Criminal Minds season 12: The highs and lows of Reid’s prison arc

One of the things that is so interesting about Reid’s prison arc on Criminal Minds season 12, and some of the reaction to it now, is how positive so many people were going into it. A serialized arc is something that is very new for the show, and not something that they ever tend to emphasize.

So with that said … what’s happened? Where did everything go wrong? Did it go wrong at all?

We contend that the idea of giving a character with Matthew Gray Gubler’s Spencer an arc is great. We even maintain that it’s very underrated as a concept. There are few emotional journeys out there quite like putting someone in jail and seeing them fight for their life and for their innocence. It’s a great idea, and there are some elements of it that this show has done an extremely good job at executing.

If there are two problems with Reid’s prison arc, we’d chalk them up to this for the time being.

1. The pacing – We’ve really seen things at times slow down to a crawl, and there hasn’t been as much, or as rapid of movement in prison as we expected. It doesn’t help that Reid’s story is somewhat isolated from everyone else.

2. The specific circumstance – Nobody wants to see Reid specifically in jail, just because it is such a difficult place for anyone to be, especially a character who is as beloved as him. We think that if he was undercover on a lengthy case, or that it was an arc that encompassed the majority of the cast on a near-regular basis, it’d probably be a little bit of a different scenario. As it is, though, we know that there are many people out there who don’t love him in this situation not being able to do what he loves best.

Even if you don’t love this story, we hope you do see the fact that Criminal Minds is doing this as a positive. They’re trying new things, and that’s not something that you see shows doing in their twelfth season. We would much rather see them take some risks and not have them all pay off as opposed to doing nothing and more or less staying the same.

You can get some additional news right now when it comes to Criminal Minds just by heading over to the link here right now. Stay tuned for more…

What do you think of Reid’s prison arc so far? Is the criticism in your mind justified? Share some of your thoughts with a comment below! (Photo: CBS.)