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youbutstupid · 6 months ago

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What d’you think is the “best” trait the main bau team members have?

OH I love this question thank you so much. There’s a lot so bear with me

Hotch: his compassion for his team. He’s an extremely compassionate and empathetic leader, constantly allowing for his team to leave work if they need to and following them on their hunches, even if they seem unlikely, purely because he loves and respects each of them. Quite often Hotch is portrayed as stone faced but I’ve honestly never seen a male leading character be so openly loving to their team.

Gideon: how much he cares for the victims in his cases. Gideon is often characterised as being a bit clueless to the feelings of his team, yet he never is to the people he is trying to save because he puts his everything into it. He has always been so open and accepting in cases which was rare for a 51 year old man in 2005; he was very willing to let go of his old ways and what he used to know so that he could evolve with the changes in society in order to best help the people he was saving. We also got to see his book of the people he saved. It was amazing.

Rossi: his ability to read and help the people on the team when no one else does. I wholeheartedly believe that if Rossi was present during the Hankel case, Reid would not have gone through his addiction alone. Rossi is always the one to call out people who try to hide their problems and he puts in so much effort to help them, even using his hours outside of work to do so. We see him waking up early to help Hotch coach Jack’s football matches, him inviting Penelope over for scotch so that she can finally disconnect from technology and him hosting the cooking class, the wedding and Strauss’ funeral dinner ar his house. His character development from being weary about the team to adoring them all individually was amazing.

Reid: I love how despite him admitting that he has trouble with emotions, he is always the one doing everything he can to be an emotional support when people around him are struggling. We see him try and comfort Elle when everyone else disconnected from her, he stayed with Garcia the entire time when she was shot, he is the one to call Emily to ask if she wants to hang out when she started disconnecting due to the Doyle situation, he is the one to try and help JJ with her PTSD in season 10 and so on. He doesn’t like the idea of the people around him going through things alone despite the fact that he often tries to go through things alone and he is extremely selfless in this sense.

JJ: I am constantly inspired by how throughout the show, she is repeatedly putting in effort to try and improve herself as a person and as an agent. We never see her get cocky, even when she deserves to be like she was in the FBI from a very young age, she had one of the most challenging jobs as the press liaison and then she was able to work herself up to profiler where she was one of the most formidable people on the field. Despite how impressive she really is, the audience are never given a chance to consider it because she never boasts about it and instead spends everyday striving to be better.

Morgan: he is always willing to take on a leadership role when he has to, yet he is always willing to give it back to Hotch when he doesn’t need to take it on anymore. I’m not just referring to season 5 either, I’m talking about any time when Hotch is unable to take on his role. Morgan respects Hotch a lot and is always willing to support him by taking on the role of team leader when Hotch can’t anymore, yet he never tries to take the role permanently for himself, despite being told he could by Strauss. Despite his years of experience and his leadership skills, he is willing to give up the role because he sees it as what is best for the team and he respects Hotch too much to keep it.

Elle: her protection of women. Elle was, in my opinion, ahead of her time. She previously worked in the sex crimes division and in season 1, she was the only female profiler and she did not step away from her previous role as an advocate for women in sex crimes just so she could better ‘fit in with the men’ of the BAU; she instead brought her perspective with her and implemented it in her cases. She was the only one in episode 3 to look at the woman who was assaulted and realise how uncomfortable she must have been surrounded by men. She ended her career in the BAU fighting for women and it hurts me that the BAU lost her.

Garcia: she never, ever stops being herself, even when people question her or bring her down for it. Sadly, because Garcia is the brightest person in the room, she is quite often the one who the profilers take their frustrations out on; we have seen JJ, Morgan, Hotch, Rossi and Emily all do this. Despite this, she doesn’t waver, she doesn’t stop being the brightest person in the room just because someone is simply not in the mood for her to be because she knows that she does not need to apologise for simply existing as her authentic self. In the episode The Black Queen, 9x12, her ex tells her that they both used to make fun of girls like her, and she corrects him saying that he made fun of girls like her, this was who she always wanted to be. This is so empowering to me.

Prentiss: my love, she was so unbelievably loyal to those around her and this was clear from the beginning. She was the only one to question Reid’s suffering in season 2, she literally uprooted her life and faked her death so that her team’s lives could be protected in season 6. When she found out JJ was in danger in season 9, she was so quick to jump on a plane back to help her. When the team calls for favours whilst she is in London, she always answers to help them. When Reid got arrested and imprisoned in season 12, she didn’t once believe that he committed the crime of which he was accused and even risked her entire career tampering with possible evidence so that it couldn’t be used against him. She is loyal to a fault and so many don’t acknowledge that.

Todd: we only got Todd for 9 episodes but I loved how human she was. She was the first character to make the audience realise that none of what we were looking at was normal. By season 4, the audience became very desensitised to the crimes that we were looking at and Todd broke us out of that and she also was not afraid to call out the fact that it wasn’t normal that the profilers were desensitised either. I respect how in the end she would rather admit that she couldn’t do the job anymore than lose that human side of her. I also loved how she made sure Hotch never took JJ for granted.

Seaver: we never got to see much of Seaver’s development because of the writers, but I loved her willingness to learn. Seaver hadn’t even graduated from the academy when she joined the team, she was not a profiler, she wasn’t even a qualified FBI agent. Watching her learn and grow in such a traumatising field and take it all in her stride was so incredibly interesting to watch. I also loved watching her friendship grow with the team; going to the cinema with Reid, Morgan and Garcia, gaming night with Rossi and going out for curry with Reid.

Blake: Blake was so incredibly talented and so unbelievably smart but instead of using it as a way to get ahead of her team, she used it as a way to relate to them and bond with them. She almost became a protective figure over them and she took that role very seriously too. It was honestly amazing watching her mind work and how easily she was able to take on her role as a profiler because of it. I know I just named multiple good qualities but it is incredible to me how much her character was able to grow and be adored in just two seasons, she had no idea what dynamic she was getting into when she joined the team yet she fit in perfectly and adapted to it so quickly in order to help them and gain their trust.

Callahan: her confidence. She went into that bullpen being unapologetically herself from the beginning and she fit herself into that team without an ounce of apprehension. She made so much effort to establish herself and she was not shy about it which I adored; she had banter with Rossi, she opened up to Reid, she carpooled with JJ, she became a close friend for Garcia and she gained Morgan’s trust all within a few episodes; the last two being hard to do as a new member of the team. I love how she didn’t question where she belonged, she knew she belonged.

Simmons: to me, Simmons was just so incredibly sweet. When he first joined and I saw that he was buff and conventionally attractive, I was weary that he was just going to be another jock detective that we see in other shows, but he wasn’t. He, again, was an incredibly strong and skilled agent yet when he arrived on the team he took everyone for who they were and never once acted like he was in any way better than them because he had skills that they did not have. He was just a nice person and that may sound like a basic description but to me, it’s the best description to give a person. I felt genuinely safe with Matt’s character on the screen because it was just lovely to see a man on the screen who was just good.

Lewis: OH I love this woman. Tara brought a new element of self assurance to the screen and also humour. She, again, was very unapologetically herself and she knew her worth, as we saw when she went through her breakup, which was so refreshing to see because it is rare you see a woman know her value and not be portrayed as cocky for doing so. She is also a character that marked her place on the team and I also love how unafraid she was to come out and say that she was dating a woman, which was a risk in itself because the BAU had never had an openly LGBTQ+ profiler before. I also loved how she brought ‘your mum’ jokes to the show because watching a 50 year old woman with a doctorate make multiple ‘your mum’ jokes is all I needed from the show if I’m honest.

Alvez: I don’t want to repeat things too much but I also love Luke’s loyalty, which is something we also saw from very early on in his time in the show. Bear in mind when Reid was in prison, Luke was only on the team for a very short period of time, yet he believed wholeheartedly that Reid was innocent and even made threats for his safety. I also love how he took Garcia’s original dislike of him in his stride and honestly embraced everything about her, whether it was her distrust in him or her ‘quirkiness’ as the team would dub it, he took it all in and loved her because of it all, not in spite of it.

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reiderwriter · 1 year ago

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Hello!!If you were part of the writers on criminal minds,what would you have done differently when it came to the romantic relationships of it all and whats your opinion on some of the ships?Which would you erase and which are your favorites?I'm willing to read as much details and analysis you are willing to give on this lmao😂I loved the analysis on Reids sexual evolution season by season and am really curious on what you think on the ships like Reid and JJ,Reid Lila,Reid and Maeve,Reid and Elle😂Personally I would have created a diffrent character as a love interest for him all together.

This is practically an essay so I'm just going to apologise in advance of this. I'm not going to say I'd change much because the end product we got is my favorite show for a reason but yes, here is me talking about all the romantic relationships I can think of in CM and my opinions on them!

(Spoilers for season 1-15 of CM, CME, and season 8 of NCIS - yeah that's how long this post is).

Reid Ships

I think Reid ships are the ones most people have issues with in Criminal Minds so I'm going to start here with personal headcanons and my personal highlights. It's going to become clear that my biggest pet peeve in CM is when the writers want to give the characters a love interest and then just gender-bend their personalities, so let's start with Maeve and Spencer.

I've already talked at length in other posts about how I think the Maeve/ Zugzwang plotline wasn't my favorite. It was some amazing acting from MGG and Beth Reisgraf, but personally, I think it suffered from "serialized cop drama" plot line status. This show airs week after week with another case to solve in 45 minutes and they don't have the time or the format to pause through moments that in a standard drama would be very impactful.

To go on a slight tangent, that is partially why the relationships between the main cast are usually the only ones developed very well over extended arcs (I'll return to this when I talk about Jeid).

So, when you're trying to have an emotionally resonant moment, and you only have a handful of cold opens and one full episode to do it, you're going to have to make the characters motivations, personalities and back stories mesh in a way that makes you think: "holy shit they're perfect together."

Maeve and Spencer aren't that. I hate to use this term, but Maeve is like a manic pixie dream girl for Spencer? She's written as if she's too good to be true, which is why we're supposed to feel so sad when she dies. But they also tried to make her a complex character and didn't have the time to really do it, which is why we're given a back story that makes no fucking sense (as Spencer's DOCTOR no less) and some hints that she probably doesn't feel the same way as Spencer does for her (fiancé she never told him about etc.)

When Spencer's character starts evolving in later seasons to being more than just a genius, but a genius with trauma, they pull a similar stunt with Cat Adams/ Max

The show runner Erica Messer did mention that the Maeve plotline was always designed to be a three act plot: she's introduced, Spencer is in love with her, she dies. But, in my opinion, we didn't get enough of an introduction to her for me to feel really all that bad about it? They banked a lot on the audiences attachment to Reid, so when you feel bad about Maeve's death it's all about Reid - why do bad things keep happening to HIM, I wonder how HE will get through it - when she is the one who was just murdered. Those kind of dynamics always kind of throw me in romantic relationships.

I'm going to be clear, I do not ship Cat Adams and Reid either and I have pretty much no opinion on Max other than that if she were real I'd probably avoid her (teachers who hate teaching and blame the kids are weird! And I'm a teacher so I can say that I think lol).

Cat Adams is girl-Reid if he had a villain arc. She's 100% again there to push Reid's character development, and she's used as an action rather than a character. Max is the same. In season 15, with the entire team at a crossroads, they have to allow Reid two outs: one villain arc where he gives into his lust for Cat Adams, and one happy ending where he gets to start something with someone who is totally normal and a way out of the BAU the way Savannah was for Morgan. But it can't be as easy for Reid, and that's why we're left with the Cat/Max dilemma because he is really attracted to Cat, despite the fact that she was threatening to end the lives of members of Max's family.

By the end of the show, Reid had been actively on the team the most out of all the cast members (bar Penelope, but she wasn't out on cases first hand, so there's not as much emotional baggage there for her). He can't have an easy exit, so I kind of view this "love triangle" bullshit as a metaphor for Spencer choosing a normal life vs a continuation with the BAU.

Which is why I think that if CME continues, I think we're unlikely to see or hear from Max, because that means he's picked the BAU.

Okay now, not to sound like a broken record but, Jeid:

Before Truth or Dare, there is one single suggestion of Jeid being a possibility and it's a suggestion, from Gideon of all people, in season 1. It is CRAZY to me that after thirteen seasons they just decided to develop that one plotline again because jesus CHRIST.

My main problem with Jeid is that, actually, I think it had a lot of potential. Like I said, serialized dramas only have time to develop relationships between their main cast members, which is why we end up with a pseudo-found-family vibe no matter who happens to be on the team at any given point. A lot of similar dramas go down the route of coworker/ team mate relationships (think Ziva and DiNozzo in NCIS or Mulder and Scully in The X Files).

There was absolutely the potential for an opposites attract relationship with Jeid, but I think the minute they abandoned that after that small dialogue we got something WAY FUCKING BETTER. Their friendship is entirely underrated, Spencer regularly babysits her kid, she comforts him after Emily "dies," enough for them to have arguments about it after the fact. Your honor they are SIBLINGS. That is UNCLE SPENCER. Not your future step-dad.

When they decided to commit to JJ and Will, they should've stuck to it, and as a big fan of the Season 7 finale + Hit and Run it is very shitty seeing them trying to retcon both of these characters amazing developments and growth over 14 seasons and have them regress to shit tier versions of their Season 1 selves.

"But Kacie, there must be some Spencer relationships you like," I hear you ask. And there ARE:

Lila Archer is a great foil for Spencer. She has a happy, glamorous life until their paths cross, and then we can assume from dialogue in season 6 that she continues having a pretty fucking glamorous life after everything goes down. I don't think Spencer works best with characters that are traumatised or overly smart the way he is, because he needs something to return to after the cases that switch off that part of him, to help him forget the horrifying shit he sees on the job.

So Lila Archer was kind of a great love interest.

Another one that I'm so annoyed they didn't explore more is Austin. She's the bartender in the Season 4 Episode "52 Pickup" that is charmed by Spencer's card tricks. She is never mentioned again, but they had a great chemistry, she was quick on her feet and managed to spot the unsub first, and she was a really great foil for Spencer as well; it was a street smarts/ book smarts kind of dynamic. If they'd carried that character forward and had her reappear a few times, it could've been a great romantic plot.

I will just quickly note that the reason we most likely didn't see many romantic plots for Reid was because Matthew Gray Gubler didn't like the idea of giving him a romantic plotline, stating that there were so many more interesting things to do with the character - and he's right!

I'm a fanfiction writer, and the allure of characters like Spencer Reid is they are mostly romantic clean slates - you can write whatever you want for them within reason without having to disregard canon relationships. This is why similarly, Steve Harrington, Eddie Munson, Venom, and young "Marauders" fanfictions are pretty popular here imo too - canon compliance isn't disregarded, the reader is just written in. So I don't think I'd change a thing for Spencer to be honest (apart from maybe not kill Maeve off and give her the actual villain arc, but I say that so regularly I'm beginning to sound like a broken record).

Also I'll just quickly mention Elle because you mentioned her - outside of fanfiction there are literally zero hints (imo) of a thing between Elle and Reid lmao there's more of a case to be made for Elle and Morgan, but for some reason, writers and fans alike don't like committing to giving Morgan more than simply platonic connections. THEY SHOULD!! THE MAN IS SEXY AS HELL!!!!!!! GIVE ME A MORGAN WHO IS REGULARLY FUCKING!

Hotchner Ships

Speaking of characters that have a long time where they are single! Aaron Hotchner is another fandom favorite to write self-insert fanfiction for, because of the gap between Haley Hotchner's death in 100, and the introduction of Beth in season 7.

In general, I like the way Hotch's relationships play out on screen. Let's start with Haley:

You can tell that the writers really enjoyed the dynamic between work Hotch and home Hotch, because they played on it so much across the four first seasons. The very first time he is introduced he's in his bedroom picking out baby names with his childhood sweetheart, so any further scenes of him being more stern or serious are always in contrast with that introduction. It's a cold open to his character that immediately let's you know that there is more going on in his world than just the BAU, and he is the only member of the season one team that has that.

Then, they really LOVE taking that shit away from him. I'm not going to go into detail here about how fucking wack the time line is for Criminal Minds, but it is stupid and that's important here because:

I think Haley's reasons for divorcing Hotch are stupid.

She says that she married a man who was a prosecutor, not a man that was an FBI Profiler but realistically by the time of their divorce, he'd been in the BAU like 10 years. They rely more on the audiences sense of time (we're two years in, so they've all been on the team two years etc) to push this character motivation off. And for a while it makes sense that they were separated, until the events of 100. But also: in sickness and in health, for better and for worse, you literally signed up for whatever the FUCK happened, that's what a marriage vow IS.

Now I'm a sucker for the angst of 100,but would it not have felt 10x more emotionally disgusting if Hotch and Haley were talking about reuniting? If they had never celebrated in the first place, and had just finished working through their marital issues when Foyet comes back into their lives and Haley has to be whisked away again? Yes. Yes it would.

There's an episode in season 9 that really pisses me off, and it's the one that Hotch passes out from an old tear in his Foyet stab wounds and he goes into surgery and talks with Haley and Foyet in heaven while watching the rest of his life after the events of 100 on a cinema screen. It's cliché and also has no pay-off because it doesn't change the way he views his relationships after that, and it's not like he's at a crossroads at that point, so it means nothing to the audience except as a remembrance of an issue and an episode so far in the past that it feels like flogging a dead horse. They do this twice, btw, and this is the more successful use of this plot (the first time they do it to Elle in Season 1/2 during the events of The Wicker King - she talks to the father we didn't even know was dead, who died decades ago in an unrelated time. Not to keep bringing NCIS up, but I think the only time I've seen it done well is whenever Gibbs kept seeing Mike Franks in the diner scenes). They do not out enough effort into these plots to achieve the emotional resonance they are aiming for in my personal opinion.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think this could've been the beginning of the era where Gibson was having a lot of issues with the cast, because it just felt like they didn't want to use him in the on-location shoots for a while lmao. Anyway, all that to say, Haley should've stayed dead, and not come back as a stupid phantom.

After the dust has settled on Haley and Hotchner though, we get Hotchner and Beth:

This is going to be a short note, because I actually really like the relationship between these two characters. They have the very slow cold-open build up that Maeve and Spencer get, but there's a lot more and a lot less to Beth's character that makes the dynamic between them really enjoyable to watch.

We're once again treated to the out-of-work Hotchner that had been missing since Season 4 (his in between scenes with Jack are cute but there's always the tragedy hanging over them). Beth is running a marathon in honor of her dad, Hotch is doing something similar for the FBI Triathalon, they train together the tension builds, they start dating. Now obviously it wasn't the purpose or aim of this character introduction to build to tragedy, and I think they just genuinely wanted to show a happy Hotchner again, but its still a valid criticism of the weird voyeuristic Maeve build-up that they literally succeeded a more sympathetic and audience engaging late minor-recurring-character EARLIER THAN THE MAEVE ARC.

I'll shut up now, but yeah, I like Hotch and Beth.

Penelope Ships

This post is getting ridiculously long, so much so that I'm even contemplating adding a fucking word count, but let's continue and dive in to my next issue.

Penelope's romantic life is used as a punch-line for the first 11 seasons and I HATE it.

There is no easy short to say this, but I despise Kevin. He is stupid, and a joke, and I hate him and I am SO HAPPY that she dumped him. They made her really pathetic about him for a few episodes, and then he kept fucking coming back too which was even worse.

Kevin is literally male Garcia but with all the worst attributes. He's clingy, and needy, and he may be smart but in a very "incel" way. In my opinion, Kevin is less a fully fledged character and more a joke line/ convenient plot point for when they need more tech analyst work. The best moment in the Kevin/Penelope arc is during the The Gathering, where she really lays into him and tells him off for being jealous of her ukelele instructor AFTER THEY'D BROKEN UP.

Penelope deserved so much better than what they gave her romantically in these seasons. First, her date tried to kill her, her boyfriend was a joke, etc. She never gets the serious romantic plotline that her other teammates do (Hotch/Haley, Spencer/Maeve, Derek/Savannah, JJ/Will, Emily/being a big old lesbian etc). Penelope is really great levity for the rest of the cast because she is happy and she is positive and she is unapologetic in her positivity. It's annoying that they don't let her be more than that in the romantic relationships they give he during these seasons.

Then Luke Alvez is introduced and there is some hope! Galvez truther's please, rise they are so adorable.

Anyone involved in the writing of CME - what the hell was that? Now I haven't seen it myself, to be completely fair, but I know enough to ask the question - really what the HELL was that?

Tl;dr Penelope's sexuality and romantic relationships should not be used as punchlines.

The Aversion to Homosexuality

This is just a general note, but the writers originally did plan to have Emily Prentiss be gay - amazing, great, it's a completely different time now, please let her have a gay awakening soon. It was obviously scrapped early in, but there's a lot of subtext that can be interpreted in that way.

They did commit with Tara, and she gets a gf in CME, so I want to see some Temily in the future if we do get more CM seasons.

So just so you know, everytime I mention Emily flirting with someone in my fic, assume it's a woman if you aren't already, lmao.

(They did also talk about making Reid bisexual as well, which would've also been great, but again, I don't think we're ever getting any more romantic plotlines from Reid).

Other Characters

Here's just a rating and short mention for all the other character couples I can think of in Criminal Minds, because this is already thesis length lmao:

Morgan + Savannah - 8.5/10, no notes, really just the gender bent love interest but done right.

Alex Blake + Husband - 7/10, solid couple, very much enjoyed when they started bringing in the people in established relationships again lmao.

Kate Callahan + Husband - 5/10, same as above but I wasn't as attached to her character rip.

Matt + Kirsty - 10/10 really no notes, I too would be called a breeder if I managed to lock that man down, damn.

Rossi + His 3 Ex-Wives - Make total sense for his character, very enjoyable to me, love that he has a nice moment with most of them again throughout the series, not going to rate it lol.

Rossi + Strauss - 3.5/10 - Last ditch attempt to make Strauss a sympathetic character, but I felt more attached to her growth after being called out by Derek rather than the effect that her death had on Rossi.

Gideon + the friend of his who is murdered by that Frank guy at the end of season 2 - stupid, worst way to go out, made no sense for the character, but I know Mandy Patinkin wanted OUT and honestly, anything for you Inigo Montoya.

Why I think Criminal Minds is Better Without Romance

Generally, I really do agree with Matthew Gray Gubler when he said that there were more interesting things to explore with these characters than their romantic attachments. It does frustrate me to no end that they focused on some of them more than others, and that post Henry, most of JJ's big moments are tied to motherhood and being a mother/ wife, but that change in her character is still amazing and leads her to a lot of growth (not mentioning Truth or Dare again, sorry it doesn't exist at this point in the post)(also I didn't have much time to mention Will and JJ, but I do love them).

Their best moments are the ones we get of them together as a team, saving people and putting away murderers for life, it's a perfect Found Family!!!

Also, no more romance = Spencer Reid can be mine. In conclusion, I am delusional. Thank you for reading this far.

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