When I finished binge-watching Poirot episodes, I struggled to find another crime series to watch. I gave a half dozen a try, but I didn’t like any of them. The gritty, realistic ones were trying to hard, and the quirky one was too twee for my taste. The latter wasn’t bad, and I might revisit it, but it didn’t really hold my interest. Before I went on the Poirot rampage, I had been watching Criminal Minds. I stopped during Season Four when I hit the ‘that darn internet’ episode, but out of desperation, I started watching it again from where I left off. Let me be clear. I think Criminal Minds is a mediocre-to-competent program. Production is slick, and the acting is competent for the most part, but it’s basically the fast food of TV shows. Comforting, deep-fried, and unthinkingly consumed. It’s especially noticeable when you binge-watch the show and see how same-y every episode is. Horrific crime shown in the first five minutes. Obvious suspect introduced within the next ten. The team flies out and is often greeted with hostility. The case touches one of them in a personal way, and they have conflict over how to deal with it. Then, after more gruesome scenes, they figure out who the real culprit is and arrest him/her. The suspect rarely escapes, unless it’s one of the nemesis enemies.
The episode that caused me to stop watching the show actually turned out to be OK. It wasn’t an indictment on the internet as much as it was an indictment on the twisted individual who was using the internet to wreak mayhem and destruction. I started watching again, and I plowed through the whole series.* I noticed that as the seasons progressed, they started running out of ideas. That’s not uncommon with a long-running series, and it’s even more apparent when you watch the episodes back-to-back-to-back in a fairly short amount of time. I would say that when Paget Brewster was written off the show was the time it went off the rails. She was never my favorite character because she was too good at everything, but the team chemistry did take a hit once she was gone.