas, but he let a "hooker" keep his winnings. ("Memoriam")
- He is the godfather to JJ's sons Henry and Michael.
- Morgan partially named his son Hank after Reid, giving him the name "Hank Spencer Morgan" and is also his godfather.
- Reid's leg injury sustained in "Nameless, Faceless" was originally unplanned but had to be written in because of Matthew Gray Gubler's real-life severe knee injury which left him unable to walk for over four months. After the third surgery in September, Gubler started using a cane but was unable to walk normally for the next five months. As of December 2009, Gubler was once again able to walk unassisted.
- After being on crutches since the second episode of Season Five, Reid was only using one crutch in "Outfoxed" and then switched to a cane in the next episode. He continued to use it through episode "100".
- He appeared without cane or crutches in the Season Five episode "The Uncanny Valley" and again in "Risky Business".
- He has killed eight unsubs in his career: Phillip Dowd (using Hotch's Glock 26), Tobias Hankel (using Tobias's own gun after managing to steal it), Chloe Donaghy, Daniel Milworth, one member of Michael Hastings' terrorist group (with the help of Rossi and Blake), Andrew Meeks, John Bradley, and Casey Allen Pinker.
- Towards the end of Season Five, Reid cut his hair, which drew initial sarcastic remarks from the other team members. ("The Internet Is Forever")
- In "The Internet Is Forever", Reid claims not to have email, although it was shown in "Cradle to Grave" that he does. Although, he may only have it at his work and not at home.
- He is afraid of the dark "because of the inherent absence of light". ("The Boogeyman")
- He loves Halloween. ("About Face" and "Devil's Night")
- He began suffering from "intense headaches" in Season Six but the headaches were not evident after Corazón and only seemed to be mentioned a few times when he told Prentiss ("Valhalla") and Morgan ("With Friends Like These..."). The doctor suggested the headaches were psychosomatic.
- He takes equal doses of Riboflavin and Magnesium, in addition to sporadic shots of B2 to prevent his headaches. This is interesting as Riboflavin is B2. ("God Complex")
- Reid's dissertation from Caltech's Department of Engineering was titled Identifying non-obvious relationship factors using cluster weighted modeling and geographic regression. ("Memoriam")
- Despite being skilled with playing the piano, he has never played it before, citing to Rossi that "it's essentially all math". ("Coda")
- He appears to live near the Van Ness Metro station in the District of Columbia.
- Despite claims that he was able to drive at age 14, he rode a bicycle around while in college because the government would not issue him a driver's license. ("The Stranger")
- Reid is banned from several casinos in Las Vegas, Laughlin, and Pahrump because of his card-counting abilities. ("Snake Eyes")
- Reid does not like the beach. ("The Good Earth")
- He has eye cataract in the initial stage. ("The Lesson")
- Reid can understand and speak Korean. ("The Road Home")
- He knows how to unclog a toilet. ("Mr. & Mrs. Anderson")
- He hates hospitals due to their bright lighting. ("Rabid")
- Reid lives on the second floor in Apartment #23 of Capital Plaza Apartments. ("Magnum Opus" and "Demons").
- His favorite kind of donut has chocolate frosting and sprinkles. ("Taboo")
- He has been shot three times on screen. The first shot was to the left knee while protecting a would-be victim from a budding spree killer in "Nameless, Faceless". The second shot was in the left arm while trying to rescue his girlfriend from her captor in "Zugzwang". The third shot was to the neck while protecting Blake during a shootout with a suspect in "Angels".
- Reid has a known "bad reaction" to carbenicillin, an antibiotic in the carboxypenicillin subgroup of the penicillins. (Demons)
- He can understand German. ("Devil's Backbone")
- Reid wears mismatched socks. This characteristic was implemented by Matthew Gray Gubler, whose grandmother told him mismatched socks bring good luck.
- According to Morgan, after he had learned that US troops had encountered white phospherous in Iraq, Reid took it upon himself to search for a cure, talking extensively about copper sulphate. Morgan would later use this knowledge to crudely treat burn wounds inflicted during his torture on the orders of a deceased unsub's vengeful father. ("Derek")
- He used to bump into things as a child, prompting his mother to nickname him "Crash". ("Surface Tension")
- He once wanted to be a tightrope-walker when he was very young, after seeing a circus performance with his mother. ("Surface Tension")
- His favorite childhood movie is Babar: King of the Elephants. ("Seven Seconds")
- If Reid wasn't an FBI agent, he would be a cowboy. ("Rusty")
- He was supposed to be bisexual but the production dropped the idea by episode four with his crush on J.J.
- Although Reid himself is absent from the team in Criminal Minds: Evolution, stated to be away on a classified assignment in "Just Getting Started", his nameplate still appears on his desk along with his belongings in the BAU bullpen at Quantico throughout the series revival.
External Links[]
- Spencer Reid on the Criminal Minds Wiki
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