Criminal Minds - Season 8 Recap!

What a year, huh? You wouldn't think that the Criminal Minds producers would be able to make a worse season of television than Season 7, but somehow they pulled it off!

Well, I say 'somehow', obviously we know how they did it - with a tireless dedication to only using the most contrived storytelling devices and most idiotic plot twists imaginable. Also, sometimes the team didn't actually solve the case. Not only were there two zeros this year, but they were just two episodes apart!

On the bright side, the episode featured two different Matthew Gray Gubler-directed episodes, and even though one of them was pretty mediocre (cough Alchemy cough), the Brad Dourif episode, while terribly scripted, made me once again long for the day he'll be free from this show and able to direct television and movies full-time, since that's where both his true talent and obvious passion lies.

What a season for terrible episodes, though. Because my reviews were written over so many years, I lost track of just how bizarrely dire this season was. Is it really possible that the worst possible version of 'Strangers on a Train' existed in the same season as a teenage girl came up with the worst multiple-murder plot in the history of fiction? That the absurd idea of people making a terrible video game real happened the same year as the serial killer who they let go on murdering nannies because they couldn't be bothered to do follow-up interviews with a traumatized victim?

This is the season that saw the return of Greg's brother Hotch, which was nice, but then the episode ended with him being carted off to jail for no reason that I can think of. Meanwhile, two different times this year team members killed people, either by putting out a hit on them the way Derek did, or by straight-up murdering them the way Joe did. This is the kind of behaviour that got Elle kicked off the team, but no one has a problem with it because the other team members actually like Joe and Derek?

I mean, hell, I like Joe and Derek too, but I'm not giving them a pass for murdering people.

So, let's take a look at the numbers!

Season 8 of Criminal Minds had 24 episodes, leading to a possible score of 240. Their total profiling score was 47/240, or 19%.

So, from the raw data, this was technically a slightly better showing for psychology than the previous year, but from a writing standpoint, this is the series' low point! I don't know that I mentioned this enough when it was happening, but can we all just take a moment and reflect that this season had two different multi-episode arcs about people stalking the team. They did two stalker storylines the same year. That's just crazy.

And... one last time - it took them literally the entire season to notice that the Copycat only started copycatting their crimes the week after Jeanne joined the team, meaning that he was focused on her. How are they this bad at their jobs?

See you back here next week for Season 9 - episode one! Will it be an improvement over the season ender of Season 8? It would be kind of difficult not to, don't you think?