criminalxminds | I'm writing a paper on the female characters of Criminal Minds!

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I'm writing a paper on the female characters of Criminal Minds!

I'm trying to get a survey going so that I can get a good idea on a direction for this paper, so can we have a discussion post on female characters?

What I need for my paper:

Your gender
Your age (an age bracket is fine if you're not comfortable giving a solid number)
Your views on Elle, JJ, Garcia, Prentiss, Seaver, and Haley Hotchner: Do you like/feel indifferent to/dislike/hate any of them? Why?

Otherwise, let's just have a free-for-all discussion on female characters of the CM verse. :)

(Also, my laptop monitor is dead, so I might be slow replying to people, but I really appreciate anyone who comments.)

Mods? I'm super hoping this is okay. I didn't see anything against it in the rules, and it's technically a discussion post?

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Your gender: Female
Your age: 24
Your views on:
Elle: I hated Elle. I know a lot of people liked her, so I'm not trying to step on toes; but when the show originally aired, I had just starting college and I wanted to go into profiling. I remember everyone telling me that I should watch the show and I just couldn't. She was not at all believable or realistic as a character, which normally doesn't bother me in TV shows, but it stuck out like a sore thumb from the rest of the show's believable universe. I couldn't be bothered to watch it until I heard she left.
JJ: I hate that JJ's gone. She had this intense maternal strength, and I was really looking forward to what else lay into her character. I think her removal leaves a hole for the ensemble of the cast; without her it's like there's no voice of humanity to keep the analytical agents in check.
Garcia: Garcia is like the original GaGa. With computers. I love how she is as a role model and inspiration to be yourself. And, as a role model she offers an important standard of wit that usually gets over-looked in female characters (not to mention comfort in one's sexuality without that ugly term "slut" attached to it). Plus, she's sparkly, and that's what I want in my life.
Prentiss: Prentiss is, in my opinion, one of the greatest female characters in television. She's a strong, assertive, intelligent female; and her character exists as one of the boys in the Boys' Club. I think she's a crucial representative of females in the real world because of how assertive she can be; most shows tend to use females as "the emotion" or "the love interest" and I love that Prentiss does not exist to fill those purposes. And, I love even more that it's not a thing that she exists to be more than emotional/the hook-up (if that makes sense). I am so very interested to see what her background is, I just hate that it's being used to toy with us about whether or not she'll remain on the show.
Seaver: I am absolutely rooting for Seaver. I really, really want her character to succeed. I get the impression that all the hate surrounding her character comes from a feeling of she's there to replace JJ, and I understand why people feel that way. But, at the same time, I feel like she can be an entirely new dynamic. That is to say, not a replacement, but an addition to what's left behind. I think her story shows promise, although, I do agree it can be easy to mess up, so...yeah, I'm rooting for her.
Haley Hotchner: I go back and forth about Haley. I liked her, but I don't like that she was never really written to be a character (at least, that's what it felt like to me), but rather to exist as a plot point the writers could keep in their back pockets and pull out whenever they needed something "outside the office".

TL;DR: I'm pretty sure the heads of CM hate women, which hurts my fandom-love because they give us the best girls and then take them away.

Would you mind messaging me about why you disliked Elle? I understand not wanting to step on toes, but I (surprisingly) haven't gotten a lot of negative responses about Elle. I won't fight you on it (for once; I'm being ~unbiased for the sake of my paper). If not, that's cool. :) Thank you so much!

Sure! It might take me a bit to organize my thoughts, but I'll give it a go.

Out of curiosity, what makes you say that the heads of CM hate women?

I vaguely remember something about when the contracts were up to be renewed, JJ and Prentiss were being cut because "they couldn't afford it", while the men of the show were being offered raises. That's sort of a first sign.
So, now they're completely removed JJ, they haven't been shy about pushing Prentiss out, and my understanding is Garcia is now on the spin-off, which at least looks like they're trying to push her to exist in that realm, and not the prime. The only female then is Seaver, a character who's still in school.
So...man-heavy Boys' Club just kicked out all the girls.

Ah. Yeah, I can see where you got that. Those were all decisions made by CBS, the studio. Bernero, Mirren, and Messer--the creative minds behind CM, the actual "heads" of CM, so to speak--did not want to cut JJ, do not want to cut Prentiss, and did not want to replace JJ. Those were all decisions forced onto them by the network (if you watch "JJ" with that in mind, it's very clear that they let her go very, very unwillingly, and were pissed at the network) and not really things the show and the people behind it are at fault for.

Oh, see, I know nothing about hierarchy in the film (specifically television), so there was my confusion. In my happy world in my head, they're all the same people. My bad.

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I'm writing a paper on the female characters of Criminal Minds!

I HAVE OPINIONS, OKAY.

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