Jason Gideon and David Rossi represent two major eras in the history of the popular CBS
police procedural Criminal Minds.
On the one hand, there are the first two seasons of the show, in which Mandy Patinkin's Gideon
reigned over a team of relative fledgling agents in a hard-boiled crime drama. Patinkin
would go on to famously and abruptly abandon Criminal Minds in 2007, claiming its depiction
of violence against women to be too extreme and demoralizing, just as pre-production on
the third season was to begin.
Joe Mantegna's Rossi arrived in Season 3, as part of a surprise cast shakeup, to begin
a trend that, over the next twelve seasons, eventually relaxed into a less edgy and grim
production that began to focus more on the Behavioral Analysis Unit team as a family
dynamic.
"It's a girl!"
The Season 3 premiere aired in September 2007, and the show wrapped after 15 seasons in February
2020, but the debate over the OG cast member's quality versus his replacement has never really
ceased.
Take a Reddit thread from April 2020, for example, with the heading "Rossi is better
than Gideon." The general concession within that thread, and others over the years, generally
agreed with this stance, to varying degrees and qualifications. While that's a circumstantial
snippet, the longtime popularity that Rossi's character enjoyed within the show meant he
was never replaced, either, and that speaks for itself as well.
When people talk about why they like Rossi, it's often in terms of what Gideon wasn't,
that is, funny, warm, and team-oriented. Comparing them is almost an apples-and-oranges argument,
but the characters are joined by a shared history as former coworkers and the founders
of the BAU as an institution.
"Are you having fun?"
"Yes, definitely. I'm definitely having fun."
All that aside, fans tend to appreciate Rossi because he definitely is fun. He hosts dinner
parties at his lovely home for his team members, offers his experience and wisdom with a distinct
kind of sassy humor, and is wise enough to know when to step back and let the youths
do what they do best.
Rossi is much more flexible emotionally and professionally than Gideon, who hated cell
phones and didn't always get along with others on the team, especially when it was predicated
on the idea that Gideon might be wrong or unknowingly biased about something. All that
adds up to Rossi being a character that is going to naturally be more appealing to a
larger audience. In general, he's just better at being a person interacting with other people
than Gideon ever was, and Rossi has explained as much himself, within the show.
One respondent in that "Rossi is better" Reddit thread also made this excellent point about
why Rossi is so popular:
"What if the roles were reversed? Like Rossi was in the first three seasons and Gideon
were in the others. I think more of us would've liked Gideon because he would've had more
time to grow and for us to like him. Since Rossi has been in more seasons he has grown
as a character a lot and he has had bigger and more moments to shine than Gideon."
In truth, Rossi's character changed over his first couple seasons on Criminal Minds. At
first, he was also pretty standoffish, and more than a little arrogant, often treating
his coworkers as lesser-educated hooligans. He didn't evolve into "Dad of the BAU" overnight,
and that's easy to forget over so many years and episodes. The things Rossi is loved for,
his gentleness, humility, and real affection for all his younger team members, developed
over time, and that was time which Gideon, as a character, was not granted.
People have never really stopped missing Gideon's place in Criminal Minds, though a more substantial
proportion of that interest isn't so much for Gideon himself, so much as the effect
he had on his former protégé, Dr. Spencer Reid, played by Matthew Gray Gubler. Reid
is a fan favorite, and the loss of Gideon in his life defined his character in ebbs
and flows over the rest of the entire series. There was even some hope that Patinkin might
show up for the series finale, despite having ghosted on the series over a decade earlier.
That, of course, never came to be.
All that aside, Gideon does have his fans, particularly when it comes to the distinct
skills, knowledge, and characterization he brought to the table. These preferences, of
course, can mostly be defined mostly by taste, and Gideon's strengths were, in fact, a particular
flavor that Criminal Minds let slip away over time, as the show evolved, changed, and found
its own stride. That's not a value judgement, it's simply what happened, and opinions vary:
in the end, it really depends on if you watched Criminal Minds as a semi-faithful examination
of a real law enforcement technique, or if you showed up to watch the "BAU and Friends
Killer Hour."
"We're going to start at the beginning. You eat what you cook, I'll supervise, but we're
going to do this, all together, just like a family."
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