Roush on Criminal Minds
Question: I realize that being a TV critic puts you in a unique situation. If you were a book or a movie critic, you would be reviewing a final project that never changes — you can watch
The Love Guru 10 times and it will still be what it was the first time: tacky. However, television is different. TV shows are constantly evolving. I would think most television shows have the potential to improve over the first season or two as the writers get a better handle on characters and plots. (Although I think most shows have a point where they get worse as writers struggle to be innovative and characters grow stale.) The reason I bring this up is that I wonder if, as a TV critic, you often change your mind about a show over the course of a few seasons and what would make you change your mind. Do you continue to watch shows that you have initially reviewed negatively? For example, I know that you really panned
Criminal Minds when it started, and I would have agreed. However, I think the show has gotten better since, and I really like the ensemble and the psychological background of the plots. It's violent to a degree, but not any more so than any of the
CSIs. Yet I notice that every time it's mentioned in your column it's in a negative context. I'd rather watch
Criminal Minds than
CSI: Miami, which is nothing more than a parody of itself. (I almost expect actors to shout out "Live from New York" or a scene to fade with the
Mad TV logo.) Anyway, have you ever changed your mind about a show that started bad but got better? If so, which one(s)?
— Olivia
Matt Roush: The changeable nature of long-running TV shows is what makes the job of a TV critic so exciting and exacting. (For the record, I checked in on Criminal Minds several times last season after Joe Mantegna joined, and watched again later in the season to check out Nicholas Brendon's recurring role, and whatever improvements there have been aren't enough to change my opinion of what I still feel to be a wooden ensemble churning through offensively exploitative plots. But couldn't agree with you more about the decline of the now-laughable CSI: Miami.) As for shows I changed my mind on, I'll name just a few, and I'm sure there are many more: NBC's The Office, which improved greatly once they stopped aping the original and began expanding the visibility of the ensemble at large; The X-Files, which took me a few episodes to realize wasn't going to be merely a UFO-of-the-week show; even Heroes to some extent, although I still find it woefully uneven and self-destructively unfocused. And then there are ongoing rollercoasters like Nip/Tuck, which as recently as last season convinced me to write positively about it again during the first few Hollywood episodes, reversing a long decline. And then shortly after my positive review ran, the show fell apart again. It happens.
