Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders – Series Premiere Review

Taking the hunt overseas.

CBS didn’t find much success last time they tried to launch a spinoff of the wildly popular Criminal Minds, even with Forrest Whitaker lending some A-List credibility. That’s not stopping the network from trying again with Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior. This new series builds on the backdoor pilot that aired as part of Criminal Minds’ 10th season. The franchise’s basic procedural formula is still firmly in twist, but with the wrinkle that this particular FBI unit specializes in crimes committed against American citizens abroad. This is very much another straightforward crowd-pleaser of a procedural drama, albeit one with some weird undertones.

The majority of the cast featured in that backdoor pilot return for the new series. Gary Sinise makes his return to the realm of procedural crime drama as he plays Special Agent Jack Garrett, an accomplished leader only slightly less generic than his name would suggest. His team includes Special Operations Agent Matt Simmons (X-Men Origins: Wolverine’s Daniel Henney) as the obligatory handsome muscle, Medical Examiner Mae Davis (The Intern’s Annie Funke) and Technical Analyst Russ “Monty” Montgomery (Everybody Hates Chris’ Tyler James Williams). The big change is that Anna Gunn’s character has quietly vanished. In her place is Clara Seger (Law & Order’s Alana de la Garza), a worldly cultural anthropologist with a knack for languages and a tragic past. The team’s first mission brings them to Thailand as they track down two college girls kidnapped by a local psychotic.

Let’s cut right to the chase. Beyond Borders is almost aggressively generic in how it deploys the usual procedural tropes and builds on the familiar Criminals Minds formula. A crime is committed, the team assembles, Sinise’s monologue delivers a thematically appropriate proverb and then the characters go about their business of making implausibly rapid deductions about their “unsub” (unknown suspect). At one point Sinise’s character helpfully reminds his colleagues that serial killers often start out by murdering animals, which shows you the extent to which this show is willing to plumb the cavernous depths of criminal psychology.

Apart from Seger, little attempt is made to flesh out these characters or give them more than the barest hint of a personality. And even in Seger’s case, most of that development occurs in the form of a few exposition-heavy conversations between her and Garrett. Sinise and Williams both feel especially wasted in their roles, with the latter doing little more than consoling worried parents and making phone calls to the rest of the team. The lone bright spot is the charming rapport between Simmons and Davis, who function much better as a duo than as individual characters.

International unsubs beware.

At the very least, one would think that the international angle would help bring a little flavor and variety to the show. But that approach creates its own problems, as well. For one thing, it’s often painfully apparent that the show isn’t actually being filmed abroad. The city of Bangkok is depicted mainly through generic stock footage, with the actors themselves spending their time standing against green screens or occupying small, closed sets alongside extras who speak remarkably clear English.

The show also seems a bit at odds with itself in terms of its premise. It wants to continue the usual formula of a crack team hunting down criminal masterminds lurking beneath the surface of polite society but also focus on a team aiding American tourists in distress. Are we really to believe that every single mission this team deals with involves a serial killer targeting innocent Americans? If serial killers were even remotely as plentiful in real life as they are on TV, humanity would be extinct by now.

A deeper issue is the fact that there’s something undeniably xenophobic about the execution of Beyond Borders. The show trades on a real, tangible fear many Americans have about travelling abroad, falling victim to some horrible crime and being stranded thousands of miles from home. It’s not unlike how CSI: Cyber targeted elderly viewers and preyed on their mistrust/ignorance of the Internet. That’s not to say the show shouldn’t be allowed to explore the dangers of international travel, but there has to be some balance in how other countries and cultures are portrayed. This episode doesn’t cast Thai culture in a very positive light, with the only insights being that it rains a lot and that women aren’t treated with very much respect. Meanwhile, the unsub of the week is a comically bad caricature. This episode is basically the story of a group of heroic Americans swooping in to rescue other Americans because the foreign police are apparently too disinterested or incompetent to do their job at even the most basic level. Is that going to be the theme of the show every week?

If Beyond Borders were just another standard, by-the-books procedural, that would be one thing. CBS has plenty of them, and obviously they resonate with a great number of viewers. But in a time when even certain Presidential candidates are stoking the fires of racism and xenophobia, it’s disheartening to see this show take such a clunky and overly simplistic view of the wider world. Beyond Borders is too straightforward and innocent to actually be offensive, but that doesn’t give the show a free pass for not aiming a little higher.