Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders

Well, I just read all the previous reviews and It seems that I agree with the vast majority of them.

It is actually preposterous that anybody would believe that any country in the world would actually give up on their own police forces and justice systems so that the FBI could come in and take over and show the world how to do it.

I have watched all of the episodes and I think that each one becomes more ludicrous than the last. The latest episode set in Singapore nearly takes the cake, this is a country with an unbelievably stringent the legal system and one of the lowest amounts of major criminal activity in the world, yet we are expected to believe that more murders are committed in a 24 hour period than in the previous 6 months. The the condescending attitude of these awesome Americans to locals in countries around the world goes more to how Americans are perceived than anything else. Why would the medical examiner just accept that the American medical person on this team would be better than her, why does the inspector does not accept that he could find the perpetrator, how the hell does Alana De La Graza know every single language in the world and every single local custom but is caught working for a pathetic team in the FBI. It is so implausible that I spend half of each episode laughing my head off.

Don't even get me started on the acting (or lack thereof), I really enjoy the original Criminal minds but this is an insult to its legacy.

All this does is reinforce the fact that the American TV Industry thinks that every other country in the world is third world and even in that they are not consistent. Let's portray every other country as backward but meanwhile we can access the greatest WiFi connections that exist with no buffering no matter where they are, and we can also access every single piece of communication in every country and the blueprints of every single building ever build. The more you think about it the more you realize how much rubbish it really is.

When I saw the title of the show I got very interested, but after three episodes I have to say it is a huge disappointment and a totally missed opportunity. As someone with international background and loved the original CM series, this show unfortunately demonstrates a very simplified, distorted, American-centric view of the world. The plots are OK so far. But the offensive, one-sided plots/comments about other countries/cultures keep jumping out, making me want to turn off the TV immediately. Ep2(India) is slightly better than the others, but after watching ep3 (Egypt) I just decided it is time for me to stop watching the show.

Seriously, who on earth believes that some pseudo-"qualified" Americans need to fly into a country to "fix" things and resolve a crime? And who wrote this script that has Alana De La Garza spouting local so called legend wherever she lands? It is painfully bad viewing.She has zero depth and I want to do to her what the perp did to the victim in episode 5. I'm kinda serious. She has no acting chops but she flips from country to country and we are expected to believe she knows all the local languages, habits, and so on, and she is no one with no background and doesn't have the strength of character to carry off such a task. Give me a break. She is so puffed up and secure in her so called knowledge of the area and country. And yeah, who believes that this crowd rolls into a country in their private plane all equipped with vehicles and weaponry? What rubbish.

I was quite excited to see a new CM spin-off after 'Suspect Behavior' was unfairly cancelled, but after watching 3 episodes I think I'll only be watching in future because it's SO bad! The cast seem to be doing their best with the material provided, and it's nice to see them include another actress who isn't stick-thin (although I have my doubts about her supposed assault course abilities), but for a show whose main premise involves foreign countries it seems to be doing a fair job of p*****g them off. Here we have the FBI sweep in to save 'innocent Americans' from the incompetent, funny-speaking foreigners (never just Americans, always 'innocent Americans') and yet still taking time to point out the cultural stereotypes. For example, in episode 2 set in Mumbai, presumably we're supposed to be impressed that one of the amazing FBI agents can name the most famous Indian cricketer who has ever lived (Sachin Tendulkar) - and yet the producers couldn't even take the time to find an old video clip of India actually playing cricket ('no one watches cricket except the Brits, Aussies, Indians, Pakistanis, Jamaicans, Kiwis, Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis etc so they won't notice if we use England vs the West Indies') - if only there were resources where you could research this sort of stuff?! And we're told at the start of the episode that it's considered to rude to refuse an offer of hospitality - and yet at the end of the same episode Gary Sinise's character (I can't even be bothered to remember his name) refuses an invitation to a wedding! Maybe the average viewer now has such a short attention span that the producers assume we won't remember something from 30 minutes previously? Maybe it's this bad on purpose just so we keep watching for the patronising cultural clangers?? Can't wait for them to visit the UK so I can see the FBI pointing out that by law you have to drink 10 cups of tea per day and speak like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins . . .

Even given the xenophobia of the show, I'm surprised that their first four episodes took place in countries that use the British right hand side driving system (Thailand, India, Egypt and Japan) but the local cars in the show have the steering wheel on the left ALF (Aft Looking Forward). Most prominent was the old BMW in Cairo and the plot point that showed a clue on the 'passenger's seat' which was on the right rather than the left. This adds to the feeling that the show's producers' mission is to denigrate foreign cultures and peoples. This lack of attention to detail adds to the lack of sensitivity to foreign cultures that seem to be a hallmark of the show. As an American who has lived in Iran, Jordan, Germany, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia, I'm surprised with the world wide audience nature of TV these days that more attention wasn't paid to these details.