Criminal Minds, a great CBS drama

CRIMINAL MINDS (A TV drama review)

What I think was the season finale of CBS’s Criminal Minds, Wednesday (3-16-11), the character, Emily Prentiss, got killed. Great episodes from certain shows I like to watch two or three times to be sure to get all the details, so I’m not totally sure what happened.

For some background, this is an FBI unit that deals with—in my mind—the very worst of the worst. Most of the “unsubs” as they call them, seem to hate women for one reason or another. I mean, I think they kill more women on that show then on any other, and why? Why do so many guys want to—not only kill women but torture them, and brutalize them? Personally, I love women. I think—slightly above children—that women are God’s greatest creation.

Criminal Minds is right up there with my all-time favorite dramas, and I like all the characters, I like’em a lot. That’s hard to explain, but if you have favorites you know what I mean. Last year’s season finale seen “AJ” leaving the show for a “better?” job with the CIA? She didn’t appear happy about it but she did leave. I hated to see her leave. I mean, come on, but if she was bettering herself…?

The season finale the year before saw team leader Hotchner’s wife murdered in some of the coldest blood I hope to ever witness on television. And it definitely affected me. But we didn’t see much of his wife, so she didn’t become a favorite character, not like the regular team. And what is so special about them? Chemistry, I guess. They all have this chemistry that keeps them all together and catching the bad guys…and, occasionally, a bad gal.

But the season finale this year really got to me. Emily Prentiss (played by Paget Brewster) got killed, murdered, actually, by an IRA terrorist contact who appeared to also have been a lover from sometime in her deep past. And Emily was one tough lady. She fought that guy—I mean she really fought him—with guns and at the end hand-to-hand. I thought she was going to actually beat him, too, when he pierced her midsection with a piece of wood/lumber.

That stopped her, but I still kept hoping—I just couldn’t believe that she could get hurt bad enough to die. And then her team and an FBI SWAT team finally got there, and Morgan—her good friend and partner—got there, and he held her, and told her to stay “with” him…but she didn’t. She closed her eyes. And then we jump to the scene where everyone waits to hear the news that she’ll be OK. But “AJ” brings the news that she died on the table.

As I said, other season finales have affected me, but when I heard “…she died...” No, I didn’t exactly cry, but the tears just rolled out of my eyes, a bunch of’em. I was alone, so nobody saw my tears, and it’s been a couple days, so now I can admit having such emotions.

Then, in the very last scene we see a woman sitting facing away. “AJ” approaches bringing “papers” for that woman—Emily Prentiss, I suspect—to “disappear”…and maybe re-appear back on the show again next year. So, she didn’t die (and, of course, in real life she didn’t die), but, for me, when she closed her eyes, she died…and I lost it.

As a footnote, the new show, Criminal Minds, Suspect Behavior…well, I’ve been watching…but the show is struggling…. There’s good actors, good scenes and ideas, but the dialog is sometimes terrible, so the problem has to be the writers. I’m sorry to say this, guys, but something has to change or the show is going to fail. Next week I’m returning to NBC’s Special Victims.