Comedy
Dead Boy Detectives
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
When Criminal Minds debuted in 2005, critics maligned CBS’ umpteenth procedural crime drama for its tired premise and clichéd, scandalous storylines. The best thing Newsday, as an example, found to say was, “The whole project feels salaciously sleazy, unless you’re enjoying the proceedings, in which case it’s juicily depraved.”
Viewers couldn’t have disagreed more. For most of its run, Criminal Minds has been a Top 10 regular, tangling toe-to-toe with other CBS heavyweights such as CSI and NCIS.
Those ratings took a dip during the coronavirus pandemic, causing the show to end in 2020. However, Paramount+ has decided to revive the show and continue the storyline with a 16th season, rebranded as Criminal Minds: Evolution.
Criminal Minds’ vast domain may be part of the reason for its success. It presents us with an elite team of FBI profilers formally known as the Behavioral Analysis Unit.
Attempting to anticipate a psycho-killer’s next move, each member applies unique expertise ranging from psychoanalysis to an understanding of sex offenders. This lets plots head into different territory with every episode. One week a case gets cracked by using math, another might focus on forensic science, still another indulges straight-up criminal psychology. It’s the Kellogg’s variety pack of modern crime dramas.
The series doesn’t ignore the private lives of its agents. Indeed, sometimes they can be considered criminals themselves for an episode or two. But the spotlight’s beam always illuminates the crimes themselves—or, more fairly, the criminals. And in delving so deeply into their minds, Criminal Minds creates more than just a few problems for itself.
Although investigators detest the pain inflicted by their suspects, audiences get hammered with a relentless stream of extremely dark, sometimes sadistic stories. Over the years we’ve seen a serial killer cage young women before raping and murdering them; a child abductor auctioning off a 6-year-old boy in an online pedophile ring; a bank robber forcing hostages to undress and simulate sex acts in front of everyone; a teenager on the verge of a mental breakdown fantasizing about hacking away at prostitutes while having sex with them; and a small-town elementary student hunting down his peers in a forest, then beating them to a pulp with a baseball bat.
CBS (and now Paramount+) tries to lighten things up with a steady dose of gallows humor and the wacky antics of tech analyst Penelope Garcia. But juxtaposing wisecracks against the horror here can feel disrespectful, bordering on lewd.
If Garcia’s zany personality is a bid to make Criminal Minds less grotesque, it succeeds only if the viewer has reached a certain level of desensitization. Just as Garcia would’ve had to experience a lot of horrific stuff to joke through it all, so a viewer would have to watch a lot to laugh. (And it should be noted that Garcia herself chose to walk away from the BAU for a while because she had grown weary of desensitizing herself to the macabre atmosphere.)
“The biggest public mistake I ever made was that I chose to do Criminal Minds in the first place,” one-time show star Mandy Patinkin told New York magazine. “I thought it was something very different. I never thought they were going to kill and rape all these women every night, every day, week after week, year after year. It was very destructive to my soul and my personality.”
It’s affected others too. In 2011, a 10-year-old boy killed his father, inspired in part by Criminal Minds. He says he saw a child kill his abusive father on the show and decided to do the same.
“He told the truth and wasn’t arrested and the cops believed him,” the boy was quoted as saying in the Associated Press. “He wasn’t in trouble or anything. I thought maybe the exact same thing would happen to me.”
Thankfully, few people who watch Criminal Minds are or will be so inspired. But that fortitude doesn’t mitigate the show’s purely puerile appeal. So we must agree with Patinkin:
“I’m not making a judgment on the taste [of people who watch crime procedurals]. But I’m concerned about the effect it has. Audiences all over the world use this programming as their bedtime story. This isn’t what you need to be dreaming about.”
Viewers returning to the series should also note that the network series’ previous TV-14 rating may no longer stand now that it’s streaming exclusively on Paramount+. The new season features more blood, harsher language (including uses of the f-word) and likely nastier plotlines.
In Washington, Tara Lewis investigates a bunker filled with the bodies of victims killed over a 15-year period. In Maryland, the rest of the BAU tracks down a killer going after families with teenage daughters.
We see lots of blood shed on screen. Two different murderers cut open their victims. We see the corpses of these and other victims later. And crime scene photos show even more gore. (We also hear brutal descriptions of what happened to these people.) We learn that a serial killer is providing “murder kits” of sorts to other would-be killers.
A man bears a scar from when he tried to take his own life. A girl holds a gun to her head after learning that her parents were murdered. (She is talked down by a member of the BAU.) We hear a young man took his own life.
People are kidnapped. We hear a young boy lost his parents to a drug overdose. He was shuffled through the foster system and spent time in juvie before becoming a kidnapper and murderer.
David Rossi, who lost his wife a year prior, takes out his grief on his coworkers. Penelope Garcia, after a disagreement with him, stands up for herself but sympathizes with him. She and other members of the team encourage him to find a healthier way to process his loss.
We hear two uses of the f-word as well as several uses of the s-word and “h—.” God’s name is also abused a few times.
A woman chants “namaste” to calm herself.
We see flashbacks of a husband and wife kissing at their wedding.
Spencer Reid, one of the team’s own, is arrested in Mexico for drug trafficking and murder. And while it’s obvious to Spencer’s FBI friends that he’s being framed, it isn’t so cut and dried for the Mexican authorities.
Spencer’s alleged murder victim, a female doctor, is found dead in a hotel room with, we’re told, more than 25 stab wounds. Her clothed torso is bloodied, and there are crimson stains on the hotel bed. (In flashback, we see the struggle and hear the victim’s screams.) Spencer bears a deep, bloody cut on one of his hands that periodically begins to bleed again, soaking through its bandages.
The car he was driving at the time of his arrest is packed with cocaine and heroin, and both drugs were found in his system. We later learn that he was buying alternative medicines for his mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s. Again in flashback, we see Spencer’s mother dump the drugs down the toilet, telling Spencer that she hates them and hates him, too, slapping him across the face.
The episode begins by quoting Ecclesiastes 7:20: “There is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.” A car’s tire is shot out. Another flashback shows Spencer forcibly injected with a drug. We hear that 60 holistic doctors died in 2015, and some conspiracy theorists believe they were victims of pharmaceutical companies. Emily Prentiss, a fellow agent, records a conversation with Spencer but lies about it to Mexican authorities. Characters say “a– ” once, “d–n” and “h—” twice each. We also hear about five misuses of God’s name.
A disturbed single mom is kidnapping men and keeping them chained up in a barn so she can eventually kill them, chop them up and use them as fertilizer. (She believes that she and her 10-year-old daughter have a disease that only healthy eating and the death of innocent men can cure.) We see the men chained and gagged, a feeding tube duct-taped to their faces. One man she kills and dumps, and the corpse is later discovered. Another she drags out into the field, raising her ax before the camera cuts away.
She buries her unconscious daughter neck-deep in the earth, cutting a man’s arm and letting the blood drain over her little girl. She kidnaps a pregnant woman and slices her open to steal her placenta. (We see her with the knife and hear the woman’s screams.) She consumes part of it and tries to get her daughter to eat the rest.
One victim throws up. (We hear the retching.) Agents find marijuana in one of the victims’ cabins. The killer uses a bevy of natural sedatives.
A former teacher, convicted of seducing a teenage student, is released from prison and searches for the baby she and the 16-year-old conceived together—killing many of the baby’s foster parents along the way. Then, once she finds the baby, she and her teenage lover run away together.
She shoots several people, including a gay couple. She forces a lady to take off her dress. (We see the terrified woman in her slip.) And when the victim begins to recite the Lord’s Prayer, her tormentor gets angry and shoots her several times. We see her lifeless body later, and we see other corpses or pictures of crime scenes, complete with blood and bullet wounds.
The teacher and teen kiss and run around a house half-naked. (He’s shirtless, she’s wearing lingerie under an open robe.) Another teen talks about knowing enough to have sex. And a couple of teens sneak out of the house, kiss and clutch in the grass. There’s a joke about sending around a nude photo.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
An elf mage contemplates on connection and regret as she watches her human friends grow old and pass away.
