TV: Whatever happened to Criminal Minds?

Freddie premiered last night, the last official new show of the Fall season. There are a couple others originally lined up for a Fall debut that have been pushed back to January (The Loop and What About Brian) and one that has yet to be scheduled anywhere (Heather Graham's Emily's Reasons Why Not), which could mean it's being held back as a mid-season replacement, or which could mean that it will never see the light of day. I'm hoping the latter, but then, I'm mean.

So that leaves three shows on my TiVo I have yet to review: Freddie, Related, and Surface, which I keep putting off because I watched the first fifteen minutes of it about a week ago, and I was not impressed, and I have yet to feel like watching the rest of it.

And I must confess, there's a fourth show I promised to review which is not on my TiVo, and which I'm not going to bother with at all. That would be Criminal Minds, yet another police procedural on CBS, this one starring Mandy Patinkin. I missed it when it debuted because it was up against Lost and Veronica Mars (which is enough of a scheduling SNAFU already). UPN is rerunning Veronica on the weekends, so I knew I could skip it on Wednesday and catch Criminal Minds in its place. But here is what I said to that idea: "I don't wanna."

Yes, I made the conscious choice to blow off Criminal Minds and record Veronica Mars on its proper night instead. So sue me! Even though I generally like Mandy Patinkin (and really liked him on his excellent previous show, Dead Like Me, which Showtime cancelled, because they're idiots), I just could not handle one more generic crime show. I knew I would watch it once and never again, due both to what it was, and to its lousy placement on the schedule, and I decided to give myself a pass.

So out of thirty new shows I expected to be reviewing when this whole thing started, it's only going to be twenty-six instead. I still say that's pretty damn good.

It's my poker night tonight, so I don't know if I'll get to one of those three reviews I still owe or not. But they'll all be done before Monday, I guarantee. And then I can finally get back to my life! And, uh, watch a bunch of other TV.