
The third in the series of TV Series is Criminal Minds. For a few years when I was working out of state I used to regularly watch reruns of this crime procedural series on ION Television after returning from work. Criminal Minds featured FBI agents criminal profilers working for Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), based in Quantico. Local law enforcement agencies sought help from BAU agents for their specialized skills in tracking down criminals and bring them to justice. The criminals featured were not the garden variety, run-of-the-mill types easy to track down but generally involved people of above average intelligence who planned their kills with precision and took pride in their ability to get away with it. Many were serial killers and some of them would even leave some clues to taunt the investigators in a catch me if you can kind of dare. To add to the difficulty of the local police (where a particular crime took place) the crimes generally spanned multiple jurisdictions as they went on their crime spree. Which meant reaching out to the good folks of BAU for their expertise and help
The BAU team had a team with different areas of expertise that could piece together the pieces quickly and more efficiently due to their training and experience. Some of the team members were (Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Minds)
1) Jason Gideon, Senior Supervisory Special Agent and BAU unit chief when the series started. Gideon was widely known as the BAU’s best profiler. He had a special talent analyzing the crimes and delivering very accurate profile of the criminal/s based on evidence available. Unfortunately after a few years of deep involvement in solving crimes he suffered burnout and left the BAU.
2) David Rossi, Senior Supervisory Special Agent. Highly experienced profiler who worked at the BAU when it was originally formed, then took early retirement to write books and go on lecture tours about criminal analysis, and then returned to the unit after SSA Jason Gideon left the unit.
3) Aaron Hotchner, BAU unit chief and Senior Supervisory Special Agent for many years. This character was a bit stiff (not to my liking) but the kind of manager that has the back of his team and tries to ensure that the Agents reporting to him don’t take excessive risks or do things, in their zeal to bring justice, that could jeopardize investigations or relationship with local police.
4) Derek Morgan, Supervisory Special Agent. A bit of a hothead but with his heart in the right place. He was also often the muscle guy knocking down doors or chasing suspects as FBI agents closed in on their target/s.
5) Spencer Reid, Supervisory Special Agent. A genius with very high IQ and elephantine memory and a great capacity to absorb and understand information.
6) Jennifer “JJ” Jareau, BAU communications liaison and Supervisory Special Agent. JJ served as the communications liaison on the team to local police agencies initially, left the team on a promotion to Pentagon and then returned to the team as profiler.
7) Penelope Garcia, BAU technical analyst and BAU communications liaison. A colorful character, who was originally an underground hacker. Garcia joined the BAU to avoid jail sentence as the team thought her skills could be put to better use on the right side of law. She has a remarkable ability to hack into any system and get any information that the team needs
8) Emily Prentiss, Supervisory Special Agent and BAU Unit Chief after Aaron Hotchner left the post.
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Typically an episode would start with a request from a local police department anywhere in the US for assistance in solving a crime. The team would meet quickly in a room, BAU chief would give a brief based on the information received, Penelope Garcia would have more details in astonishingly short time for the team and after a short meeting BAU chief would announce “Wheels up in 30”, meaning the team flying out in their unit’s airplane in 30 minutes! Upon arriving at the destination for investigation the team would set up office in double quick time, gather some details from the local police and the scene of crime trying to strike a delicate balance in order to not appear as overbearing while gathering facts. After the initial fact finding the team would hunker down, sift through the known facts and then deliver the most important first part of the investigation: Profile of the suspect/s to the local police! One funny part of this aspect was the uniform way the profile was delivered in each episode. Each member of the team would deliver a line about the profile developed by the team, always by turn. I used to be amused by it and think “Come on, man, it doesn’t have to be the same way all the time. It’s ok if some team members do not get equal speaking time always” Anyways the profile delivered would help narrow down the list of suspect considerably and go a long way in solving the crime!
What did I like about the series? The analysis aspect and problem solving approach. Start with a wide list, analyze the pattern, connect the dots and whittle down the list to a manageable number. Not unlike support of software defects or errors: Start with a list of likely causes, look for a pattern, discard from the list causes that do not fit and zero in on the root cause! Most times it involves painstaking work and the reward is when all the dots are connected. The other thing I liked is the sense of justice being served and closure for families of victims on knowing what happened to their loved ones and a knowledge that the perpetrators will be brought to justice
Among the things I learned watching Criminal Minds: “unsub” = unidentified subject (perpetrator of crime), the word zugzwang (used in one of the episodes) which means a situation in which the obligation to make a move in one’s turn is a serious, often decisive, disadvantage, more commonly used in chess, the term “eidetic memory” which refers to ability to recall an image from memory with high precision for a brief period after seeing it only once, and without using a mnemonic device. That kind of memory would certainly help in job interview or when appearing for tests/exams