Let's Talk About Ashely Seaver Criminal Minds

I am a pretty big fan of Criminal Minds and anyone else who is as well probably knows about the online fan war of sorts to get JJ and Prentiss back on the team. The fans won and the new season has the status quo back.

But what about a new character that was introduced last season (6th) and won't be back at all? Ashely Seaver was a FBI cadet in training that came into the team to train but got a huge amount of backlash from the fan community. I was behind on the season at this point and didn't watch the 6th season until I already knew JJ and Prentiss would be back, so when I got to see this character everyone was bashing I already knew she wasn't going to "replace" JJ or Prentiss so I got to see her on her own merits.

So the big question is did Seaver deserve all the hate she got?

The largest concern I heard was she looked like a younger clone of JJ. An obvious attempt to replace her. The same could be said of Prentiss when Greenaway left the show, but where Prentiss was able to make a name for herself and stand above the fact she replaced a character/team mate Seaver unfortunately reminded me a bit to much of cheesy fanfics featuring original characters joining the BAU.

First she is in training when she consults with the team. Besides her "unique" background she didn't bring much to the team. Under different circumstances I might have bought the "young cadet" angle. A new agent that doesn't understand really what the team does and is green around the edges could be a source of conflict within the team especially if it was Strauss or someone else high up essentially trying to "replace" the current team with younger (cheaper) agents and thought profiling is as simple as checking things off a list. Imagine the personal conflict with taking an optimistic trainie and a downward spiral when they find out what people are really capable of and if they couldn't handle it. Not to mention the guilt the team might have if it ended up ruining the new character. (This would only work if the cadet was never supposed to be a pernament part of the team) Unfortunately the whole "young agent" angle seems to try and make the show "hipper" and have the main cast explain things to her. It seems almost like an audience surrogate, and since she is so new and young we are supposed to wish we were her or something.

There is also the issue of her appearence. Even if they wanted to go with a blonde actress my suggestion would be to give her short hair. All the women on the team have long hair aready so it would have made a nice visual change in pace and perhaps set her apart since it would make sense if the team was a little hostle to her for "replacing" JJ. It might have even been better to get an actress with a different hair color, the fans might have still been upset with JJ leaving but at least then it isn't so obvious.

Truth was even just trying to watch her character knowing JJ would be coming back didn't work. The character left me kinda cold. I wasn't outraged like some fans, but her character really wasn't as good as it could have been.  The reason Seaver was brought on was because her father was a serial killer, and that was supposed to give her a unique view on things. My issue with this backstory isn't so much what it was, but how it was presented. We find out immediately what Seaver's backstory is and so does the rest of the team. There is no tension or drama, it just is. Which I think really cheapens what could have been done with the character. It is an interesting angle for a new character for the BAU to be the son or daughter of a notorious serial killer but Seaver seems to be walking around proclaiming what her past is. It almost seems like the character is bragging it is brought up so often. You would think a character with that past would want to hide it more, and may have joined the FBI more out of a sense of guilt then any real desire to protect people. That at least would have been a little more interesting then what we got.

I also wasn't too pleased with the way the character was played, though if it was a director or actor decision I don't know. I think they were going for a wounded kind of personality, but what came out was more of the teen-ish "no one understands me I'm so sad." Where she just seemed so toned down that it seemed like she was bored. The actress just seemed uable to play this, "tough and competent character that has a wounded past." Hell every other character on the team plays that angle better. Since if you think about it every single member of the team (excluding maybe JJ) has been through something pretty sad/bad that drives them forward. Seaver seems to wallow in her past.

So maybe the outright level of hate was a bit much, but I'm not sad to see Seaver leave. I'm more sad for potential characters or plotlines that had to die to shoe horn her in.

Wouldn't it be better if it was a male FBI agent that had a serial killer father. The show has shown that at times that father passes on some of these traits to their sons. So this particular FBI agent probably would be really sensitive about who his father was, probably tired of getting judged because he is that mans son, and it might have been assumed by some that he would be exactly like his father. Of course that couldn't be revealed all at once in the same episode, since that would kill possible tension. Which is, what they did with Seaver.