2025 marks the 20th anniversary of Criminal Minds’ debut on television, which is an impressive milestone for any ongoing series. A series with that kind of longevity is objectively a successful one, and those involved usually speak of such things with pride. However, the actor around whom the FBI profiling procedural was built doesn’t see it that way. Beloved actor Mandy Patinkin calls playing Jason Gideon on Criminal Minds one of the most significant mistakes he made in his acting career.
When a series endures like Criminal Minds (now called Criminal Minds: Evolution on Paramount+), it’s because the viewers appreciate and support the show. The cast of profilers isn’t done yet, as production is underway for Criminal Minds Season 18. Still, all this evidence that Criminal Minds is appreciated by audiences hasn’t softened Patinkin’s stance on his two seasons in the cast. He played Jason Gideon, the superstar profiler and founder of the BAU, until he abruptly left the show in the second episode of its third season. While The Princess Bride star has gone on to appear in a number of venerated productions, he does not look back fondly on his time as Gideon.
Who Was Jason Gideon on Criminal Minds?
Jason Gideon Co-founded the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit
Despite only appearing in 46 of Criminal Minds’ 345 total episodes, Jason Gideon left a major impact on the show. While FBI profiling is a dubious (at best) field of criminology, Gideon was the character who truly made it seem like a superpower. A student of a man named Max Ryan, Gideon was one of the founders of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. Despite his regrets, Patinkin played the character as a compassionate investigator who believed justice did not always come from the barrel of a gun.
After his departure, both Joe Mantegna’s David Rossi and Felicity Huffman’s Doctor Jill Gideon — Jason’s ex-wife and mother of his son — were retconned in as co-founders of the unit. Ironically, Patinkin’s Gideon never shared a scene with either character. Instead, his closest relationship in Criminal Minds was with Matthew Gray Gubler’s Spencer Reid. After a case goes horribly wrong in the Season 3 premiere, it’s Reid who travels to Gideon’s cabin discovering his resignation letter.
He ultimately bailed on the unit and disappeared from the characters’ lives. Still, Gideon was the BAU’s star profiler who is spoken of with reverence by characters even in Criminal Minds Season 17. While Patinkin may think of his time on the series as a mistake, the show treats Jason Gideon with love and respect. Stories that involved Gideon, such as Criminal Minds’ Season 1 finale, resonated through successive episodes for years. Patinkin may want nothing further to do with the series, but the show has never forgotten the contribution he made through the character he helped create.
Why Mandy Patinkin Regrets Appearing on Criminal Minds
Mandy Patinkin Took Issue With Criminals Minds’ Misogynistic Use of Violence
The surprise exit of Jason Gideon at the top of Season 3 shocked fans, many of whom expected the character to one day return. At first, the reason Mandy Patinkin left Criminal Minds was attributed to the catch-all Hollywood reason: “creative differences.” While this is not exactly inaccurate, it perhaps downplays the severity of those disagreements. Both before and after playing Gideon, Patinkin played characters who were closely involved with tragic deaths. Right before the series, he played Rube on Dead Like Me, a show about grim reapers who had to collect the souls of people violently killed. After leaving the series, he played Saul Berenson on Homeland, which focused on the violence of war and terrorism.
The biggest public mistake I ever made was that I chose to do Criminal Minds in the first place
For Patinkin, his objection to Criminal Minds was about the specific kind of violence the show portrayed. He spoke about it most frankly in a 2012 interview with New York Magazine.”I never thought [the show’s writers] were going to kill and rape all these women… week after week, year after year. It was very destructive to my soul and my personality. After that, I didn’t think I would get to work in television again,” Patinkin said. While fans may love the disturbing episodes of Criminal Minds, Patinkin couldn’t continue to play Jason Gideon.
In a separate interview, Patinkin explained why he took the role: the financial stability of being a network series regular. “I was brought up to worry about [money], even if you don’t have to,” he told Thane Rosenbaum at the 92nd Street Y. Explaining his acting process, Patinkin said he doesn’t “believe” the material on the page, instead “infus[ing his] own reality under” the performance. Calling his Criminal Minds plots “misogynistic,” he said he “had to go mentally” to a place “beyond darkness.” Patinkin admits “I’m glad I got the money… but I’m not proud of it.”
Is Mandy Patinkin Right About His Criticism of the Series?
The Pros and Cons of Murder Procedurals Like Criminal Minds
For as long as human beings have told each other stories, they’ve been a vehicle to examine fear. Criminal Minds is, at times, a horror show. However, the appeal of any procedural series comes from watching heroes solve a high-stakes problem in under an hour’s time. When those heroes are law enforcement, the show can also allow viewers to pretend the criminal justice system works as efficiently as it’s supposed to. Real-world institutions and the people who run them can often let people down, but fictional characters never can. To fans of the series, Jason Gideon was one such hero, in large part because of Patinkin’s performance choices.
After 345 of those hours, asking what a series like this actually accomplishes is a fair question. In Season 17 of Criminal Minds: Evolution, “Piranha” is a cleverly crafted episode. However, the story itself is so disturbing and depressing, even diehard fans may question if the show doesn’t go too far in the name of raising the stakes and surprising the audience. At some point, telling these kind of stories goes beyond the examination of violence and fear, and instead comes off as a celebration of it. Such decisions, of course, are left to each individual viewer, as no one is forced to watch Criminal Minds.
With “Piranha,” the storytellers were thinking about the characters first. “It’s a victory because we’ve caught him,” showrunner Erica Messer told CBR, “but it all feels…like a loss, and we don’t have that often.” Mandy Patinkin’s criticism of Criminal Minds comes from the perspective of a person who had to bring those characters to life. At the 92nd Street Y, he clarified fans aren’t “wrong” for loving the show. Rather, his decision to leave Criminal Minds was about what he had to do in order to bring Jason Gideon to life. “I needed to leave,” Patinkin continued, “to save my life.”
What Happened to Jason Gideon in the Criminal Minds’ Narrative?
After Departing in Criminal Deaths Season 1, His Death Was Confirmed in Season 10
Mandy Patinkin’s last scene as a part of the Criminal Minds cast seems almost to be a reflection of the actor’s need to leave. Gideon is seen driving off to parts unknown in search of a kind of happiness he couldn’t find in the BAU. However, that’s not the last time the character appeared in the show. Ben Savage played Gideon in both flashbacks and in Criminal Minds’ (original) final season as a vision seen by David Rossi. A few years after Patinkin shared his feelings about Criminal Minds, Messer and her writers killed off the character.
Patinkin, of course, didn’t return for Season 10’s “Nelson’s Sparrow,” so the murder happened off-screen. During a later scene in the morgue, the coroner mentions she left the body “covered, out of respect” as an excuse to not show his face. The episode was actually a celebration of the series. Killing Gideon actually kept the character alive in the series, as it gave characters a germane way to talk about him. Despite Patinkin’s critique of Criminal Minds, there appears to be no bad blood. They could’ve diminished Gideon’s role in the BAU’s history in favor of Rossi or other characters. Instead, they take every chance they get to talk about how important he was to them.
Still, Gideon’s death was one of Criminal Minds’ saddest. Most stories, especially long-running ones, need character deaths to maintain a sense of stakes. Since Mandy Patinkin left, the series has experienced a lot of cast turnover for myriad reasons. Yet, no character remains as relevant to the series and its characters as Jason Gideon. The character Patinkin brought to life is held up as the gold standard of who the series’ heroes can be. The actor’s personal feelings aside, that kind of legacy is nothing to be embarrassed about.
The full Criminal Minds series is streaming on Paramount+, and Criminal Minds: Evolution Season 3 is in production.