criminal minds: suspect premise
i believe thomas gibson as special agent aaron hotchner in the original criminal minds series. he’s uptight, anal, icy, precise, and driven – exactly the qualities that i would expect from an FBI profiler.
so now there’s another profiling team in town, but i’m just not buying it. criminal minds: suspect behavior is made up of agents who got kicked out of profiler school in the first month. they are a supposed FBI “red cell that operates outside the bureaucracy” (although this seems slightly disingenuous as they are part of the federal bureau of investigation, right? just sayin’).
forest whitacre operates his team out of a badly lit gym office – apparently operating outside of the bureaucracy has some problems, like the lack of a paid-up electricity bill. similarly, his phone is out of minutes, so the head of the FBI comes down to the gym to give forest his marching orders in person. like any good leader of a rogue team, forest’s management style is a mixture of arbitrary decision making, kicking in doors without a warrant, and voodoo.
CM portrayed a modicum of due diligence – showing up at places with a warrant, or at least yelling at the occupant “we can be back in 5 minutes with one”. CM:SB tosses that unnecessary step out the window, because really, if you want to see serious legalese, you should be watching LA law. as for solving a case, i’d say it’s split about 50/50 between kirsten vangsness’s sexy awesome hacking skills (so important to the franchise that they had to import her from CM), and forest’s ability to go into a holy trance where he becomes the serial killer and somehow lands an amazing intuitive triple lutz that helps track down their target.
janeane garofalo plays angry girl. the only character to have created her own nickname (in my mind), she’s defiant and likes to talk sternly at her superior officers. i think she moves about 4 facial muscles per episode, and would be the only believable character on the show.. if she wasn’t so angry. in a recent episode, they even tried to build her back-story as angry girl by having forest pull her aside with a comment like, “i know you got kicked off your last team for talking back…”, to which she angrily replies “but i was right!” forest mumbles something like “i know” and the matter is considered settled.
then there’s:
- an ex-ira sniper, who has the potential to be an awesome character, but really needs to shoot more peeps.
- feels-the-need-to-prove-himself guy, who “proved himself” in the pilot, but still acts like there’s more to prove.
- blond-girl-who-calms-other-people-down, who has yet to be (or do) anything else.
- and the amazing kirsten vangsness, as i mentioned previously, moonlighting from CM.
IMDB doesn’t yet list any “memorable quotes” from CM:SB, but i have one:
“as a profiler, we’re not supposed to jump to conclusions, but…”
i don’t remember who said it (and it may not be word-for-word), but i think it accurately wraps up this series so far. i’m not going to jump to any conclusions here, but i think they need some better writers.
irregular polytopiary 