CBS has wisely cast familiar faces in key roles, which gives the show a leg up given that the characters can barely pass for one-­dimensional.... There’s something comforting about the fantasy of a government task force leaping to your aid hours after a vacation takes a detour to hell.

No doubt plenty of people will be able to ease into the show’s groove thanks to its workmanlike adherence to the franchise’s established and efficient structure, but anyone unmoved by procedural formula won’t find much excuse to go beyond their already established borders.

Beyond Borders, like its predecessors, is by no description a good show, but you can see the warm-bath appeal of its consistency and the insidious way in which it combines splatter-film scare tactics with pop-psychology platitudes and affirmations.

The last thing we need as viewers is any show this terrible, scary or not.

In other words, more of the same, with the added twist that all the victims are American and all (or most) of the criminals are not.... Imagine the situation reversed--a show in which tourists to America were continually victimized in horrific ways--and you see the problem.

Logistically, the producers get some credit for approximating all these far-away locales. But any ingenuity pretty much ends there, and Sinise’s character is so gruff and gravely as to make David Caruso’s old “CSI” role look emotionally effusive.

Moving on from the prevalent misogyny of the original Criminal Minds, CBS' new spinoff Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders is a pure distillation of xenophobia. A shameless combination of international b-roll and Trump Era paranoia.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I thought it was as good as any other crime show out there. Better than the crap reality TV shows on air today, the cast line up was a plus and the story line was good. It was entertaining and I will give it another watch.

I really wanted to love this show with Gary Sen ise and all. But, I didn't. The cast is great but don't gel well at first. The writing was sort of weird at first. The filming? I'll give the following as and example. San Pedro, Belize is on the island of Ambergris Caye off the shore of the the Belize mainland. Yes, most of the tourists to Belize go there. I have been there 26 times and I live in Wisconsin. I would think CBS could have done a little more research. There are no paved roads on the island. There are no rental cars on the island. The police force is not that professional. There is a reef visible from every resort on the Caribbean side of the island, that is the draw, the reef. There is no embassy on the island. There is no airport able to accomodate their plane in San Pedro. I have been to San Pedro, Belize 26 times and have friends there. We are laughing our collective you-know-whats off. Until tonight, I thought the show was doomed. It is starting to show heart and at least they are making up location names to make their case. I guess the budget is a little restricted and they have to film somewhere else and "pretend" it is their location but...seriously...Belize may have a population of 350,000 or so but...a lot of people have been there and they do get CBS. I'll keep watching for now but some of these plotlines have been so implausable and obviously soundstage...I expected better

As a crime show it's about as unrealistic as any of them out there. FBI swoops in and finds a whole truckload of clues the incompetent locals weren't able to see because they're not trained observers. (Sad commentary on the American police training academies, but hey...) Added problem is that it tries to be 'exotic' by having some kind of made-up stereotypical last-century 'motivation' for the foreign 'unsub' to kill Americans, while portraying locals in an equally stereotypical way that is offensive to their culture. So far I've found these 'motivations' laughable. Oh, and if Americans do leave the 'safety' of our borders to go to these dangerous places, then what has the national BAU been doing all these years?

Do you enjoy "Criminal Minds?" Would you like it better if the profilers were solving crimes in foreign countries, jetting around and wasting tax payer money to save Americans too dumb to avoid desperate situations? If you answered yes, "Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders" is for you. If not, avoid the stench of this tepid failure of imagination like the plague that it is.