Criminal Minds

Tonight, Agent Morgan is in the spotlight as CBS replays “Profiler, Profiled.” He returns to his hometown for a visit only to have a murdered child show up. He becomes the focus of the police investigation, and his BAU team members are working to clear this up. He refuses to talk about his past, which leads them to the conclusion that he’s hididng something. This episode from season two is a good one if you missed it the first time around, and good for giving some background and depth to Shemar Moore’s character. “Profiler, Profiled” on on at nine tonight.

“3rd Life,” guest starring Gina Mantegna, will air on January 9. This has been pushed back a few weeks from its original airdate. This episode is eagerly awaited for two reasons: one, star Joe Mantegna is the father of Gina, who plays the missing teenager. Also, it’s the last of the new Criminal Minds episodes for the foreseable future.

(The picture above is from People Magazine - which named Shemar Moore as one of the sexiest men alive. He came in at a very respectable #10.)

Criminal Minds was in top form for Wednesday night’s episode, “Lucky.”

The show opens with bubbly, happy, smiling Penelope Garcia. She meets a guy at a coffee shop, fixes his computer, and gives him her number. She tells Morgan, and says she’s not the type to get hit on from across the room, and that it usually takes men longer to realize how wonderful she is. Morgan tells her to go with her gut, which she does. She throws his number away. But then, as she is talking to Morgan, she gets mad when he implies (or seems to) that there must be something wrong with the guy if he asked her out. So of course she sets up a date.

The case the team is investigating is particularly gruesome. The victims have pentacles carved into their chests, their legs are missing, and one had partially digested fingers in her stomach. The crimes take place in a small Florida town, and it revolves around the church. After the team deduces that the unsub is a former mental patient, they find the hospital where he was likely a patient. They find out that he bit a chunk out of his nine-month old sister when he was seven. Luckily, they also found out his name. From there, it was easy to trace him - he didn’t use an alias or try to hide. The last victim is saved, but one woman is still missing.
Morgan interrogates the unsub, who wants to talk to the parish priest. The priest tells the unsub that he is not alone, God is a part of him. To which the unsub replies, “And Tracy is a part of us too.”

The gruesome part: he signed up to help with the search party. His job was to feed the other volunteers. There are flashbacks of him ladling out soup to people in the community. This was so disgusting to me - they’re eating the person they’re trying to find.

On the personal side, Morgan is struggling with his faith. He lost faith in God when he was a child and was being abused. God did nothing, Morgan says. At the end of the episode, he is praying in church.

And Garcia’s date…at the end, James says, “Garcia, I’ve been thinking of doing this all day.” Hmmm…first date kiss? No, he takes out a gun and shoots her in the chest.

This was a great episode - very dramatic and creepy. Not only was the case interesting, the characters were developed further. We got to see more of Penelope - her interaction with Morgan when she gets mad at him lets us see a different side of her. Her character shows a lot of personality, but we don’t know a lot about her personal life. This will change in the upcoming episode when the investigation into her shooting takes place.

The third season started off well with “Doubt.” I was less impressed with “Scared to Death,” but the subsequent episodes have been exciting and entertaining. Next week’s offering, “Penelope,” continues the story and leads the team to suspect that the attacker is someone close to the investigation.

If you want to read a bit more about the WGA strike, Buddy TV has a new article, with thoughts from AJ Cook, CM exec producer Edward Bernero, and CM writer Andrew Wilder.

Tonight on Criminal Minds, the team tracks down a serial killer, played by Jamie Kennedy. This cannabal causes Morgan to doubt his faith. Also, Garcia goes on a date, and the relationship is not off to a good start.
If you want to know what happens, click here. Otherwise, we’ll see on Wednesday!
With the writers strike unresolved, this is one of the last new episodes. Next week, Nicholas Brendan will guest star as a computer tech hired to crack Garcia’s unique system.
To find out what else Criminal Minds has in store, check out TV.com’s episode guide.

Last night marked Joe Mantegna’s second episode with Criminal Minds. A funny part of the episode had Emily, Spencer, and Morgan looking through his office and profiling him. Of course he walks in. Emily and Spencer were properly embarrassed, but Morgan just looked annoyed. He is not accepting of David Rossi at all.
So the action of the episode revolved around a former militia member in Colorado, Francis Goehring. He was being pursued by the police when he blew himself up, taking a police officer with him. He’d kidnapped four women, the fourth only a half hour or so before he killed himself. Goehring’s ex-wife leads them to her parent’s land, where the women’s bodies were found. Rossi discovers that the last woman had been killed only a short time ago, and couldn’t have been killed by Goehring.

As they search for his partner, they find several clues as to his personality. He is a submissive partner, he tried to please Francis Goehring, and he was also in love with him. His identity was so wrapped up in Francis that when he killed himself, he took on Goehring’s personality - or tried to. The partner, Henry, kidnaps a woman from a gas station and is preparing to kill her. The team and sheriff find the location (Spencer had been working on a geographical profile all episode). A sniper is the only way that they’ll be able to save the woman. The best sniper they have is not even a cop. He’s the leader of the local militia, which Morgan objects to strongly (because they had a little run in at this guy’s bar). Anyway, the sniper kills Henry, and the woman is saved.
There’s a lot of back story that played into the events also. Brought up numerous times was Ruby Ridge and the surprise that Montana authorities actually asked for the FBI’s help. I thought it was interesting how the show brought up actual events, and especially events in which the FBI is shown in a poor light. It comes out that Rossi was at Ruby Ridge -and doesn’t want to talk about it.
At the tail end of the episode, Morgan and Rossi are talking and Morgan asks him why he came back, which he’d been suspicious of for a while. Rossi just said “Unfinished business,” and walked away.

This scene bothered me a bit, and I’ve been trying to find a word that fit it since last night. The best I can come up with is cheesy. Or maybe melodramatic. We get that Rossi has unfinished business and is tortured by some case that was unresolved. I think it doesn’t really need to be said anymore - we know. It’s much more dramatic and mysterious if very little is said about it, but it comes up very frequently. I don’t know if anything needed to be said at all - a former FBI agent has a lucrative career as a writer and lecturer and he gives it up to come back as a subordinate in the BAU. Last week, he kept touching the bracelet with the children’s names. We get it. We don’t need anymore hints that he has a troubling secret.

That was just one part that I thought could’ve been better, but otherwise, I liked the episode. It was dramatic, and I liked the local characters. When Henry is kidnapping the last woman in front of a gas station, the woman who was working there ran inside when she saw what was happening. I assumed that she went to call 911, but she came out with a shotgun. I also liked how they were able to get the militia to help them. Militia hate the FBI, the government. Rossi told them it wasn’t about them, it was about this woman from their community who was missing and in danger. This made the militia members seem human, which is not always done on tv or movies. They’re caring people, they just don’t care for the government.

Next week’s episode is going to be a good one - this one features Penelope. It’ll be good to have her get her own show!

The whole way through last night’s episode of Criminal Minds, I was on edge about what happened to the missing little girl, Katie Jacobs. The show was suspenseful - thanks in large part to atmospheric music and the presence of so many police officers and FBI agents in such a normal, everyday setting.
The show begins with a call to 911 from Katie’s aunt. Her parents are desperately trying to find her. Another little girl had been taken - and killed - from a mall the previous week.
As the story unfolds, we get more details about the family. Morgan and Prentiss went to Katie’s house to look around. They find that she’d wet the bed a lot and that she’d mutilated her barbie doll - Morgan thinks she was being molested. Through this, the focus narrows to the family. The little girl’s father, uncle, and cousin are questioned. The little boy, Jeremy, was the last to see Katie before she disappeared. He saw something but will not tell the BAU.
A big clue is the necklace belonging to Katie. It is found in a garbage can, it’d been ripped off of her. Hotch feels that her abduction was personal, full of rage. Not a stranger kidnapping, and not related to the other little girl’s case.
Katie had lied to her parents about where she got the necklace, leading the BAU to believe that her abductor had given it it her. They’re led to her uncle but don’t think that he took her. Prentiss remembers a few things that Katie’s aunt had said. One was that she’d worked in retail for years and years (she doesn’t mention that she’d work in this particular mall). The other was that at the time of Katie’s disappearance, she was getting a lighter engraved for her husband. Who had quit smoking.
Prentiss questions the aunt - she’d take Katie. She was jealous of the attention her husband was giving to Katie. When the little girl slept over at their house, she knew her husband was abusing her, yet did nothing. She’d taken Katie to get rid of her competition.
She doesn’t tell Prentiss where Katie is but the team and police find her in a closet with duct tape on her mouth. She is asthmatic - which could easily be fatal with a blocked airway. They can’t find a pulse. The paramedics are working on her as her parents look on. You keep seeing and hearing the heart monitor as she flatlines. Then suddenly, you hear the beeps and she has a pulse.
I was actually unsure about whether she’d live. In most shows, it’s almost a given that she’d be ok, but this was so tense. I really didn’t expect the heart monitor to pick up a heartbeat.
Katie’s aunt and uncle are arrested and led away, leaving their son by himself. They appeared unconcerned with him as he stands with Reid and Morgan.
At the end, Hotch goes to where Haley is staying (with a sister or friend, I’m assuming). He asks to see his son for just five minutes. She lets him in and he goes and looks at his sleeping child. This was very sad - I can understand why he wanted to see his son so much, and the fact that he had to go ask made it more painful.

“Seven Seconds” was Criminal Minds in top form.

Next week’s episode deals with a predator who taunts his victims by making missing fliers of them before they go missing. Joe Mantegna also makes his first appearance, and it looks like he and Hotch butt heads right away - there’s no I in TEAM, Joe.

Last night, “Scared to Death” aired on CBS. This was Criminal Minds first Mandy-free episode, though his character was mentioned several times. When the show opens, Spencer is sitting at his desk rereading his letter. They quickly move on to other matters - a serial killer in Portland, Oregon. The team travels there to investigate and eventually figure out that the deaths had to do with phobias. From there, they need to figure out who is responsible. Through a lucky spotting of a flier in a laundromat, they are led to Dr. Howard (aka Dr. Goodman), in time to save his latest victim from being buried alive.

I really like Criminal Minds, I write a blog about it. But did anyone else think “Scared to Death” was kind of…boring?
The doctor was torturing these people, recording their responses, while having flashbacks to his mom making him sleep in the dark. Michael O’Keefe as Dr. Howard was kind of creepy, but it seemed like they crammed all of his motives into 45 minutes, and it didn’t quite work. It did cover all the bases; his abusive childhood, his naggy wife, his change in behavior, his treatment of his daughter. But it seemed like they hurried to put this all in so it’d make sense at the end.
Criminal Minds can be very creepy - like in “Revelations” or “North Mammon,” from season two. This one didn’t have the same feeling to it. It also felt like the characters were kind of wooden; they didn’t seem as dynamic as they usually are - with the exception of Spencer and Morgan getting stuck in the elevator…that was pretty funny.

What was interesting, though, was their response to Gideon leaving. Spencer is clearly upset. He talks to Emily at one point and says that Gideon confronted the most violent, dangerous criminals in the world. If he had enough courage to do that, why did he just leave a letter? Emily tells him to read it again and figure out why the letter was written to him. Out of all the people he left behind, why did he only bother to explain to Spencer?
Morgan also brings him up. On the flight home, he says that the team is doing just fine without Gideon.
Besides Gideon leaving, the only personal note was when Hotch tells Morgan that Haley has left, and he didn’t know if she was coming back.

“Scared to Death” was all right. It wasn’t one of their best episodes, but it was still entertaining. I’m looking forward to Joe Mantegna’s debut (on October 31 - Halloween) to bring some tension to the team and move some action along.

Shemar Moore is clearly close with his mother, Marilyn, so I thought I’d find out a little more about their relationship. She sounds like a great mother, and her son obviously adores her.

Marilyn was a teacher. After she and Shemar’s father were divorced, they moved to Holland. Shemar’s mother only spoke Dutch to him so he didn’t learn English until he was five or six.

About his race, Shemar says:

The world sees me as a black man, but my mother didn’t raise me as a black man. She didn’t raise me as a white guy. She raised me as Shemar Franklin Moore. She said; don’t worry about being black or being white. Just be you, and go tell your story.

Shemar also biked 100 miles to raise awareness and funds for the National MS Society. His mother, Marilyn, has the disease. He got his Criminal Minds buddies to help him out and plans to do the bike tour again.

Shemar’s mother also made sure her son took his education seriously. While in high school, Shemar was a star pitcher.

I could run, but I was throwing 93 mph coming out of high school. So I got drafted by Baltimore and Boston, so I thought I had a chance to play at Fenway Park. But I got drafted out of high school, and my mother wasn’t having it. She was like, you’re not about to think that you can just play ball, because if you get hurt, you’re going to be out of luck. So you’re going to go to school, and you’re going to get that piece of paper, and then you’re going to do whatever you want to do.

Shemar Moore started his acting career as Malcolm Winters on The Young and the Restless. After graduating from Santa Clara University (where he attended on a baseball scholarship), Shemar moved to New York to pursue his modeling and acting career. He landed a job as a GQ model and then, with no acting experience, became Malcolm Winters on Y&R.. That worked out well - he won a Daytime Emmy in 2000 for outstanding supporting actor in a drama and was nominated for several others.
Moore said in an interview for The Philadelphia Inquirer,

I come from a soap, that’s what I’m most known for, so now I’m changing the conversation people are having about me. Being on Criminal Minds is opening doors that were once shut to me.

Apparently it’s difficult to have a “serious” acting career when you start on a soap opera. Inquirer writer Michael D. Schaffer writes: “Moore…is trying to do something that few actors have done: build a serious acting career on the slippery foundation of soap.”

Shemar is definately as well-known for taking off his shirt as he is for acting. There will be no disrobing on Criminal Minds though. He says:

As soon as I take my shirt off, they’re going to say, ‘He takes his shirt off because that’s the only reason people will watch him.’

Costar Kirsten Vangsness agrees, saying:

When you look at him, you think that’s all there is because there’s so much to look at, but the way he looks is nothing compared to the way he is as a person…I can always do a scene better when he’s there. He’s absolutely connected to you as an actor.

Shemar hopes to use Criminal Minds as a stepping stone for a career in movies. In a Boston Globe story, Moore says:

The soap opera was high school. I graduated. Now I’m in college with ‘Criminal Minds.’ In a couple of years I will graduate from ‘Criminal Minds,’ and hopefully that will be the start of a long, long film career.

Until then, you can see Shemar Moore Wednesday nights at nine on CBS. You can also check out this youtube clip of Shemar as Malcolm Winters on Y&R. I chose this one because in it he’s very reluctantly modeling with his shirt off.

Shemar Moore had some thoughts for TMZ the other night. Shemar is leaving what I assume is a club while the TMZ cameraman follows him. When he finds out it’s TMZ, Shemar gets angry and makes some weird statements about them trying to ruin him. Very weird, but kind of funny. The only way I can see that TMZ tried to “ruin” him was by posting stories of his arrest for DUI.
And this picture taken just days after he was arrested:

For more info on your favorite alcohol-challenged celebrities, check out these sites:
Britney Spears Watch, Lindsay Lohan Watch , Nicole Richie Watch and Paris Hilton Watch.

Fans of both Criminal Minds and the Red Sox got a treat last night when Shemar Moore threw the opening pitch at Fenway Park. Shemar was a high school pitcher - clocking 93 mph fastballs - and was drafted by the Sox and the Orioles. He says his mom vetoed the pro baseball career in favor of a baseball scholarship to Santa Clara University.
A dedicated Sox fan, Shemar says:

I was at the playoff game in 2004, freezing my tail off and jumping up and down on the Green Monster, calling all my friends, ‘Look at me under the Coca Cola sign.’ It was pretty easy since that was the game the Yankees won 19-8 and they were scoring home runs every four pitches! I think I even made ESPN’s highlights that night.

Maybe the Sox will trade in Daisuke Matsuzaka for Shemar. (Reminder: email me your entries for a CM episode idea…the winner will get a book by real-life profiler, John Douglas.)

Boston Red Sox, Shemar Moore, Criminal Minds

AJ Cook talks about how the show will introduce Joe Mantegna’s new character, while at the same time explaining Agent Gideon’s (Mandy Patinkin) departure.

The writers are locked in a room somewhere trying to find out who this new character is and how to bring him on. It’ll be interesting to see how that changes the dynamic on the set and on screen…Last season [Agent Gideon's] girlfriend was killed and he was on the run trying to find the killer, so luckily they had that, to set up his departure…They’ve left us all in the dark here. All I know is we’re looking for him … We’re trying to figure out where he is and hunt the man down. What’s so funny is, it’s kind of art imitating life. In our read-through, we had lines in there that seemed to be pulled out of our lives — ‘Has anyone seen Gideon — or Mandy?’

Cooks said she’d be “shocked” if they killed off Mandy Patinkin’s character.
Shemar Moore expressed anger at Patinkin for leaving the show without any word to his costars, feeling they were “slapped in the face.”

I don’t like that he did this the way he did this. I don’t think it’s right. He left us hanging… no warning, no nothing. We all showed up to work on Day 1, and he didn’t.

Thomas Gibson was also disappointed: “We look at this as a great opportunity to shake things up. This is certainly a disappointment to everyone, but I don’t think it’s a catastrophe.”
AJ recently said of Patinkin:

We have been kind of playing phone tag, but he has gone out of his way to make sure he reached all of us. I think that was the biggest part for us … We just didn’t know what was going on, and we were all worried. Once we got into contact with him and knew he was OK, then it was we just want him to be happy. (National Ledger)

As to Mandy Patinkin’s final appearance on Criminal Minds: He shot one day of scenes that will be stretched out into two episodes. TV Guide reports that he will be in the scene alone because none of the other stars wanted to work with him again after he left without telling them. “What’s more, Minds’ producers were forced to use a special crew to shoot the pariah’s scene because the show’s regular staff refused to be on set with him.”
Apparently, the scene will show Agent Gideon getting into a car and driving away, and which, according to TV Guide, will air on October 3.

(Look for more on AJ Cook tomorrow.)

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.

It’s so hard to pick a favorite character on Criminal Minds. I love every single one of them for one reason or another and the actors have developed them so well.

However, if I was forced to pick just one character, I might be inclined to pick Penelope Garcia as my favorite. I love Kirsten Vangsness as an actress, and I love Garcia as a character and as a rle model. What makes Garcia such a role model?

She’s not a stick figure. If you look at the most common body shape in Hollywood, it’s a sea of skinny actresses. Kirsten Vangsness is certainly not what I would call a fat woman, but she’s definitely bigger than your average starlet. And you know what? I love it. She looks like a real person, and she’s beautiful - and she’s not going to contribute to young girls having eating disorders.

She’s bringing sexy back - sexy brains, that is. All the women on the show are intelligent, of course. One would hope there wouldn’t be any idiots working with the BAU, but Garcia is geeky smart. She can find anything on anyone if it exists, she can hack into computer systems, and she doesn’t apologize for her knowledge. She plays RPGs and knows about viral videos. She can probably hook up a network with her eyes closed. As someone who lives and dies by the world of blogging (well, sort of), I can appreciate geek intelligence.

She’s flirty with style. One of my favorite things in any given episode is the banter between Garcia and Morgan. The pet names - Sugar, Mon Amour, Baby - are ridiculously cute intervals in between the darker plot lines. The sparks of sexual tension - such as when she teased Morgan about having Photoshopped images of him wearing nothing but chaps - make you almost wish something would happen between them. The lustful drooling in “The Big Game” when Morgan was dancing - “He’s like a CAT” - is just one more aspect of realism that she brings to the show.

She’s funny. Nothing beats the way Garcia answers her phone calls. Who can forget one of my favorites:

Garcia: You’ve got a problem. Deadbolt’s the number one password crack-resistant software out there. You’re gonna have to get inside this guy’s head to get the password.
Morgan: I thought I was calling the office of Supreme Genius.
Garcia: Well, gorgeous, you’ve been re-routed to the office of Too Frickin’ Bad.

I only have one complaint about Garcia - compared to the rest of the team, she just doesn’t get enough screen time!

(Photo source)