Quicklet on Criminal Minds Season 2 (CliffsNotes-like Summary, Analysis, and Commentary)

ABOUT THE BOOK

The second season of Criminal Minds aired on CBS, and ran from September 20, 2006 until May 16, 2007. Of particular importance to this season is the absence of Elle Greenaway, who left the show during Episode 6. Starting with Episode 9, Criminal Minds introduced a new character, Agent Emily Prentiss, who took Elle’s place for the rest of the season.

Criminal Minds follows an elite team of FBI criminal investigators, known as the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), as its members travel the country working to solve grisly murder mysteries and arrest the serial killers responsible for them.

During its premier season, Criminal Minds was the newest iteration of crime scene investigation television programs, competing with such shows as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Crossing, Law & Order: SUV, and Medium, many of which were also broadcast on CBS. Given this context, Criminal Minds used its first season to set itself apart from the crowd.

MEET THE AUTHOR

Charles Limley is a native of Colorado. After earning bachelor’s degrees in both English Literature and Humanities from the University of Colorado—Boulder, he entered the world of professional writing. He began his work with Hyperink during the fall of 2011. In addition to writing, Limley is an avid reader. He also loves bicycles, and has completed several long-distance bicycle tours.

EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK

In portraying these crimes, each episode of Criminal Minds becomes its own mini-narrative placed within a larger overall story in which the BAU team works together to become not only a professional team, but a personal team as well. As the season unfolds, characters’ personal struggles, fears, and doubts are revealed, and as they are, teammates must figure out how best to help each other.

In this way, the members of the BAU team are constantly focused on providing relief and help to those in need, despite being surrounded by a world of deranged, senseless, and bloody killings.

This fundamental theme is attested to by Agent Gideon during an episode of Season 1, when he reminds Agent Reid that for a psychological profiler, the “most effective weapon is the ability to empathize—to humanize an unsub’s victim” (TV.com, Criminal Minds: Episode Guide). Gideon tells Reid that only by reversing the dehumanizing effects of crime and murder, returning to the victims their dignity and worth as individuals, can an effective and accurate profile of the perpetrator be constructed…

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