Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior

Here's a first for me, reviewing a TV show.  My regular favorites are Bones and Criminal Minds, throw in a dash of the CSI (Vegas, New York and Miami), some Law & Order and the occasional Mentalist. So you'll understand of course when I heard this was coming out, I had to catch the premiere.

Tonight's episode was about the abductions of children in Cleveland and the Red Cell team is called in to solve the case.  Now, for those who forget, we've actually already met most of the team on a previous episode of Criminal Minds last year.  The format is very similar to that of the original series: crime happens, theme/opening credits, team goes in to investigate. The audience already sees the unsub and from there it's watching the team solve it and apprehend the unsub in the last 10 minutes, with a non-case follow up to end the episode.

The concept isn't new, after all, it's another part of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, but with different actors, and at least in this first episode, less discussion of the unsub, their background, motivations and psyche. Forest Whitaker takes the lead role as the unit head, Special Agent Sam Cooper.  He is less rigid than Thomas Gibson's Aaron Hotchner, but seems he does more of the analysing at this point, with the rest of his team gathering evidence and smaller contributions to profiling.  The rest of the cast is thus far solid in Matt Ryan and Michael Kelly.  The female agents we have yet to learn more about and to make an impression, but perhaps we will see this in later episodes.

So how does this measure up to Criminal Minds? Well, personally at this point I still prefer the original with more emphasis on the profiling, there seems to be more on the pyschology there while Suspect Behavior is more go go go.  The original cast also comes across more cohesive and well rounded - but that too could be attributed to years watching them together and knowing how each work and what each bring.  There have been musings of whether the original will continue to air, and if we look at franchises like CSI and Law & Order, I'm sure it will, and fans can follow both or simply just say keep the original, ditch the spinoff.  It's still too early to tell as Suspect Behavior has yet to blow us away. Given the choice, it's Hotch, Rossi, Morgan, Prentiss, Reid and of course the genius Garcia all the way.

Garcia's role was quite limited in this, we miss the camaraderie between her and the original team, as the relationship here is coming across as more professional. 

So will I catch next week's episode? We'll see, but let's just say it's not a priority.