Matthew Gray Gubler

Criminal Minds has Matthew Gray Gubler in it so it is clearly the best show on television. Aside form this adorable boy; the show is very unique in how it presents each episode, often in medias res. The beginning of the show may show the serial killer himself in his home doing very normal things. Only after, will it show flashbacks to his crimes and display two different stories throughout the episode of both the FBI, as well as the criminal. This postmodern way of showing the story leaves the viewer more connected to the criminal and the dramatic irony of knowing who the bad guy is gives an eerie sense of anxiety. The narrative is linear only for one episode; in fact it is two separate narratives (bad guy and good guys). Rushkoff elaborates on shows like Criminal Minds and their linear structure, “(shows) may not be capable of conveying a neatly arced storyline, but the slowly moving ‘metanarrative’ creates sustained tension-with little expectation of final resolution” (Rushkoff 34). The show itself has a metanarrative between the characters, building relationships and going through their own hardships. The viewers know there will never be an end to their own drama, so they are satisfied with a resolution only through each individual episode.

            One aspect of Criminal Minds that is very presentist is that it can be binge watched on Netflix. Unlike traditional narratives or shows that are paced out, Criminal Minds is often watched all at once. People are living in the present: only thinking about what they want to do for themselves in that moment and not about the future. The do not acknowledge the time wasted nor the lack of episodes to be viewed later. Watching the show is not a small pastime; it is an event or an entire evening. This act of watching a show so much at once changes the way the viewer perceives it. The individual narratives seem to fade away and the focus is drawn to the metanarrative. However, this overarching narrative really has no resolution for the show would not go in if it did. Therefore, the viewer is stuck in a trance of watching the show waiting for answers that will never come. Hotch will never get back together with his wife, JJ (yes a girl on the show is named JJ but she is not as cool as our JJ ;)) will never find out what happened to her husband and Reid will never find his true love. Rushkoff discusses how viewers have changed because of streaming, “sponsors no longer have the luxury of captive viewers who will sit through commercials. Many of us are watching entire season’s worth of episodes in a single weekend through streaming services such as Hulu or Netflix. The traditional timeline of television schedules vanishes in an on-demand world” (Rushkoff 36). Watching Criminal Minds is no longer like watching traditional television, for with no commercials, no breaks and a seemingly endless amount of episodes to view, we feel like we are in the show. We become completely disjointed from reality.

            Criminal Minds often has random episodes in a completely different structure just to mix things up. Maybe the whole episode is only through the killer, or we never see the killer, or it is only through the victim. In any case, the viewer is sucked in to a new story; they live in each moment with the killer, the victim, or the FBI. The familiar sense of consistency with most shows whether how they are filmed, the same few sets and camera angles, or how each episode is structured is constantly being broken. The show feels more like real life than many viewers realize. It can engrain certain ways of thinking on you and make you paranoid of serial killers. The “narrative” of Criminal Minds is more like a disjointed reality that never really ends, There is always another serial killer to catch.

Work Cited

Rushkoff, Douglas. Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now. New York: Penguin, 2013. Print