CBS gives us the exploits of a team of profilers from the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit. These are the people whose job is to analyze the clues left by serial killers and figure out what type of person the cops are looking for. In the pilot, we're on the trail of "The Seattle Strangler," who kidnaps young women and keeps them for about a week before strangling them and dumping the bodies; there are, at most, 36 hours to find him before he kills his current victim.
The team is headed by Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin), returning to the field six months after a "major depressive episode" triggered by the death of a colleague during the capture of a killer. On the team: Aaron Hotchner (Thomas Gibson), an expert in interview techniques; Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore), who specializes in obsessive crimes; Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler), the team's young, socially awkward genius; and Elle Greenaway (Lola Glaudini), whose expertise is in sexual offenders.
One of the reasons I don't watch many crime shows is that in recent years, they seem to be less about showing us the work of the officers and more about showing us the work of the criminals, with as much punishment and degradation of the victims as possible. The first episode of Criminal Minds is less obnoxious in that regard than some, but there are still a lot of lingering shots of a woman in a cage, and closeups of her nails being cut with enormous clippers (so that she can't claw the duct tape from her eyes).
If you're less bothered by that sort of thing than I am, then your enjoyment of the show will probably be in direct proportion to your tolerance for Mandy Patinkin. Patinkin is given to acting on a large, theatrical scale -- he could find a way to overact if his character were in a coma -- and this show is no exception; he strides across the room, declaiming his profile of the suspect as if it were "to be or not to be." If the rest of the show were similarly scaled, he might get away with it, but the rest of the actors are giving more naturalistic performances.
The show's well made, but like E-Ring and the already cancelled Head Games, will likely need to be moved to another timeslot if it's to survive; Wednesday at 9 will be owned by Lost.
(On a purely shallow level, Thomas Gibson is finally starting to show a few lines on his face, to nice effect; and my goodness, but Shemar Moore is a handsome man!)
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