By Patrick Luce – Monsters & Critcs

The fourth season of Criminal Minds sees the show starting to be a bit formulaic, but still able to throw a surprise or two – especially in the final episodes of the season.
Criminal Minds follows the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit as they crisscross the country helping various law enforcement agencies stop the country’s most twisted criminals (sometimes you wonder how they got some of these episodes on the air).

The team is made up of a variety of specialists – including street smart cop Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore); computer tech wizard Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness); FBI agent Emily Prentiss (Paget Brewster); genius Dr. Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler); public liaison officer Jennifer ‘JJ’ Jareau (A.J. Cook); by the book FBI team leader Aaron ‘Hotch’ Hotchner (Thomas Gibson); and profiler extraordinaire David Rossi (Joe Mantegna).
The show’s success rest in the ensemble cast and the excellent way the actors seem to play off each other. The series never feels like a vanity show with one actor as the main star and the rest just there for window dressing.

The writers do excellent work keeping each character involved in every episode and the series grounded in the world of the profilers – where very little time is spent on the characters’ lives outside the office.
With that said, I still feel Criminal Minds continues to suffer from the departure of Mandy Patinkin and his Jason Gideon character.

Watching the fourth season, I also felt several times that the show was in need of a cast shake-up and some fresh faces. There is a bit of a chance for this when JJ goes on her maternity leave and a new liaison is added to the team.
The show also seems to be on a bit of auto-pilot and just covering the same ground that has been used in past seasons or on other similarly themed crime shows. Most episodes find the team on the trail of their suspect and managing save the day at the last minute. While not every episode follows this pattern (“Omnivore” has to be the best episode of the season and sets up a great cliffhanger), it happens enough during the fourth season to make the show a bit of a drag.

In the past, the series’ formulaic feel was able to rely on its cast to keep it interesting, but this season even the cast seems a bit out of steam. They all provide solid performances, but do little to add to their characters. We get a few glimpses of new ground being laid for the characters (mostly with Gubler’s Reid), but it isn’t enough to keep certain characters from being a bit boring.
I realize these characters are extremely serious and handle some of the worst crimes that no one should ever have to see, but the fourth season becomes a bit of a drag halfway through the episodes because it seems to be just grinding the same material again and again.

Gibson’s Hotch is dry and lacks any real emotion for most of the season – despite the choices past seasons forced his character to make to stay with the team. Brewster’s Prentiss seems to become easily forgettable mid-season. Moore’s Derek Morgan continues to serve little more purpose than giving the show its good looking tough guy with the heart of gold.
I also grew quickly bored with Mantegna’s David Rossi. Mantegna is a great actor, and does his best with the show, but I never could get past the feeling he was just another version of Patinkin’s Gideon – which in turn just reminded me of how good the show used to be.
Luckily, the fourth season saw Vangsness’ Penelope Garcia getting more screen time, and even getting out of her computer lair for a couple of “in the field” assignments. It seems all of these crime shows now need an “odd” tech to provide some comic relief or give the show character. Vangsness’ Penelope Garcia is the queen of these kinds of characters and she gives Criminal Minds its heart and its fresh feel.
I hope she continues to become a bigger part of the series and even maybe starts packing a gun. I can see Morgan running for the hills now. With the great cliffhanger, I hope the writers manage to shake-up the show some and get the characters out of their comfort zone.
With the fourth season, the writers seemed to have taken all of the characters to some pretty dark places, caused them to question their commitments to the team, and taken an emotional toil on each one. Now, I hope we will get to see the aftermath of all that work.
The fourth season comes with some expected special features that take you behind the scenes, give you a look at some deleted scenes, and some profiles. There is also a gag reel – which is always funny on a show as serious as Criminal Minds.
Criminal Minds: The Complete Fourth Season doesn’t break any new ground, but it also doesn’t do anything to make fans give up on the show. The series stays with what has worked in the past, and manages to end with a decent cliffhanger that will make fans want to tune in to the fifth season premiere to see what happens next.