Why the Last Few Seasons of Criminal Minds Were a Failure

Everett Lynch, you will never be George Foyet

Let’s just start with a spoiler warning, for anyone who cares about what happens in Criminal Minds. I recently watched all 15 seasons of the show; for the first ten, I was flying through it. I was watching two seasons a week. And then it took me three months to watch the final two seasons. Because it sucked! It was a drag! And I have a few thoughts on exactly what went wrong.

First of all, the loss of major cast members in Thomas Gibson and Shemar Moore led to the show truly suffering. At its core, this show is a copganda procedural featuring a terrific ensemble cast. For 10 seasons, the only changing characters were a revolving door of brunette females (who truly are pretty interchangeable on how they fit in the show and the team). And then, within 1 season of each other, the two alphas exit. And the writers were fumbling with how to handle the major changes! When the viewers are so connected to the characters, and the way that the team functions, it’s always going to be a struggle to recover from such a major loss. But the replacements for Hotch and Morgan did not cut it.

In those last five seasons, the show seemed to forget what it was. What people loved about it was the formula, and the team at the BAU. Those dynamics were important! By the final season, it was rare that the entire team was featured in the episode. Reid was off teaching one week, and the next Lewis was gone interviewing an inmate. When they weren’t all there, it became extremely hard for them to connect as a team; it made it difficult for the viewer to connect to the characters. They were hardly in a room with each other. Sometimes they didn’t all travel. And I get it. I get that Matthew Gray Gubler needed a chance to rest after so many years with the pressing tv schedule. But maybe they should have just ended the show on a high note after Moore’s exit in season 11.

In the early seasons, each episode follows a blueprint. A case is presented, the team gets on the jet and flies to a new city, where they build and then present the profile to the local police or FBI branch. Then they catch the Unsub in an epic shootout. They go home; they have some banter. Occasionally, one or two episodes focuses heavily on a certain member of the team (the episodes in season 2 where Morgan is a suspect or where Reid is held hostage and drugged, the ones in season 5 where Hotch is targeted by Foyet, etc). But as a viewer, I came to rely on the formula. It was comforting! It worked! I knew what to expect, I knew that it would all be okay in the end.

Except the writers seemed to lose the plot in those final seasons. Reid is framed and imprisoned, and the team spends the whole season trying to clear his name; they barely focus on a case, and they barely get to present a profile. Even with an attempt to return to form following his return, it just doesn’t work. There are too many tries at switching it up, at introducing new Big Bads and situations for the characters. Dare I suggest that there is too much banter? Too much focus on personal lives? That is not why anyone is watching this show! We just want to see them presenting profiles and catching serial killers!

And let’s talk Big Bads. Because Criminal Minds had some great ones in earlier seasons. George Foyet, injuring himself and inserting himself into the investigation, getting caught only to break out of jail and target the team? Brilliant. Chef’s kiss. There is nothing more heartbreaking than Hotch arriving home to Foyet having murdered his ex-wife. And maybe they should have stopped with the big bads there. Because Peter Lewis was entertaining, but he didn’t have the same It Factor. I simply didn’t care as much about his drugs inducing psychosis and wreaking havoc for the team. And although Aubrey Plaza as Cat Adams was the only redeeming factor of the final seasons, she was still no Foyet. The best part about her was the sexual tension between Cat and Spencer. She wasn’t threatening in the end; there were no stakes of danger when she was on the screen.

But the worst Big Bad of them all? The most unsuccessful in Criminal Minds history? That award goes to Mr. Everett Lynch. I simply could not care about him, and how he ~almost~ killed Rossi and removed his face. And him killing his daughter? Did not evoke any emotion from me, at all. The strife that Rossi went through to try to catch him, the realization in the penultimate episode from Reid that Lynch had escaped the blast, the almost scramble to explain that the team members could possibly leave the BAU? None of these things did it for me. I didn’t care.

I spent 15 seasons, over 300 episodes with these characters, and I had no emotion about what happened to them. I simply finished the show to be able to say that I finished it. I am sad to say that actually finishing the series might have made me never want to watch another Criminal Minds episode again. By the time I got to the end, I missed the campiness of the montages while presenting the profile from the earlier seasons. I missed the less crispy, almost bad quality that they oozed. The show outlasted it’s good graces, which makes me incredibly sad. I will not be consuming the reboot; I don’t even think they should make it.