Investigation and Debriefing question

NateSean · Apr 16, 2014

I was watching an episode of Criminal Minds the other day and something occurred to me.

Hypothetically you have roughly five people who are all experts on serial killers. Although they have a range of talents and experiences, none of the members of this team ever seem to have any information that the other four don't have.

Yet in a show like Criminal Minds, all five of those players will be at the "debriefing" scene where they're informing a room full of detectives about the serial killer they're after.

Character 1: The killer does this, this, this and that. *Pause*

Character 2: Purple is probably the killer's favorite color because of X. *Pause*

Character 3: The killer will look like this. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Etcetera. Judging from the looks on the rest of the "Team" none of this information is news to them. So my question is this.

Why don't they just have one person filling in the detectives while the other four put that knowledge to use? They already have one woman back at headquarters mining data for information about the killer, so it's not like everyone has to be present for the debriefing.

Do investigations normally go like this or is it just a TV gimmick?

MarkEsq · Apr 16, 2014

TV gimmick. Those scene where they "present the profile" is not for passing on the info to the assembled cops, it's to pass it on to the viewer. So you can see how smart they are.

In real life cases, the "profile" continues to be developed and changed as the investigation goes on and new info comes in.

frimble3 · Apr 16, 2014

So you can see how smart they are, and, so all the actors get credit for speaking roles, I imagine. It must be hard to keep good actors if you can only offer them a few lines every couple of episodes, and the rest of the time they're just miming 'research'.

Melville · Apr 16, 2014

It's television, not reality. Not even close. And, specifically, it's an ensemble drama. That's why they give the profile as a group. It's also why the profilers have a private jet (FBI agents usually work in pairs and fly commercial coach) as jet time allows for another ensemble scene.

CSI, likewise, bears little resemblance to reality other than some of the lab science. Real CSIs stay exclusively in the field. They hand off what they've gathered to the lab folks and then return to the field. Real Las Vegas CSIs spend 75% of their time in their vehicles traveling from one scene to another.

These shows are enough like reality to be interesting but never at the expense of drama.

Jamesaritchie · Apr 24, 2014

One person doe snot know it all when it comes to experience, speculation, and profiling. Each has his own talents and experience, and will make different things of the information. This isn't like evidence you can show detectives, it's educated guesswork, and even during the debriefing, any one of them can put pieces together in a different way and come up with a new educated guess.

Each one also needs to know exactly what all the others are saying and thinking. This is how such a team works. Not one piece of information should be unavailable to all, including musings, and on the spot insight.

Investigation and Debriefing question

NateSean

Vulcan/Time Lord Hybrid

MarkEsq

Clever title pending.

frimble3

Heckuva good sport

Melville

Reader first, writer second

Jamesaritchie