An attempt at conversation

[blythechild.livejournal.com]

In the last episode comment posting in this community, some folks lamented the general atmosphere of crickets here, and then a_blackpanther suggested that some members might want to discuss more general themes related to the show, sooooooo... yeah, I decided to do a thing. And since things can be daunting for some, I decided to fill the thing with fun little checkboxes because who doesn't like checking things off, amirite?

Below is a poll with lots of questions that hopefully encourage a little back and forth. Feel free to expand on your opinions in the comments section, okay?


[Poll #1960090]

As I said above, please feel free to expand on your answers in the comments!

*EDIT*: LOL! I'm impressed that so many of you think that this show needs more dinosaurs XD

Comments

[blythechild.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on the 'sexual-sadism-of-the-week' thing. This season has been an improvement over the last two - no question - but I'm convinced that this show's best days (and best storylines) are behind them. When I think about how I was riveted in seasons 4 & 5...

I love Garcia and Reid as well but I think that many, many fans do so that's not really news ;)

[blythechild.livejournal.com]

There was this fantastic short as an extra on one of the DVD sets about how the set designers do all of these crazy things to environments in order to convince the viewer that they are Baltimore or Tampa or Chicago. The best one were these custom made... ummm, I don't know what to call them... tree coats maybe? Basically, they slapped them around the bases of palm trees and it looked like fir tree bark instead. It was seriously weird and I thought "who the hell thinks THAT up?". Set designers, that's who ;)

[rebak1tten.livejournal.com]

I forgot about 200! Or maybe just blocked it out. What a mess. And super-hacker Garcia, we know she's good, but come on. And the scene where she grabs the nerdy kid and kisses him like god's special gift? If a guy had done that, it would be assault. Really squicky.

[blythechild.livejournal.com]

Sooooo... I'm sensing that you don't care for J.J. ...

I'll admit that she's never been my favorite and that her evolution since Cook was fired/not fired has been increasingly head-scratchy. I generally try to ignore her in scenes, especially when she uses a tone that would cause me to take her to the wood shed if she were one of my co-workers and spoke with such disdain in a professional setting >:/ She used to be such an empathetic character... I just don't get it.

[freakingdork.livejournal.com]

...as a survivor, lemme tell you, plenty of us think that rape and sexual abuse is worse than death, myself included.

that being said, I completely agree that the show started sexualizing a lot of the violence in later seasons and unnecessarily so. it's really discomforting to me.

[blythechild.livejournal.com]

Dude... killing off love interests is part of the fine print on the FBI work contract. Right after "...the applicant indemnifies the Federal Bureau of Investigation against any and all acts of violence and work-related trauma [including but not limited to]: shooting, stabbing, kidnapping, motor vehicle collision, torture, substance addiction [when acquired through official duties], psychological abuse, emotional abuse, sleep loss, brain disorders [when acquired through official duties and good luck proving that one, btw], questionable social interactions, and there may be the slight chance of Anthrax as well 'cause that happened once and the lawyers made us put it in here..."

[blythechild.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, blossom.

[blythechild.livejournal.com]

If comments here are any indication, you are not alone in your distaste for the increased violence.

[freakingdork.livejournal.com]

I partially agree with this. while I vastly prefer not knowing who the unsub is until the end, there are some times where you do kinda need to see the unsub up front to better understand their motivations. in previous seasons, this worked well (true night, minimal loss, soul mates, etc) and they used it sparingly, but as it is presently...it takes a lot of the mystery out of it ("lemme monologue at you for a second") or is just over the top ridiculous (PRAYING MANTIS?????). can they still get it right? of course! but they get it wrong so often these days that when we do meet the unsub right off the bat, I prepare myself to be disappointed.

[freakingdork.livejournal.com]

it's super hit and miss. like I ADORED 9x16, but 9x17? it wasn't even a week ago and I had to look up the summary to remind myself what it was about. :-/

(ahhhhh fellow Elle-lover, hiiiii)

[freakingdork.livejournal.com]

YES, I looooooved the green screen and I was super excited during that sniper episode as well, esp bc it was 9x03 and I had hope that MAYBE they'd decided to bring it back on a regular basis. alas, no such luck.

[blythechild.livejournal.com]

I'll bet you that it's a cost issue...

[freakingdork.livejournal.com]

one thing I haven't seen discussed here (I wrote about it on my tumblr, which got reblogged enough to know I'm not alone) is the way really heavy episodes have a tendency to be brushed aside in order to show the ~team as a family~ narrative (aka pasta parties) in later seasons. example: in 200, JJ gets tortured for over 24 hrs, is made to relive losing her pregnancy, and found out that everyone on her iraq!team was betraying her in various ways...and we immediately go out to a bar to drink and SMILE! no trauma here folks! two weeks is totes enough time to sort myself out! this is made worse by the fact that Messer has literally said this storyline is over, the chapter's closed, so it's not like I can hope for a realistic depiction eventually. I get that they had Paget and wanted to do something happy with her, but it was so out of place and disrespectful of what JJ went through.

(also holy shit, the plot holes in that episode were big enough to fly the BAU jet through)

I don't mind the characters having traumatic pasts (thus far, they've made sense/been in character) and I don't mind them going through traumatic things (minus all the lady love interests dying omg stop), but please, please, PLEASE follow through! preferably within a season or two (I'm looking at you, Route 66...it's so out of place that I've divorced it from its shitty case and legit headcanon'd the hospital stuff all the way back to s6), tho I'll settle for slightly drawn out if done correctly (see: the profiler, profiled/foundation/restoration arc; a long time coming, but at least it made sense). follow through is important with keeping characters 3D, even the little things (hi, why has no one mentioned Morgan's specialities in bombs, obsessive behavior, or his undercover work in SEASONS), but it's so much more important when the thing you've referenced or created is traumatic. because even if the number of people who've been through [insert trauma here] is low, it's extremely disrespectful to them and those who have suffered similar situations to just throw it out the window in favor of a happy scene.

tbh, I couldn't pick between whether or not I want the show to have another season. despite being displeased by a lot of elements since s6, there's still a tiny (quickly dying) hope in me that we'll see more episodes like final shot and gabby. problem is that after all these years, they're still so few and far between and sometimes followed by really offensive episodes (I almost stopped watching after 8x21; I couldn't believe that after such a good episode dealing with sexual abuse (restoration), they decided to follow it up with a case based on false rape accusations)...that I certainty don't think the writers DESERVE another year. buuuut I know that won't stop me from watching if it does go on. pretty sure mgg, gibby, and/or shemar want to leave after 10 (p sure all their contracts are up after that), so maybe that'll be the thing that finally allows me to step away.

[blythechild.livejournal.com]

Messer said something pretty boneheaded about these 'team scenes' in a recent interview. She said that the team members needed the level of personal trauma in their lives because having them be 'normal' would look ridiculous juxtaposed against the cases they work. BUT, she didn't want the show to be a complete downer, hence the pasta-and-drinks scenes (ALWAYS at the end of an episode because 'they aren't the focus of the show'). And I was all "REALLY??? That just sounds like you are tired of hearing criticism so you took us all out for ice cream instead. Lazy producer! No biscuit!". I sorta got all rageful that she considered her audience to be so shallow that a handful of unrealistic, toss-away scenes wouldn't appear to be wildly inconsistent.

I'm less concerned about the hit and miss nature of this show. To me, any program that sets itself up in a crime-of-the-week format is gonna have its fair share of stinkers in any given season (especially considering that they are over 200 episodes now). But it is the purposeful fucktwittery going on with character storylines etc. that really makes me want to quit. this. damned. show.

(and yes, for the love of all that's holy, please stop with killing the wimmenfolk already)

[freakingdork.livejournal.com]

oh, I'm sure it was! doesn't mean a girl can't dream. ;-)

[blythechild.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I dig it. I was always fond of those scenarios as well...

[synviver.livejournal.com]

So glad I'm not the only one that's tired of the trope.

[szarabasjka.livejournal.com]

awww YAY!! I'm not the only one

[freakingdork.livejournal.com]

are you talking about the buzzfeed article? bc p sure that was Frazier and Dunkle rather than Messer? either way, I remember reading it (and ofc it's like...the first bullet point?) and being like "then you need to shut the pasta parties DOWN!" it came out right before 200 so that was already stewing in my brain by the time they got to the bar and ugh, it just fanned the flames. like it's cool to be happy every once in awhile, but make sure it's appropriate to the situation? I agree with you re: Messer considering the audience as too shallow to get it...but at the same time, lemme tell you, don't browse the criminal minds tag on tumblr unless you want a lot of proof that she may be right. :-/ and like, fine, I understand not always wanting to analyze the shows you watch, but they legit advertise crimi as "the thinking man's show" (on ion, as I hear them say a million times every Monday and Tuesday :-P), so if Messer and her gaggle of writers could WRITE like it, that'd be nice.

(idk, probably doesn't help that I'm still not sold on the team as fam narrative. it's hard to get on board for me bc like...early seasons, they're super protective of one another, but push comes to shove? they're going to protect themselves first, even at their own detriment. hell, in one episode (s3? s4?), Morgan tells Hotch he's a good boss, but wouldn't want to hang out with him after work. I can see the possibility of them eventually heading in the direction of "made family," esp because they've become friends, good friends, but it didn't come organically, in my opinion anyway, so every time it comes up, it feels really forced.)

I think the hit and miss bit bothers me because it was such a huge shift to me? instead of loving 20 of the 22-24 episodes, it's more like I love 4 of the 23-24 episodes per season and some of the others are okay and the rest are just terrible. on top of that, it's really clear that it's related to the writer shift caused by cm: suspect behavior + Messer clumsily taking the reins...because the downhill slide for me starts on the back half of s5. tbh, I'm surprised I survived s6 because I have a lot of the same feelings about it as laceymcbain.

[freakingdork.livejournal.com]

oh gosh, minor correction to my original remark - I listed the wrong episode. 8x19 was the gross case after restoration. for some reason, I always think restoration was 8x20, rather than 8x18. oops.

[blythechild.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the Buzzfeed article *shrugs*, and (probably showing my age here) I do not do tumblr because I enjoy having actual conversations and using the letter 'e' where appropriate *double shrug*.

I belong to some other fandoms where the fan base is SUPERHYPERCRITICAL about everything to do with Show, and, honestly, that's tiring to be a part of. But a little feedback/criticism isn't something that should be buried simply because you 'fan' something. It's not like we all checked our brains at the door or something just because we've been known to squee high enough that only dogs can hear us at times.

Criminal Minds has story issues. It has unsatisfying character development (even if you don't care about that sort of thing, you'll notice it). If FANS have thought about these things, I find it hard to believe that the writers haven't considered these issues. While it is easy for us, as fans, to sit back and complain, I would like to think that any professional tv writer worth their salt would've raised a few of the points that have been raised here by casual observers. I'd like to think that this is all part of some fabulous plan on their part, but, increasingly, I think that they're just winging it.

[freakingdork.livejournal.com]

tbh, I only read the buzzfeed article because I got linked there by my younger sister and I am one of those older tumblr users. I think tumblr is like cm in that, if all (or perhaps just most) of my friends left, it'd be easier to leave myself. ;-) part of the reason I started using tumblr was that the crimi fandom had a lot of meta and general discussions about the show (and other things, but in the beginning, crimi was my all consuming fandom lol) at the time and I felt comforted by the fact that I wasn't the only one who felt like things had changed.

idk, I think I'd prefer super-crit over not? but I generally prefer to analyze media over not and it's hard for me to judge what super-crit would even mean; I've seen good ppl be pushed out of fandom for being too vocal about a fandom favorite (even tho they were vocal bc that character was also their favorite). it's easier for me to scroll past or otherwise ignore legit venting and/or meta than to scroll past really fucking terrible characterization.

which is...yeah, the show's not doing a good job with that. the most obvious to me is Reid, which no one really talks about because he's so cute! which apparently distracts people from the fact that he used to be a LOT more 3d than he is now. like...when he goes from having (at the very least) work email and knowing about pop culture to a technophobe who has never heard of lady gaga and legit tells a victim's friend that he doesn't have an email? something is w r o n g. very wrong. seems like most ppl would be happy to see him become a Sheldon (the Big Bang theory) clone, whiffle him down to a flat geek stereotype, which is just...sad. I've also got issues with JJ, but only in the way AJ and Messer keep trying to sell her as kickass. not because she isn't, but because it shows a thorough lack of JJ's character by both the actress and the showrunner and quite frankly, that's fucking terrifying to me. JJ was ALWAYS kickass. I just want to sit them down and make them rewatch, idk, ride the lightning? the end of penelope? any time JJ talks with the press?????? how was she just not badass before? bahhhhhhh.

[heliokleia.livejournal.com]

Time for a comment, because I ♥ polls and yours, dear, was way to tempting to ignore... ;)

Looks like I'm not the only one whose fave seasons are s04 and s05 (Spencer's hair!!), but o surprise, I'm more content with the actual season than I'd expected.

Is there more brutality and violence on the show now? - Hm... I don't know but IMO, CR was always very realistic in that department and that's one of the reasons, I started watching.
- Oopsie, did I read that right; Hotch is no longer on the show? Well, I'm a Spencergirl but ...noooooo!!
*gasps*
I had no idea, because in Good Ole Europe, the new season just started a few weeks ago...

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nextboldmove_/]

When I read books by real former profilers I'm like....what? WHAT? You mean you don't go out in the field like, hardly ever?

Also, I'm a few months away from becoming a certified behavior analyst. You know what we do? We teach children with autism, we don't track down serial killers. I wish the FBI would get its head out of its butt and realize what they do is educated guessing that is less than 20% successful (I read this somewhere, can't find the article so don't take it for gospel).

/rant

[szarabasjka.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, but I kinda get your point.
I've been forced to a six months rota of forensics (actually it was a selective rota...)and trust me is nothing like CSI either... and we working with victims? mostly battered wives and fights, nothing like serial crimes or murders.