Well, that puts the cap on the second season of Criminal Minds! We had some fun this year, with Elle going mad and killing that rapist, and the team having to deal with the arrival of Emily, and figure out a way to merge her into the team. They also went to some odd places dramatically, battling terrorists, giving us some backstory on Derek, and offering one of the worst stories about the Russian Mafia that I’ve ever seen.
But that’s all subjective – let’s look at the hard science of numbers! Numbers on a scale that I created and then used subjectively to score the episodes.
This year there were 23 episodes of Criminal Minds, featuring a total of 22 gradable serial killer investigations. Episode 9 “The Last Word” featured two killers who were graded separately, while episodes 13 and 14 were both the first parts of two-parters, so the team’s endeavours during them were counted in the second parts, episodes 23 and 15, respectively.
The total ‘profiling’ score for the season was 45/220, or 20%, a 5% drop from last season. That’s right, in the second year the show suggested that profiling was even more useless than the first year had.
At some point are they just going to stop pretending that this is about psychologists at all?
The season’s high point was episode 12, ‘Profiler, Profiled’, which both did a great job of explaining the limitations of profiling (which were, of course, forgotten about just one week later), and demonstrated how psychology can help identify patterns of behaviour that are common between a variety of killers.
On the other end of the scale this season featured a 3-way tie for the worst use of psychology to solve crimes. In three separate episode the team completely failed to get the job done, spending the entire episodes on sophistry while killers either turned themselves in or were murdered by other killers. Hell, in the first episode of the season Reid’s mother told them who the killer was. You can’t get much further from profiling than that, can you?
18.6.10
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2 comments:
I have just discovered the joy that is Criminal Minds. Finishing Season One soon, so I'm a bit behind, but my pace has been record-setting in the first season.
At first, I was stunned by the brutality of the show and how any network could possibly air it before midnight. That's before I remembered that violence is okay, as long as no boobies are shown.
Then, the sweet realization that every episode would feature one of the team members describing a psychological abnormality in the simplest possible terms to another team member, who should already be well aware of that very psychological precept! Ah, underage nerd guy, thanks for reminding your fellow team members that there has never been a recorded instance of an actual Satanic ritual murder. And thanks for bringing it up again in the next break.
Keep them coming, Count, I'll be caught up in no time!
I'm glad my overwhelming negativity has had at least one positive outcome! Feel free to weigh in on any particularly egregious episodes in their respective comment sections!
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