We’re almost at the finish line, hurrah! tvN’s upcoming Criminal Minds is set to premiere in less than a week, and they’ve released a highlight teaser that gives us an extended look into the crime thriller.
The teaser starts with a relevant but terrifying quote from poet W. H. Auden: “Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.” Sohn Hyun-joo (Three Days) says that their job is to look for monsters who have lost their humanity, as we see flashes of those same monsters with their victims. Moon Chae-won (Goodbye Mr. Black) and Lee Sun-bin (Missing 9) report to Kim Young-chul (Father Is Strange), the director of the NCI profiling branch, who muses whether team leader Kang (Sohn Hyun-joo’s character) could have handled a case better.
Team Leader Kang, however, is haunted by traumatic memories of a profile gone wrong, which resulted in multiple deaths. This incident is also why Lee Jun-ki (Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo) is scornful of criminal profiling, and is more of a fists-first kind of guy. I really liked it when a certain case became a personally significant one for the BAU agents in the U.S. show, as it allowed for some welcome character development, and it looks like NCI agent Moon Chae-won also has her own demons regarding an old case.
I also really appreciated the light, comedic moments between our profiler team members, and I’m super happy to see that Yoo Sun (Our Gap-soon) is going for Penelope’s quirky clothing style and very vocal appreciation of Lee Jun-ki’s looks, lol. I can’t wait until their characters hit it off like Garcia and Morgan. Also, I totally giggled at Go Yoon’s (Monster) very Spencer-like interruption to correct Nana’s ramblings with useless, unwanted scientific trivia.
Oh wow, so I guess they’re also going to transplant certain villains from the original series, and they certainly chose a memorable one if they’re going to recreate the Reaper. Now that explains Park Geun-hyung’s (Because I Love You) character, of which there were some conflicting reports early on. If I remember the American series correctly, he’ll play a retired detective who worked with Team Leader Kang on the Reaper case. Man, I got chills seeing the Reaper with Kang’s son; this show hasn’t even started yet, and it’s already stressing me out. And then I got chills for another reason entirely when Team Leader Kang references the Talmud quote, “When we save a life, we save the entire world.” Eugh, Sohn Hyun-joo does gravitas so well.
Just by looking at this trailer, tvN is definitely going for an epic, grand-scale action thriller, and I’m really hoping it doesn’t fall flat once it starts airing. There’s so much good source material to be mined (12 seasons of it, in fact) that I want them to succeed and be able to carry on for multiple seasons as they originally planned. I’m also quite excited to see the various guest appearances in the individual cases, and it was fun to spot familiar faces here and there in the teaser.
Criminal Minds is gearing up to premiere on July 26 in tvN’s new Wednesday-Thursday slot. Is it morbid that I can’t wait for a show about murders and serial killers?
