fabrisse

Criminal Minds.

I love the show quite unreasonably (or have through the first five seasons), but when the ads began appearing around Los Angeles while I was living there, I determined that I wasn't interested.

Part of it was that I HATE a "daily drive" type of commute. Commuting is for reading or walking or both. Having to get behind the wheel of a car and concentrate on the road rather than either reading or using my body does not make Fabi a happy girl. So my daily 16 mile each way commute was not something I enjoyed. For several months it was made worse by the fact that no matter what route I took (I varied it as much as I could, especially on the way home) there was Mandy Patinkin's face with other people behind it.

I don't particularly care for Patinkin, I find him a showboat whose process is out in the open for everyone to see. I'd also over the previous year or so given up on every cop/procedural show I watched. None of the Laws and Orders were appealing anymore, and the CSI franchise had gone so over the top icky (live rat coming out of a dead person's mouth) that I couldn't watch.

My sister watched Lost which didn't appeal to me from the few episodes I'd tried to watch.

And then early in the new season, but not too early for reruns, I flipped through channels while trying to decide whether to read a book instead when a scene from the episode "Plain Sight" caught my eye. Sis sat and watched with me, since Lost was a rerun too. The following week was also a repeat -- "L.D.S.K." -- and I was hooked on Reid, on Hotch, on Garcia, on the team, and on the plots.

I love many of the episodes from first and second season, but I still don't care much for Patinkin -- other than in Yentl. His unprofessional departure at the beginning of season three certainly hasn't endeared him to me, but the team endures.