As long as “Criminal Minds” are at work, detectives will be watching.
So will viewers, evidently, since CBS’ new Wednesday mystery series got off to a fast start. The show’s premiere ranked first in its time period in key Nielsen categories — admittedly helped by a special Thursday launch, after the top-rated “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and opposite NBC’s “ER” — and has kept performing strongly in its regular slot against another tough competitor, ABC’s “Lost.”
In a way, it should be no surprise “Criminal Minds” is faring so well with its tales of FBI behavioral profilers, since CBS has had crime hit after crime hit lately. The new show’s cast offers such familiar faces as Mandy Patinkin (“Chicago Hope”), Thomas Gibson (“Dharma & Greg”) and Daytime Emmy winner Shemar Moore (“The Young and the Restless”). Lola Glaudini, Matthew Gray Gubler and A.J. Cook also star.
“Criminal Minds” started out amid a wave of new crime series explicit in depicting violence, especially toward women. The pilot episode involved a serial killer who kept victims caged, and blindfolded and gagged with duct tape, before murdering them. Series creator and co-executive producer Jeff Davis maintains, “The most gruesome scene we see is this woman in the cage getting her fingernails clipped. We never see any stabbings. We never see any stranglings. I don’t think you have to show it to scare the audience.”
Emmy winner Patinkin adds, “If this show isn’t fair to women, it won’t make me happy either. I got involved with this group of people, particularly (executive producer) Mark Gordon, because I believed that they had a profound, moral and honorable center. If I’m going to sometimes spend 16 hours a day doing something, I hope that what is osmosized through this piece is a moral code. I hope there’s a message of ending suffering, in our behavior and for the victims.”
Patinkin’s character, Jason Gideon, has rebounded from a nervous breakdown after becoming one of those victims himself. “This man was written as having lost six of his friends,” the actor explains. “Because of his impulsivity, all these people die, and he has a meltdown and ends up teaching … then they need his brilliance back out in the field. There are only 29 profilers in the FBI, out of 12,000 agents. There used to be 20; they just upped it to 29. It’s highly elite. I’m talking two hours a morning with some of the guys.”
Co-star Glaudini, who also played a federal agent two seasons ago in CBS’ short-lived series “The Handler,” is enjoying professional input as well. She recalls, “There’s a scene (in the pilot) where I’m trying to apprehend someone, and I had to get out of a car and hold a gun and chase him down. We always see on television a certain way that guns are held, and (the technical adviser) said, ‘Not in the FBI. You don’t hold a gun that way.’ It’s different training. Things like that were completely inspiring to me.”
They’re also things the makers of “Criminal Minds” would like their show to be known for, more than for being among crime series that appear to be pushing the networks’ violence boundaries … physically or otherwise. “We’re going to base it in real psychology,” Davis stresses. “I haven’t seen a show about criminal profilers yet that shows the most interesting things about (the profession). It’s those kinds of really cool moments, the way they understand behavior, that make this show different.”
