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Worst TV Show of the Week

Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior on CBS

Spin-offs of crime procedurals usually take one of two tacks to differentiate themselves from the original series. Mostly, they are set in another city (i.e. Law & Order: Los Angeles, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, etc.) or they intensify the brutality by focusing on a special unit that deals with only the sickest, most perverted crimes (i.e. Law & Order: SVU). Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior clearly took the latter approach, exemplified by the February 23^rd episode that reveled in sexual sadism, which earned the new series its first (and, if it continues down this path, most likely not its last) title of Worst TV Show of the Week.

In the opening scene a blonde woman is ravaged by a stranger. He forcibly pins her against the wall and kisses her chest. She eventually acquiesces, and when he falls asleep face down on the bed, she takes the opportunity to stab him. As he slowly dies, covered in his own blood, she watches intently. She narrates what she sees in voice-over to an unseen accomplice. 

Another victim turns up. Again, the female serial killer first seduces her victim, and when he strips naked, she stabs him. The investigative team notices a pattern develop. The stabbing wounds suggest that the killer wants the victim to die more slowly with each successive murder. The modus operandi mirrors a string of similar murders that happened years before. In the previous murders, a male sexual predator targeted young girls. One victim survived a stab wound to the chest by pretending to be dead. In a flashback, the male assailant straddles the fourteen-year-old victim, drives the knife into her torso, and sadistically watches her die.

Upon interrogating the male serial killer in prison where he’s serving a life sentence, the lead investigator determines that he has seduced a woman to carry out the murders by proxy. And both take sick pleasure in watching the life drain out of their victims.

With such a prevalence of crime procedurals, it is difficult to come up with novel ways to solve mysteries. Unfortunately, ingenuity often takes a backseat to intensity. As a result, the crimes aren’t always more intriguing – they’re just more sadistic. This particular episode of Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior embraced this phenomenon, thus earning it the title of Worst TV Show of the Week.