Criminal Minds

Ok: I’m stealing an idea from Randi at WatchingHouse.com. CoverItLive is a cool site that allows people to cover live events on blogs and websites…or in our case, television shows. What is Cover It Live? Well, basically it is a way for me to watch CM and provide commentary instantly. Say I like Prentiss’s shoes…I can just jot a note and there it is. It is a different way to do a summary of the show for those who didn’t get to see it or just want to follow along. Best of all, you can comment along too. Say you hate Prentiss’s shoes…You can write, “Katie, you’re nuts. Those shoes are hideous.”

Click on the Reader Information button above and you’ll get a quick little rundown. Basically, though, it’s a way to get updated content and have readers comment back, which would be fun. It’s not a chatroom though, because I approve all comments. But I think that’s fine too…you can comment about any aspect of the show that you want and add your own observations.

Criminal Minds fans are the most vocal and active in fandom, and this might be a way for us to be a bit more vocal too. So, I’ll try it tomorrow at nine. If you want to join, just pop on the site while you’re watching “Demonology.” If you’d rather concentrate on the show, you can always check out the comments later. To see how it looks, go to Watching House.

Hopefully, I’ll see some of you tomorrow night! And let me know if it’s something you’d enjoy doing each week.

If you’d like to be emailed a reminder of the event, just enter your email address in the box above and one will be sent to you. If not, just pop on tomorrow at nine eastern time. Thanks.

Congratulations to AJ Cook and her husband Nathan. They welcomed a beautiful little boy on Saturday, September 13. His name is Mekhai Allan Andersen and he weighed 7 lbs, 10 oz at 20 inches long. Mekhai was born at 8:50 p.m.
AJ says, “He’s such a good baby. I feel so lucky that he’s mine. My husband and I feel very blessed!”

Congratulations to them…it’ll be a great Thanksgiving with their new baby.

I love the name…very pretty and unusual. I couldn’t find it in any name meaning sites. Does anyone know what it means?

Shemar Moore made People’s list of sexiest men for 2007. He came in at #10!

WGA members and networks couldn’t reach an agreement, so the writers have gone on strike. WGA - East is set to strike Monday in front of NBC headquarters. LA writers will stand on the picket line from 9-5 protesting until a deal is reached. Negotiations with a federal mediator failed to resolve the big issue - a bigger cut of digital revenue. After 11 hours of talks, writers were informed that there was to be a strike.
Check out the full story on yahoo.

Congratulations to Lociloco. She is the winner of the Criminal Minds Jump Cut contest. She’ll receive the new CM-based book from Amazon. Jump Cut is available for sale today.

Lociloco chose “Riding the Lightning” as her favorite episode, which is one of mine as well. It is always heartbreaking to watch. If you missed this episode from season one, you can read a recap at tv.com, or better yet, you can get the netflix or something. It’s really good.
Here’s a You Tube clip from the ending of “Riding the Lightning.” This is very sad; the mother is making the ultimate sacrifice to make sure her son has a good life. I just watched it and it gives me chillls.

Barnes & Noble will start selling Criminal Minds: Jump Cut on November 6. Apparently this is the first in a series of books based on Criminal Minds. For only $6.99, you can read about a BAU case - I’m assuming the characters in the book are the same as in the show (their pictures are on the cover, so I feel pretty safe in saying that!). A review on the B&N website calls it a “fascinating crime thriller.”
The basic plot is the murders of homeless people in Lawrence, Kansas. The killer stalks the victims, drugs them, and then chains them up, leaving them with the tortured hope they’ll escape. After four bodies are found, the BAU is called in. They see the escalation in violence. While they are in Lawrence, a college student is kidnapped. The ransom demand is $68,000. They figure the cases are connected as it’s a small town. They need to find the connection between the kidnapping and the murders.
The prologue of Jump Cut is told from the murderer’s point of view, and he (or she) continues to speak throughout the book. The case is told from the third person point of view, and the reviewer says this adds tension, because you don’t know what happens to the last victim until the end.
Max Allan Collins authors the book. Collins has also written books based on CSI and NYPD Blue (best show ever). He scripted the Dick Tracey comic strip from 1977-1993, and the movie, Road to Perdition, with Tom Hanks and Paul Newman, is based on Collins’s graphic novel.
I love books, but for some reason, I have a block against books based on tv shows. I have no problem with movies based on books - I don’t know why. My mind just decides these things one day, and no logic can change it. But maybe a good book review would persuade me to read it. If anyone gets Jump Cut, let me know how you like it. You can write a review for all of us.

Season Two of Criminal Minds is coming out on DVD tomorrow, October 2. This review appeared in IESB the Movie Reporter:

I must be honest and say that I have never seen “Criminal Minds” until I was asked to review it. I sat down in front of my TV and put the second season DVD on. From the second the first episode started I was hooked. In fact, I sat in front of my TV every chance I could until I finished the entire second season and that only took two days. I then ran to the store and bought the first season.

The featurettes look pretty interesting - I’m always fascinated by the real-life profilers and the cases they work on. I have season two on my Netflix que, so I’m looking forward to seeing the episodes again. Hopefully, season three will expand on the development of the characters’ personal lives.

“Criminal Minds” is a very well written crime series with action and suspense in all the right places. I am a fan of other crime related shows that air on television, but I am very excited to have found something new. Very fast I became a devoted fan. If you are in the mood for one hell of a good ride this could be your lucky day. Strap off the belt, grab a pillow and get ready for the best television experience yet. My hands are up and clapping loud, to commend the brilliance of “Criminal Minds.”

IGN.com recently had a review of the second season DVDs. Hock Teh writes about the prevalance of procedural shows on televsion and how they have to compete for viewers. Criminal Minds does this, he says, by featuring increasingly grusome and violent crimes.

Criminal Minds’s only trick up its sleeve is to showcase really heinous crimes in such a gruesome manner that one really has to question if such horrific scenarios should even be suitable for primetime. As competition heats up for ratings, it seems that some shows are willing to go down the road of using violent crimes and the gritty depiction of violence as its calling card. Criminal Minds, it seems, is one of them. Other than that, everything else about this show is really just a rehash of every other TV crime drama already out there.

Teh also takes exception to the use of quotes by literary giants such as Faulkner, Hemingway, and Conrad. “To me, this seems like a pretty pretentious effort to make the show appear smarter than it really is.”

These criticisms have plauged the show since its debut but are by no means universal. DVDTalk also reviewed the DVD set. The reviewer, Francis Rizzo III, talks about the character development shown in the second season, as well as the interesting crimes the BAU team investigates.
Of the characters, Rizzo writes:

Each member of the main cast gets a chance to suffer, some more than other. One arc that puts Reid (Matt Gray Gubler) in danger, is particularly dark, though unfortunately without the hoped-for payoff, while “Profiler, Profiled” a story that casts Morgan (Shemar Moore) as the suspect, is particularly touching and emotional as he revisits his troubled childhood.

And though certain crimes felt overused to Rizzo, overall the villains and crimes were well-developed in only 44 minutes.
Another advantage Criminal Minds has is that people who have never seen the show can catch up with the DVDs and then hopefully watch the new episodes on tv. They can judge for themselves if it is too grusome (I don’t think so) or unoriginal (I also don’t think so).

The set comes on six disks with 23 episodes, with four episodes offering commentaries. There are also four featurettes on the last disk. “Profilers, Profiled” discusses the second season’s focus on the characters’ lives. “The Physical Evidence” talks about the making of the series. “The Behavioral Science of Criminal Minds” covers the real-world profilers and how the job is done. And finally, you can get to know Kirsten Vangsness a little better in her own six minute featurette.

For more information on your favorite crime shows, check out Crime Drama TV. To see what new on DVD, check out TV on DVD Buzz.

I saw the new ad for Criminal Minds season three on CBS last night. I’d seen the YouTube video before that. Here’s where I need help: on the YouTube one, I could have sworn that Elle (Lola Glaudini) spit in JJ’s face. Then when I saw the commercial on tv, I saw it more clearly but wasn’t paying total attention. I thought it was Elle again. Can anyone deny or confirm that I am crazy? I swear it was her.
Nothing much is going on in Criminal Minds world. Ed Bernero commented on the character David Rossi, to be played by Joe Mantegna.

In looking over the world of television shows, the show I think that replaced characters the best of all time was M*A*S*H,” Bernero said. “M*A*S*H always replaced a character with an exact opposite. When McLean Stevenson left, who played a total anti-authority guy, they replaced him with Sherman T. Potter, who was a regular Army stick-in-the-mud. They filled the same role, but with someone who was the opposite. That’s what we wanted to do.

Rossi is the antithesis of Jason Gideon. Where Gideon is very sensitive to the unsubs, Rossi doesn’t display as much emotion - he’s much more cool and doesn’t display emotion as freely as Gideon did. I think it’s a good idea to make the character completely different. That way, Joe Mantegna doesn’t have to try to “fill” Mandy Patinkin’s shoes. He can create a whole new direction for the show. He also was unconcerned that the violent content would affect him, saying that he could detatch himself from his work pretty easily.
Before, I’d written about rumors that the cast didn’t want to work with Mandy Patinkin and they used a different crew to film his final scenes. Then, it was reported that that was a rumor. Now, Glenn Kershaw (a CM producer and director) says in a New York Times article:

We then put together an entirely different company, and I spent a day directing Mandy up at the Disney Ranch. He only had to face me, since we’re starting with a flashback about why Mandy is writing this letter, and that cuts into the case from last year. Ironically, the day I was shooting Mandy’s scenes, I got a call up that Joe had been signed.

So, whatever the reason, Mandy Patinkin did shoot his final scenes without his former costars.

TV.com has little blurbs about the first six episodes of next season, if you’re curious. The first, “Doubt” has the team investigating a string of killings at a small Midwestern College. After shutting the campus down, creating a profile, and arresting a suspect, the killings continue. This was the episode that was pulled from last season because of its similarity to the Virginia Tech shootings, as well as the timing. It will be set up as a flashback. So if you’re interested in getting an idea of what the BAU will be doing this season, take a look.
Of course, we can still look forward to seeing what they do with Gideon and how Joe Mantegna’s character, David Rossi, comes to be on the team.

Criminal Minds, Joe Mantegna, Virginia Tech shootings, TV.com

No, Harvey Keitel won’t be replacing Mandy Patinkin on Criminal Minds. Ed Bernero, CM’s executive producer, announced Friday that the job had gone to Joe Mantegna. Apparently, Keitel was almost a lock when negotiations fell through because he demanded to have creative control and perks that the producers weren’t willing to give him.
So, Joe Mantegna. I was kind of hoping for Harvey Keitel. I can’t get past Joe Mantegna playing a cheesy mafia don-wanna be in The Last Don. This is kind of disappointing. I’m definately going to watch the new season of Criminal Minds, but I have to admit that it’s going to be hard for me to change my mind about Joe Mantegna. He just doesn’t seem like he’ll blend into the show.

Just a little update: Shemar Moore, who plays Agent Derek Morgan, on CBS’s Criminal Minds was sentenced to 36 months of probation and community service after he pleaded no contest to charges that he was intoxicated while driving and going over 65 miles per hour on a city street.
Shemar has made the news quite a bit recently with his arrest, as well as the revealing pictures of him taken at a nude beach in Hawaii (yes, those photos are available somewhere online).
Well, at least he gave me something else to write about other than Mandy Patinkin - no, no news there yet.

Some of you may be aware that there was one episode missing from the 2006-2007 season for Criminal Minds. It was titled “Doubt” and it was pulled from its original air date because it was too close in similarity to the real life tragic shooting at Virginia Tech in April 2007.

TV.com has the following synopsis of the episode:

The team investigates a serial killer who is targeting women at a small midwestern college. The BAU shuts down the campus, creates a detailed profile of the unsub, and arrests a suspect. However, the team members begin to have doubts about themselves when the killings on campus continue.

In order to be sensitive to those affected by the V-Tech murders (and who wasn’t, really?), it was pulled with the intent of showing it later in the season but now it seems it will be held over until next season.

(Photo source - imdb.com)