Shameless Plug

It really has no bearing or relationship to the stuff I post here, but there’s a friend of mine who writes comics. Check them out at his blog.

Criminal Minds

Several friends of mine, including an ex-roommate who watched it all the time, really love this show Criminal Minds . I figured I’d give it a chance. I watched the first two episodes and decided that I kind of hate it for many reasons.

1. There’s not much value in criminal profiling, despite what Hollywood would have you think. To quote Wikipedia, “There is little empirical evidence that profiling is effective.” But it’s a TV show, so who cares?
2. In the first episode, the “footpath killer” is profiled as a young white male who drives a beat-up, American-made pickup truck. Does that sound familiar at all? (Hint: I’m 22, Caucasian, in possession of a Y chromosome, and I drive a 1990 Chevy c1500.)
3. They misquoted Yoda’s most famous quote. I understand the effort at humor they were making. It would have been pretty hilarious if done correctly, but they botched it. Some may not have caught it, but Derek Morgan says “Try not. Do or do not.” Dr. Spencer Reid attributes this to Yoda. Here’s what Yoda said: “Do or do not…there is no try.” Now I understand that not everyone’s a huge Star Wars geek like me (although you’d think people who work in television would go through the effort to quote movies correctly), but you know how much research I had to do to make sure I was right? About five seconds. I Googled “Yoda quotes” and clicked on the first link, which has, as one might expect, a list of Yoda quotes, the very first of which is the relevant quote. Five seconds of research is all it would’ve taken.
4. The creators are so obviously trying (and failing) to portray the characters as super-extra-smart. This shows up in a number of ways, but the most notable (to me) is how chess is shown and used. I’m somewhat qualified to talk about this as I’ve played chess since I was seven and I placed (1st, 2nd, or 3rd) in several tournaments as a child. Chess.com has me ranked in the upper 1100s or lower 1200s. Not exactly a grandmaster, but I understand general concepts. In this episode, Reid (high IQ, three doctorates, eidetic memory) is always losing in chess to Jason Gideon (also smart, though you’d probably expect Reid to be better at chess).