Criminal Minds Has Ruined The BAU

Criminal Minds season 19 has shown us a lot of things as viewers, but the most recent episode made it clear that the Paramount+ iteration of the long-running CBS series has effectively ruined the BAU as we once knew it. The point of Criminal Minds: Evolution was always to delve deeper — deeper into cases, deeper into the characters who solved them, and deeper into the crimes that were being investigated by the BAU. Unfortunately, though the characters who make up the elite team are relatively the same, the BAU often feels like a distant relative of its former self.

As Criminal Minds: Evolution has continued over the course of four seasons, the BAU has proven once and again that though they’re some of the brightest minds that the FBI has to offer, their courses of action are almost always all wrong. In resolving convoluted cases that require a precision and a sense of urgency, the BAU often fails to have either, going through bloated and roundabout plots in order to arrive to conclusions late, without the ability to resolve what they came to. In the show’s most recent episode, the unit felt entirely in the dark, which doesn’t work.

Instead of continuing to treat the BAU like they’re a team that has a competent split of members that know how to take action and members who have the analytical and technical background to support that action, Criminal Minds has managed to make the team feel like a rookie squad.

Criminal Minds Season 19 Proves The BAU Is Inefficient

Paramount Press Express

Although the BAU was consistently able to work a step(ish) ahead of Elias Voit (Zach Gilford), their most difficult UnSub in the modern era, their case throughout the show’s current season has often seen them moving in a clunky, uneven manner. Dealing with The Fan (Justin Kirk) has brought out every single one of the worst parts of the team, from their inability to separate current crimes from Voit to their inconsistent reads of the profile. While there’s always room for error with the BAU, the bones of this case have made the team feel deeply inefficient.

One of the most damaging parts of the season has been the inclusion of Brian Garrity’s (Paul F. Tompkins) story. While Garrity himself and Tompkins performance are both great in their own right, seeing Garrity throughout Criminal Minds season 19 episode 9 was an exhausting reminder that the BAU isn’t up to par. As Garrity and other guest stars, including Connor Storrie’s Lance Kingston and Yvette Nicole Brown’s Sheila, handled The Fan, the BAU was nowhere to be found and struggled to figure out how to proceed. By giving the guest cast the heavy lifting, the BAU seemed entirely unnecessary.

The BAU’s Lack Of Knowledge & Foresight Made The Fan Uninteresting

Although the BAU doesn’t have to be on top of every case with an efficient precision from the very start, the way The Fan’s case has rolled out throughout the season has made the team seem like they lack the knowledge or understanding of how to crack a case like this at all. Though there have been glimmers of the old BAU in their movements, the majority of the work done on the case has been too wrapped up in other UnSubs and incorrect motivations. It’s been frustrating, frankly, to watch the BAU fail at their jobs.

Though the reality of chasing a case may lead to a ton of dead ends, Criminal Minds’ reality doesn’t have to. The BAU are meant to be highly trained profilers with a ton of expertise. By bringing them into the case and making it feel like they’re drowning in information and options, then allowing guest cast to do a lot of the heavy lifting surrounding what’s actually happening, Criminal Minds effectively made The Fan’s case feel like it wasn’t the team’s to solve. Instead of having the BAU play catch up, Criminal Minds should’ve leaned into their expertise.

Release Date: September 22, 2005
Showrunner: Erica Messer
Directors: Félix Enríquez Alcalá, Rob Bailey, Matthew Gray Gubler, Joe Mantegna, John Gallagher, Douglas Aarniokoski, Guy Norman Bee, Larry Teng, Nelson McCormick, Alec Smight, Charles S. Carroll, Rob Spera, Charles Haid, Diana Valentine, Rob Hardy, Tawnia McKiernan, Bethany Rooney, Karen Gaviola, Sharat Raju, Thomas Gibson, Aisha Tyler, Anna Foerster, Gloria Muzio, John Terlesky
Writers: Bruce Zimmerman, Virgil Williams, Edward Allen Bernero, Janine Sherman Barrois, Chris Mundy, Simon Mirren, Debra J. Fisher, Kimberly A. Harrison, Jay Beattie, Dan Dworkin, Karen Maser, Oanh Ly, Stephanie Sengupta, Aaron Zelman, Kirsten Vangsness, Erica Meredith, Andi Bushell, Holly Harold, Alicia Kirk, Jeff Davis, Randy Huggins, Edward Napier, Jayne A. Archer, Chikodili Agwuna