If several flagship series will say goodbye this year, on Netflix in particular, cult fictions are celebrating important anniversaries in 2025. This is the case of Grey’s Anatomy, Supernatural, Medium, Prison Breakwho is also preparing his return, Bonesor even How I Met Your Mother (yes, yes!). But also Criminal mindsof which this character is a tribute to a real police officer. So what did it look like Criminal minds for its very first episode, broadcast on September 22, 2005 on CBS? To be clear about it, Tele-Leisure decided to rewatch it, the series being available in full on Disney+. If it gave us a big look of age, especially in terms of technology, this pilot‘Criminal minds was above all an opportunity to realize how much the casting of the series had changed over the years.
The first episode ofCriminal minds presents the different personalities of the characters
Like most episodes ofCriminal mindsthis pilot opens with a kidnapping, before turning to the agents. The first we meet is Aaron Hotchner (Thomas Gibson), setting up a cradle and looking with his wife for a name for their unborn baby. Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore) then appears, already looking classy in his suit, drinking in a bar with some interns. Then zoom in on Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin) giving a lesson, before being interrupted by Doctor Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler), the “genius” who works with him. It is gradually revealed that Gideon was on sick leave after an incident in Boston six months earlier, where he arrested a serial killer in an operation that cost the lives of six officers. At 25 minutes, finally, appearance of Penelope Garcia, much less “flashy” than the one we will learn to know and love later.
The case developed in this first episode sets the tone for what the series will be: tortuous investigations, always very clever, which multiply the leads and twists and turns and put the viewer in the position of the profiler, trying to guess who is the guilty. While highlighting the different personalities of the agents, which are already emerging in this pilot. The recurring elements ofCriminal minds are already there, like the quotes (when Gideon quotes Becket, Derek responds with a quote from Yoda from Star Wars…) or the plane in which the heroes find a well-deserved rest.
Criminal minds : Jennifer Jarreau (JJ) does not appear in the pilot of the series
This first episode ofCriminal minds concludes with a surprising ending. Just when we thought we were done with the suspense, the case having been resolved, the series offers us a twist. While putting gas in his car, in the middle of nowhere, Gideon understands that the gas station cashier is none other than the “Highway Bandit”, a serial killer whose profile he established for the police a year earlier. A chilling encounter, the killer pointing at him with a rifle, which he will tell to students at the start of episode 2, in which we also learn that Elle Greenway, a specialist in sex crimes who helped them in the first episode , joined the team and where we meet JJ
Criminal minds : we had totally forgotten about Elle Greenaway, played by Lola Glaudini
And if this pilot episode of the American series made us feel quite old, with computers that look like dinosaurs, discman and fax machines, it is the characters who surprised us the most. Indeed, the liaison agent Jennifer Jareau, played by AJ Cook, does not appear in this first episode ofCriminal minds. She only joined the series from episode 2, never to leave it afterwards! Even more surprising, we had completely forgotten the character of Elle Greenaway (or Ellie in the French version). Played by Lola Glaudini (later reviewed in The Expanse et Ray Donovan), She was nevertheless one of the main characters of the team ofCriminal minds, from the first episode until episode 6 of season 2. She will be replaced from episode 9 by Emily Prentiss, played by Paget Brewster. In fifteen seasons (for the original series), Criminal minds experienced a waltz of the actors, quite normal in the end for such a long fiction, as was also the case for NCIS for example, which also lost a first female heroine after two seasons.
Criminal minds : a series that disgusted its main actor
This first episode is not that different from what we remember. It recalls the quality of this procedural police series, although very dark. So dark that it was the reason for the departure of Mandy Patinkin, the interpreter of Gideon, at the end of season 2. “The worst public mistake of my life was to choose Criminal Minds, said the actor in an interview with New York Magazine. I thought it would be something very different. I never thought they would kill and rape all these women every evening, every night, week after week, year after year. It was very destructive to my soul and my personality.”
