The Audacity of Mark Harmon, and other syndication matters
Syndication is one of the greatest inventions of television, but also the dark horrid secret of hours lost to America’s Next Top Model marathons and the nightly search around a section of cable for a “new” episode.
When I first watched Criminal Minds, I immediately noticed the pattern of main characters. “It’s NCIS-lite”. There’s the stoic and grizzled team leader. The new-ish younger male genius, the wacky individualistic geek/tech girl, the attractive brunette woman who’s transferred in, etc. etc.
But thanks to A&Es $650,000 per episode syndication buy-in, I’ve caught up with a good portion of the show’s past episodes. I’m in syndication’s sweet spot – I’ve seen enough to build a timeline of the show, but each episode is new to me. While the show still does bring to mind the team dynamic and self-contained case style of NCIS, I’m warming to Criminal Minds in its own right.
Thomas Gibson will never not be Greg (from Dharma and Greg) for me, so his unrelenting seriousness and even deeper voice makes me laugh, which is the probably not what the actor and show had in mind. I’m not the target audience for Tyler Perry movies, so I’ve missed out on the great acting of Shemar Moore until now, and Matthrew Gray Gubler, well, is just a strange, wonderful duck.
Joe Mantegna, who shows up later to take the place of Mandy Patinkin (who, does not at any moment, say he is here to kill any one’s father), who’s character gets so burnt out he walks off into the woods and doesn’t tell anyone where he went. Criminal Minds is more intensely disturbing than NCIS, because it deals with the pathology of criminals and often deals with criminals who are so psychologically damaged, yet can’t be found until the team whittles down levels of statistics and figures out the motivation of each.
Plus the show has this habit of starting and ending each show with a philosophical quote. I’m almost expecting them to start an episode with “Derrida once said, ‘the author is most certainly dead when television shows deem themselves experts in the mind’*”
It’s easy to guess why cable networks pay over half a million per episode for procedural crime dramas like Criminal Minds. The satisfaction of a mystery and a resolved case every hour made Law and Order creator Dick Wolf a very rich man. The CSIs, NCIS, and Criminal Minds of television add onto that grim satisfaction by moving beyond the basics of simple law and order. The BAU (Criminal Minds‘ unit at the FBI) is understood to be the nationally elite profiling team. They have their own private jet. The mystery and tension are higher, because the stakes are assumed to be bigger.
I wonder though, how problematic the explosion of daily and higher-stakes crime procedurals is towards actual law enforcement. Of course CSI techs don’t perform interrogations, but what else is elided for time and dramatic tension in shows like Criminal Minds is unlikely to be obvious.
*not an actual Derrida quote
Actually, Shemar Moore really came to prominence on the daytime soap opera, The Young & The Restless — he was on it for eight years.
Ah! I’ve never watched soap operas, so I was really missing out. It’s pretty fascinating to see actors on soaps make the jump to primetime. Moore is definitely an actor with considerable range.
the private jet deserves your italics for silliness…i imagine the director gets his own jet, but not the rank and file like b.a.u.
“criminal minds” is the final decadence of the whole “profiler” mythology. i think i just heard some angels blowing trumpets…