Criminal Minds
Nov. 25th, 2024 11:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naushikaI'm watching Criminal Minds for the first time ever! I'm up to the beginning of season 4. Overall impressions and thoughts:
- The first season was a bit of a slog. There was little attention paid to character development (except maybe Gideon). The first season was very heavy on the plots of the episodes, which would have been fine, but I didn't find the plots of the episodes to be particularly impressive. But I stuck with it, and I was rewarded, because the show started getting a lot better in season 2.
- By the point I am at now in season 4 they have gotten very good at balancing the character development/moments with the actual plots of the episodes. Balanced, and great, lots of found family development. This is what I came for! So I'm loving it.
- I looove how big the cast is, how different they all are from each other, and how the show routinely swaps people around so different characters end up together for different episodes. It's been fun to watch everyone interact with each other in different ways and grow and form relationships. I like every character so I enjoy everything.
- Why is Spencer Reid just Bobby Goren without the anger issues and further along the autism spectrum? LOL. They both know too much about too many things, love spewing random facts, can get a bit too literal at times, love doing silly magic tricks, and have schizophrenic mothers, shitty useless dads, and a trauma-filled youth. I need a crossover fic featuring the two of them together.
Here's a list of my favorite characters:
- Hotchner, wow, I love him so much. Strong yet gentle leader, insanely loyal to his team (would do anything for them and even breaks rules for them when he otherwise fucking LOVES RULES), takes way too much onto his own shoulders, workaholic, over the top intensity. You know it is not often that a man is my favorite character on a show so this is a really big deal that Hotchner is my number one fave. He's also hot. :D
- Prentiss! I mean.. it's Paget Brewster. How could I not love her. I was looking forward to her coming onto the show from episode one. I ADORED her as Frankie on Community so, I knew I'd love her here too, because Paget is great and I'm not gonna lie, she was at least 23% of the reason I decided to watch Criminal Minds. No notes, A+. I can't survive a show that doesn't have a Strong Independent Woman (so sue me) so she gets to fit that role for me, hahaha.
- Garcia. If I'm being honest the quirkiness was a little much in the first season, but they've mellowed her out and made it less that She's So Quirky is her only character beat, starting with season 2. She's an actual developed character now and her quirkiness is part of her overall personality and it all fits together. And now I love her so much! Also she's like the literal most useful person on the team and indispensable and responsible for solving at least 25% of their cases fully with her input and another 50% strongly with her contributions.
I love all the other characters too, I mean, it's not a particularly strong difference in love levels for everyone. The three above just stand out a little bit more than the rest, and honestly the rest of the characters are pretty equal footing to me.
And here's a list of my favorite ships, which is a grand total of one:
- Hotchner/Garcia. It was not on my radar at first until a particular event. Garcia made a fuckup and caused their system to be hacked, and she felt really really guilty about it, but then later she comes in clutch to help find this missing girl and Hotch goes out of his way establish eye contact with her and thank her sincerely, because he wanted her to know she was still important and needed on the team and mistakes happen, and he communicated that all through a Look. And that was when I was like oh. OH. OKAY. And after that I started taking notice and yeah we got a real grumpy/sunshine situation on our hands with these two, which is one of my pairing kryptonites. 80% of the time, if Hotch is smiling at something, it's something Garcia said or did. So yeah, I can't resist that. They have a lot of respect for each other, Hotch tolerates her quirkiness in a way I don't think he would tolerate from anyone else, and she makes him smile. UGH MY HEART.
I'm open to other ships but so far nothing is clicking for me. Which is crazy, everyone is so shippable, I feel.
I always thought I would ship Morgan/Garcia, because of how they are with each other, but seeing them in gifs vs seeing it play out on screen, it comes across very differently. And in the first few seasons, it felt like Garcia had a mad crush on Morgan that he was lowkey exploiting with no intention of ever doing anything about it. Aka stringing her along. In the two-parter where she gets shot it feels especially strong, like he enjoys having her around to flirt with but would never actually date her. IDK I just don't like it, actually. And I'm a little crushed because I wanted to ship them so bad. For years and years, the biggest thing I've known about Criminal Minds from the outside was that these two have a cutesy flirty relationship, but it just isn't landing that way with me. Maybe I'll change my mind as the show goes on. I feel like recently in the episodes I'm on they have actually backed down a bit on the flirting interactions between them.
But we have many seasons to go, so we'll see what ships I may yet develop!
- The first season was a bit of a slog. There was little attention paid to character development (except maybe Gideon). The first season was very heavy on the plots of the episodes, which would have been fine, but I didn't find the plots of the episodes to be particularly impressive. But I stuck with it, and I was rewarded, because the show started getting a lot better in season 2.
- By the point I am at now in season 4 they have gotten very good at balancing the character development/moments with the actual plots of the episodes. Balanced, and great, lots of found family development. This is what I came for! So I'm loving it.
- I looove how big the cast is, how different they all are from each other, and how the show routinely swaps people around so different characters end up together for different episodes. It's been fun to watch everyone interact with each other in different ways and grow and form relationships. I like every character so I enjoy everything.
- Why is Spencer Reid just Bobby Goren without the anger issues and further along the autism spectrum? LOL. They both know too much about too many things, love spewing random facts, can get a bit too literal at times, love doing silly magic tricks, and have schizophrenic mothers, shitty useless dads, and a trauma-filled youth. I need a crossover fic featuring the two of them together.
Here's a list of my favorite characters:
- Hotchner, wow, I love him so much. Strong yet gentle leader, insanely loyal to his team (would do anything for them and even breaks rules for them when he otherwise fucking LOVES RULES), takes way too much onto his own shoulders, workaholic, over the top intensity. You know it is not often that a man is my favorite character on a show so this is a really big deal that Hotchner is my number one fave. He's also hot. :D
- Prentiss! I mean.. it's Paget Brewster. How could I not love her. I was looking forward to her coming onto the show from episode one. I ADORED her as Frankie on Community so, I knew I'd love her here too, because Paget is great and I'm not gonna lie, she was at least 23% of the reason I decided to watch Criminal Minds. No notes, A+. I can't survive a show that doesn't have a Strong Independent Woman (so sue me) so she gets to fit that role for me, hahaha.
- Garcia. If I'm being honest the quirkiness was a little much in the first season, but they've mellowed her out and made it less that She's So Quirky is her only character beat, starting with season 2. She's an actual developed character now and her quirkiness is part of her overall personality and it all fits together. And now I love her so much! Also she's like the literal most useful person on the team and indispensable and responsible for solving at least 25% of their cases fully with her input and another 50% strongly with her contributions.
I love all the other characters too, I mean, it's not a particularly strong difference in love levels for everyone. The three above just stand out a little bit more than the rest, and honestly the rest of the characters are pretty equal footing to me.
And here's a list of my favorite ships, which is a grand total of one:
- Hotchner/Garcia. It was not on my radar at first until a particular event. Garcia made a fuckup and caused their system to be hacked, and she felt really really guilty about it, but then later she comes in clutch to help find this missing girl and Hotch goes out of his way establish eye contact with her and thank her sincerely, because he wanted her to know she was still important and needed on the team and mistakes happen, and he communicated that all through a Look. And that was when I was like oh. OH. OKAY. And after that I started taking notice and yeah we got a real grumpy/sunshine situation on our hands with these two, which is one of my pairing kryptonites. 80% of the time, if Hotch is smiling at something, it's something Garcia said or did. So yeah, I can't resist that. They have a lot of respect for each other, Hotch tolerates her quirkiness in a way I don't think he would tolerate from anyone else, and she makes him smile. UGH MY HEART.
I'm open to other ships but so far nothing is clicking for me. Which is crazy, everyone is so shippable, I feel.
I always thought I would ship Morgan/Garcia, because of how they are with each other, but seeing them in gifs vs seeing it play out on screen, it comes across very differently. And in the first few seasons, it felt like Garcia had a mad crush on Morgan that he was lowkey exploiting with no intention of ever doing anything about it. Aka stringing her along. In the two-parter where she gets shot it feels especially strong, like he enjoys having her around to flirt with but would never actually date her. IDK I just don't like it, actually. And I'm a little crushed because I wanted to ship them so bad. For years and years, the biggest thing I've known about Criminal Minds from the outside was that these two have a cutesy flirty relationship, but it just isn't landing that way with me. Maybe I'll change my mind as the show goes on. I feel like recently in the episodes I'm on they have actually backed down a bit on the flirting interactions between them.
But we have many seasons to go, so we'll see what ships I may yet develop!
