About Michael Edwards
Location: Dallas, Texas
Occupation: Knife Sharpener
Bio: I was born in 1518, in the village of Glenfinnan, on the shores of Loch Shiel...and I am Immortal. (cough…cough) (You know, writing a silly origin like this makes me think of the time I was at a Star Trek Convention and saw a balding, overweight guy in a Starfleet Uniform on a stage say, “Hello, I am Captain Hochsteader from the USS Klondike.” I wanted so badly to say, “Noooo, you’re Melvin Goldfarb, Accountant from Plano.”)
Favorite movie: Hmmmm... It's a toss up between Schindler's List and Cabin Boy. (Kinda makes you wonder about my ability to review DVD’s don’t it?). Actually, if I use the criteria I used above of “never get tired of watching…etc…”: The Road Warrior, The World According to Garp, Creator, Terminator 2, Somewhere in Time (If I wanna get reaaallly weepy)
Greatest video game accomplishment: Buying and beating the first ever home PONG game. Haven’t really played much else… Well, there was the time I died on the first level of MediEvil. Or the time I died at the beginning of Resident Evil. Of, course my favorite was dying while playing Tetris.
If you could have any one superpower, what would it be?: The power of Super Speed. There just never seems to be enough time to do everything I want to get done. And I can never get anywhere fast enough. (However, this would have to be combined with certain degrees of Super Agility and Invulnerability so as not to have to wear Band-aid Brand Nuclear Knee-Pads.)
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Mandy Patinkin has always been an enigma to me. The man is incredibly multi-talented, yet full fledged across the board stardom has always seemed just out of reach. Perhaps he’s too well-rounded. Most big stars only have one talent (or a very well paid publicist) so the focus hits them dead on for doing the same thing over and over. Patinkin, on the other hand, has over his illustrious career entertained Broadway audiences with his phenomenal singing style and theatre audiences with his skills as a dramatic, comedic and physical actor.
Though he has been in the business for far longer, my first memory of Many Patinkin was as expert swordsman Indigo Montoya in The Princess Bride. While every character in that film had their opportunity to shine, it was Montoya that most people fondly remember. After that I saw his name pop up a few times in movies, but it wasn’t until a PBS airing of Sunday in the Park with George that I found what a gifted singer he was. After that I made it a point to pick up his Broadway inspired CDs (who along with Anthony Warlow produce some of the some of the best I’ve ever heard, by the way), none of which have ever disappointed me.
Then all of a sudden he seemed to drop out of sight for a lengthy period of time, an analogy that is rather fitting as he was suffering from a debilitating eye disease and it was feared he would lose his sight. Slowly he began to creep back into the limelight, first with Showtime’s excellent series Dead Like Me as Rube, the foul-mouthed, foul-tempered, yet sympathetic head of a group of Grim Reapers. Unfortunately that series was cancelled after the 2nd season (stupid Showtime), but he bounced back as the lead in the new CBS series Criminal Minds.
Criminal Minds gives us a lean, mean Mandy Patinkin as Jason Gideon, an FBI criminal profiler. He heads an elite team of profilers who each week find themselves pitted against murders, kidnappers, and the like. The series was surprising in just how rough it was willing to get as far as the crimes that were being. It was brutal in the way that CSI is, only without all the flash and glitter. Murder is an ugly business, and it gets pretty ugly in this series. I was also surprised to see Thomas Gibson cast as his second in command Aaron Hotchner. I was so used to seeing him in a comedic role with Dharma & Greg. Here he stretches his dramatic chops and holds his own against Patinkin.
The rest of the team is made up of Derek Morgan (played by Shemar Moore - who is still trying to shed his Young and the Restless image), Spencer Reid (Matthew Grey Gubler), Ellen Greenaway (Lola Glaudini), J.J. Jareau (A.J. Cook) and Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness). Though at first the series seems to focus mainly on the three leads (Patinkin, Gibson and Gubler), over the course of the show’s first season each character begins to come more to the forefront.
My wife and I were glued to the TV for about three days when we received the DVD set for the first season last year. The stories were often shocking if not depraved but we enjoyed seeing the criminals getting their comeuppance… at least the times that they do. Of course, the end of season one hit us with a cliffhanger, and we opted to start watching the series regularly. After all, the final scene had the screen go to black as shots were fired. It was possible that one of our beloved characters was dead. But we just enjoy these DVDs so much that we summoned up the willpower and waited.
Last week the wait ended and again wild horses couldn’t pull us away from the set. We learned the fate of the character, which I will not give away here… suffice to say a new character (Paget Brewster as Emily Prentiss) is introduced later in the season. This new season completely blew away the first season. The show got even tighter and the stories even darker. There were episodes that I actually found hard to watch, especially when they involved the death of children. I know it’s a TV show, but I have a really hard time with that subject. We are also introduced to the ‘one that got away’, Gideon’s arch-enemy as it were, who is far more insane that any TV psychotic in recent memory.
I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention the 2-part episode ("The Big Game”, Revelations"), which starred James Van Der Beek as a religious zealot looking to rid the world of sinners. I’m so used to seeing his squeaky clean image in “Dawsons Creek” (not that I ever watched it regularly) that I never knew he had it in him to play something deeper. Here he comes across as not only deranged, but downright scary.
The DVD set for the second season of Criminal Minds offers up all 23 episodes. As is the case for most newer shows released to DVD, the video looks fantastic. The transfer is excellent and the Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound makes good use of a home surround system.
As for extra features, you’ll find four commentaries (listed below) by various members of the creative team, all of which were quite fun and interesting to listen to. There is a featurette on the episode “Profiler, Profiled” (where Morgan is accused of being a serial killer) and another that allows most of the cast and crew to chime in with their take on the directions the second season took. In Behavioral Science: Real Life Criminal Minds, we meet the researchers for the series whose job it is to make everything as real as possible. This was a great feature. Additionally there’s a profile on actress Kirten Vangness, who started out with a very small part in the first season but has been given the chance to grow. Finally we have a gag reel (that was WAY too short) and a couple of deleted scenes.
So now we’re ready for the long wait until the DVD for the third season comes out (next year). As much as we love the show we are having reservations though as the news surfaced a few weeks ago that Patinkin was leaving the series. I had hoped that the news would change, but it didn’t. Stepping in is actor Joe Montegna, who I think is a fine actor. I just can’t imagine the series without Patinkin, but I guess time will tell.
“Criminal Minds” is still one of the better of newer ‘cop’ shows and those of you who didn’t catch the first two seasons on their original run won’t be disappointed by these sets, especially the lack of commercials!!
Episodes:
The Fisher King, Part 2 (Commentary by Edward Allen Bernero and Amanda Bernero)
P911
The Perfect Storm (Commentary by Erica Messier, Debra J. Fisher, and Nicki Aycox)
Psychodrama
Aftermath
The Boogeyman
North Mammon
Empty Planet
The Last Word
Lessons Learned
Sex, Birth, Death
Profiler, Profiled (Commentary by Edward Allen Bernero, Shemar Moore, and Glenn Kershaw)
No Way Out, Part 1
The Big Game
Revelations (Commentary by Chris Mundy and Matthew Gray Gubler)
Fear and Loathing
Distress
Jones
Ashes to Dust
Honor Among Thieves
Open Season
Legacy
No Way Out, Part 2: The Evilution of Frank
