CRIMINAL MIND

Yes, we've struck bottom. For several months we've resorted to amusing ourselves, collectively, with the television show CRIMINAL MINDS. It was going along so well for us, too. We'd gotten used to the visual or implicit violence, the theme of FBI profilers digging into the minds and motivations of the nation's most depraved serial killers. We were aware the show was painstakingly reality-based (without being reality-based). We'd gotten to like the cast, especially Gubler, and had come to realize that the real-life profilers working for the real-life FBI were heroes. All of that.

But we crossed a line last night, watching something tacked onto our Netflicks copy of one of the series' shows, called The Making of CRIMINAL MINDS. This self-congratulatory look behind the scenes has become de rigeur in the movie and television industry, as those of us with inquiring minds--"who want to know"--demand more and more of what ought to be a simple diversion: watching a make-believe television show featuring actors and actresses pretending to be someone else. We now need to see the boom operators and cameramen stalking the scene as well. Otherwise, its just fake, right?

We hit bottom however, when Mandy Patinkin, who had so covered himself with glory and laurels as the Spanish swordsman Montoya in THE PRINCESS BRIDE, had to get personal with us. He had (he's OTS* now) some sort of personal identification with the show and his role that just...wasn't quite right. And he had to couch this in terms that were just wrong. Just wrong.

In speaking of the heroic role of FBI profiler, dealing with all of this evil in the world, he had this, sort of (by memory) to say:

"You just have to breathe in all of that darkness, and breathe out light."

Somebody with only one nature can do this?





*Off The Show