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I'm out sick today, and after napping, decided to watch the first two episodes of Criminal Minds: Suspect Writing.
Even with my expectations set low, this underwhelmed me. Aside from not understanding the point of the show (they operate just like the standard BAU and take similar cases, but are outside of the power structure, which seems like nothing more than an excuse to put them in a warehouse instead of offices), it's also just ploddingly poorly written. Bad information sharing, no victims with agency, infodumps piled on infodumps, and entirely predictable cases (without any of the redeeming character-driven stuff to mitigate it).
Generally, the only decent scenes are the ones featuring Cooper and Griffith (the brief hallway conversation after she interrogated the suspect in the second episodes was one of the best things on the show). If they just kept the two of them (as well as the borrowed Garcia), I'd enjoy the show a lot more. I'm still waiting for LaSalle to show any personality at all (other than pausing at random points as if she's reading cue cards and is waiting for the next card to come up), and Rawson and Simms are so generic (one of them wants to be Stabler when he grows up, the other is comfortable being every cop ever, but with an accent), they might as well not exist.
I'll watch last week's ep (still on the DVR) to give it a fair shake, but if I don't see at least some sign of the spark that made the first show work, I'm pretty much dumping this into the "meh" bin.
Even with my expectations set low, this underwhelmed me. Aside from not understanding the point of the show (they operate just like the standard BAU and take similar cases, but are outside of the power structure, which seems like nothing more than an excuse to put them in a warehouse instead of offices), it's also just ploddingly poorly written. Bad information sharing, no victims with agency, infodumps piled on infodumps, and entirely predictable cases (without any of the redeeming character-driven stuff to mitigate it).
Generally, the only decent scenes are the ones featuring Cooper and Griffith (the brief hallway conversation after she interrogated the suspect in the second episodes was one of the best things on the show). If they just kept the two of them (as well as the borrowed Garcia), I'd enjoy the show a lot more. I'm still waiting for LaSalle to show any personality at all (other than pausing at random points as if she's reading cue cards and is waiting for the next card to come up), and Rawson and Simms are so generic (one of them wants to be Stabler when he grows up, the other is comfortable being every cop ever, but with an accent), they might as well not exist.
I'll watch last week's ep (still on the DVR) to give it a fair shake, but if I don't see at least some sign of the spark that made the first show work, I'm pretty much dumping this into the "meh" bin.