10.10.07

Criminal Minds Wants You To Know That Profiling Is Useless

Here you'll find my reviews of the show Criminal Minds, as well as its sister show Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, taking a look at the writing in general, and their treatment of 'profiling' in particular. You can also find my 'FactCheck' articles, where we take a look at the real-life serial killers that the episodes are based on!

Want to hear some in-depth thoughts about the show, as the Count rewatches episodes for the first time in years? Check out the Profiling Criminal Minds Podcast!

Also, if you'd like to get a look at an interactive map of the country showing where all the episodes are set (from season 3 onwards), just check out Penelope's Murder Map!

Curious about who Greg is? Click Here!

Season 1

1 - Extreme Aggressor (FactCheck)
2 - Compulsion
3 - Won't Get Fooled Again
4 - Plain Sight
5 - Broken Mirror
6 - LDSK
7 - The Fox
8 - Natural Born Killer (FactCheck)
9 - Derailed
10 - The Popular Kids
11 - Blood Hungry
12 - What Fresh Hell
13 - Poison
14 - Riding the Lightning
15 - Unfinished Business
16 - The Tribe
17 - A Real Rain
18 - Somebody's Watching
19 - Machismo
20 - Charm and Harm
21 - Secrets and Lies
22 - The Fisher King Part 1
Season 1 Retrospective

Season 2

1 - The Fisher King Part 2
2 - P911
3 - The Perfect Storm
4 - PsychoDrama
5 - Aftermath
6 - The Boogeyman
7 - North Mammon
8 - Empty Planet
9 - The Last Word
10 - Lessons Learned
11 - Sex, Birth, Death
12 - Profiler, Profiled
13 - No Way Out: Part 1
14 - The Big Game
15 - Revelations
16 - Fear and Loathing
17 - Distress
18 - Jones
19 - Ashes and Dust
20 - Honor Among Thieves
21 - Open Season
22 - Legacy
23 - No Way Out: Part 2: The Evilution of Frank
Season 2 Retrospective

Season 3

1 - Doubt
2 - In Birth and Death
3 - Scared to Death
4 - Children of the Dark
5 - Seven Seconds
6 - About Face
7 - Identity
8 - Lucky
9 - Penelope
10 - True Night
11 - Birthright
12 - 3rd Life
13 - Limelight
14 - Damaged
15 - A Higher Power
16 - Elephant`s Memory
17 - In Heat
18 - The Crossing
19 - Tabula Rasa
20 - Lo-Fi
Season 3 Retrospective!

Season 4

1 - Mayhem
11 - Normal
13 - Bloodline
18 - Omnivore
23 - Roadkill

Season 6

1 - The Longest Night
2 - JJ
3 - Remembrance of Things Past
4 - Compromising Positions
5 - Safe Haven
6 - Devil's Night
7 - Middle Man
8 - Reflection of Desire
9 - Into the Woods
10 - What Happens at Home...
11 - 25 to Life
12 - Corazon
13 - The Thirteenth Step
14 - Sense Memory
15 - Today I Do
16 - Coda
17 - Valhalla
18 - Lauren
19 - With Friends Like These
20 - Hanley Waters
21 - The Stranger
22 - Out of the Light
23 - Big Sea
24 - Supply and Demand
Season 6 Retrospective

Season 7

1 - It Takes a Village
2 - Proof
3 - Dorado Falls
4 - Painless
5 - From Childhood's Hour
6 - Epilogue
7 - There's No Place Like Home
8 - Hope
9 - Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
10 - The Bittersweet Science
11 - True Genius
12 - Unknown Subject
13 - Snake Eyes
14 - Closing Time
15 - A Thin Line
16 - A Family Affair
17 - I Love You, Tommy Brown(!)
18 - Foundation
19 - Heathridge Manor
20 - The Company
21 - Diving Rod
22 - Profiling 101
23 - Hit
24 - Run
Season 7 Retrospective

Season 8

1 - The Silencer
2 - The Pact
3 - Through The Looking Glass
4 - God Complex
5 - The Good Earth
6 - The Apprenticeship
7 - The Fallen
8 - The Wheels on the Bus
9 - Magnificent Light
10 - The Lesson
11 - Perennials
12 - Zugzwang
13 - Magnum Opus
14 - All That Remains
15 - Broken
16 - Carbon Copy
17 - The Gathering
18 - Restoration
19 - Pay It Forward
20 - Alchemy
21 - Nanny Dearest
22 - #6
23 - Brothers Hotchner
24 -The Replicator
Season 8 Retrospective

Season 9

1 - The Inspiration
2 - The Inspired
3 - Final Shot
4 - To Bear Witness
5 - Route 66
6 - In the Blood
7 - Gatekeeper
8 - The Return
9 - Strange Fruit
10 - The Caller
11 - Bully
12 - The Black Queen
13 - The Road Home
14 - 200
15 - Mr. and Mrs. Anderson
16 - Gabby
17 - Persuasion
18 - Rabid
19 - The Edge of Winter
20 - Blood Relations
21 - What Happens in Mecklinburg...
22 - Fatal
23 - Angels
24 - Demons

Season 10

1 - X
2 - Burn
3 - A Thousand Suns
4 - The Itch
5 - Boxed In
6 - If the Shoe Fits
7 - Hashtag
8 - The Boys of Sudworth Place
9 - Fate
10 - Amelia Porter
11 - The Forever People
12 - Anonymous
13 - Nelson's Sparrow
14 - Hero Worship
15 - Scream
16 - Lockdown
17 - Breath Play
18 - Rock Creek Park
19 - Beyond Borders
20 - A Place at the Table
21 - Mr. Scratch
22 - Protection
23- The Hunt

Season 11

1 - The Job
2 - The Witness
3 - Til Death Do Us Part
4 - Outlaw
5 - The Night Watch
6 - Pariahville
7 - Target Rich
8 - Awake
9 - Internal Affairs
10 - Future Perfect
11 - Entropy
12 - Drive
13 - The Bond
14 - Hostage
15 - A Badge and a Gun
16 - Derek
17 - The Sandman
18 - A Beautiful Disaster
19 - Tribute
20 - Inner Beauty
21 - Devil's Backbone
22 - The Storm

Season 12

1 - The Crimson King
2 - Sick Day
3 - Taboo
4 - Keeper
5 - The Anti-Terror Squad
6 - Elliot's Pond
7 - Mirror Image
8 - Scarecrow
9 - Profiling 202
10 - Seek and Destroy
11 - Surface Tension
12 - A Good Husband
13 - Spencer
14 - Collision Course
15 - Alpha Male
16 - Assistance is Futile
17 - In the Dark
18 - Hell's Kitchen
19 - True North
20 - Unforgettable
21 - Green Light
22 - Red Light

Season 13

1 - Wheels Up
2 - To a Better Place
3 - Blue Angel
4 - Killer App
5 - Lucky Strikes
6 - The Bunker
7 - Dust and Bones
8 - Neon Terror
9 - False Flag
10 - Submerged
11 - Full-Tilt Boogie
12 - Bad Moon on the Rise
13 - Cure
14 - Miasma
15 - Annihilator
16 - Last Gasp
17 - The Capilanos
18 - The Dance of Love
19 - Ex Parte
20 - All You Can Eat
21 - Mixed Signals
22 - Believer

Season 14

1 - 300
2 - Starter Home
3 - Rule 34
4 - Innocence
5 - The Tall Man
6 - Luke
7 - Twenty Seven
8 - Ashley
9 - Broken Wing
10 - Flesh and Blood
11 - Night Lights
12 - Hamelin
13 - Chameleon
14 - Sick and Evil
15 - Truth or Dare

Season 15

1 - Under the Skin
2 - Awakenings
3 - Spectator Slowing
4 - Saturday
5 - Ghost
6 - Date Night
7 - Rusty
8 - Family Tree
9 - Face Off
10 - And in the End...

Season 16

2 - Sicarius

Criminal Minds: Suspect Behaviour

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

You keep getting Aaron's name wrong. It's not Greg. You're making the recap confusing and hard to read.

Chris Abbey said...

Anonymous... there are tens of millions of people who would understand the running gag of calling him Greg. It would take you less time to Google (or Bing or Yahoo or DuckDuckGo) the reason than it did to type your sentence. (Without actually doing it, I would bet typing in Hoetchner Greg would work. Let's try it and see... Yep. Right there with pictures, too.)

Or you could go back and look at the first review where it's smack-dab explained.

But even if you didn't do any of that, the reviewer calls him Greg, does so consistently, and you know it. How is that confusing?

Anonymous said...

I wish you would start this up again. I can understand that you could very easily get fed up with the series, but I love reading your take!

Anonymous said...

Welp got to season 8, episode 8 and realized you stopped doing these. Now I'm sad ):

Vardulon said...

Well, you won't have to be sad for too much longer.

Seriously, like two weeks longer.

But that's all I'm saying for now.

anomaLei said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
anomaLei said...

I hope what you are saying is that you're coming back...I really want your take on Season 8, Episode 8 through now...I love your observations!

Esther said...

Thank you for your Criminal Minds posts; I am loving them! I really like Criminal Minds and your posts help me...enjoy the show even more! Part of the reason I started watching was because of Greg.

gevinshaw said...

After enjoying shows like Criminal Minds, The Inside, and Profiler, it's been a mixed blessing having you ruin them for me. Luckily, some of these shows have characters worth spending a little time with each week. Though worth a bit less now. Sometimes the truth sucks.

You are not alone in your hypothesis. I ran across a couple of articles very much in line with the idea that profiling is more of a hindrance than a help. Thought I'd pass them along, though, chances are, you've already seen them.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/criminal.aspx

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/sep/14/psychological-profile-behavioural-psychology

~b said...

Your blog has become the reason I continue to watch CM. I sit down to watch an ep and pull up your site so I can see that someone else finds the behavior/comments as fucking ridiculous as I do.
Imagine my horror at coming to the site to realize you have stopped right before the episode I was about to endure! I hope you are going to continue!!
Who else will comment on how insane it is that this obvious OCD neat freak would put on a DIRTY apron & gloves before tormenting his current victim?! You can see reflections in his shoes! There’s not a wrinkle anywhere, but to just thrown on a bloody apron and gloves?! (Although, the apron does look starched. Bloody, but starched.)
Anyway, come back, please. Thank you.

Unknown said...

So that's it? You just quit your blog? I'm so confused

LinZ said...

I'm so sad that I hit the end of your reviews. It's so much fun to read as I'm watching the series. Now I'm flying blind watching from here on out. It's not going to be the same. I MISS YOU!! ;)

Unknown said...

Please continue from season 13 to present. I know a lot of us love reading your work. Please continue where you left off. Pretty please with a cherry on top? Why do you stop after season 12? A lot of us love your blog and are disappointed you stopped. Why? And is there any chance you will start up again, from season 13 to present? Regardless thank you for your blog. Take care

Akbjornberg said...

I only see reviews through season nine. Can anyone link to me to the later reviews if they really exist?

Anonymous said...

are you going to post reviews for the last couple of episodes?

Abbe said...

Dear Count,
I guess you can go on calling him Greg. He certainly is a reason I still watch Criminal Minds. So is your podcast and blog. You and Sheila are a hoot! I am certain the actor prefers Thomas but it’s your gig! Will you nickname Mandel Patinkin next? (LOL!)

Anonymous said...

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Unknown said...

Howdy again. I was certain I had read the reviews of the last episodes on this show - but now they are not available for review. What happened? Thank you for making this show even more interesting to watch. It had gotten too gory for me, but reading your reviews made it possible for me to watch while usually reading along with your blog. Happy Thanksgiving!

M.A.