Why Mandy Patinkin’s Jason Gideon Left Criminal Minds

While each major broadcast network has procedural dramas, CBS is the king of the format, at least in the 21st century. It’s mastered the art form of the procedural, specifically focused on crimes of all kind. The “NCIS” franchise alone has spawned a handful of series, each of them taking place in the United States and abroad going as far back as 2003.

But CBS is no stranger to other long-running procedural crime dramas, including the darker and no less famous “Criminal Minds.” When “Criminal Minds” began airing in the fall of 2005, it boasted a unique hook, focusing on the profilers of a specific unit of the FBI and the very grim cases that they would have to solve all across the country. The show has lasted in some form for two decades, although what was once a full-season drama airing on CBS is now a streaming reboot series titled “Criminal Minds: Evolution” on Paramount+.

One of the common elements of procedural shows, no matter the network, is cast turnover. Yes, a show like “Criminal Minds” may have run for 15 seasons on CBS, and is now into its 17th via streaming, but the cast can’t always remain the same. For example, when “Criminal Minds” premiered in 2005, its leading man was a most accomplished stage and screen performer beloved for so many of his roles: Mandy Patinkin. Some of us may know Patinkin best as Inigo Montoya from “The Princess Bride,” but he’s no stranger to CBS. In the 1990s, he was one of the leads on the network’s medical drama “Chicago Hope,” winning an Emmy for his work.

Despite this, Patinkin only played lead profiler Jason Gideon on “Criminal Minds” for two full seasons before departing. (You can see /Film’s ranking of every season of “Criminal Minds” here.) So, why did Patinkin, and thus Gideon, leave? Well, it turns out the actor regretted signing on for such a dark drama in the first place.

Actors leaving a successful procedural is not a new thing, but both the way in which Patinkin chose to leave “Criminal Minds” and his public remarks about his departure are fairly unique for their abruptness and honesty. The short version is that “Criminal Minds” was, in reality, not the show Patinkin said he signed up for, at least in theory. When talking to New York Magazine in 2012, on the eve of the second season of Showtime’s “Homeland” (in which he was a co-star), Patinkin explained, “The biggest public mistake I ever made was that I chose to do ‘Criminal Minds’ in the first place.”

At the very least, it’s admirable that Patinkin takes the responsibility for his choice to star in the program. Whatever you may think of “Criminal Minds,” it’s not unfair to state that it features gruesome murders in just about every episode. If anything, though, that seems pretty much baked into the DNA of the show, making one wonder what Patinkin thought the series was going to be. “I thought it was something very different. I never thought they were going to kill and rape all these women every night, week after week, year after year,” Patinkin admitted in the same interview.

Since he departed so unexpectedly, to the point where the New York Magazine profile notes that the show’s creators were completely taken aback, the nature of how Jason Gideon, already a fairly emotionally tortured individual, leaves feels similarly abrupt. The show’s writers concocted a scenario in which Gideon’s colleague Aaron Hotchner (Thomas Gibson) is suspended for actions for which Gideon himself feels responsible. And so, quite randomly, he abandons his post and is last seen telling a diner waitress that he’s not sure where he’s headed but will know when he gets there.

The fact that Gideon was eventually killed offscreen is less surprising than the fact that it happened eight seasons later. You’d think the “Criminal Minds” writers might’ve had an axe to grind and wouldn’t have wanted to wait so long.

Talent doesn’t always win the day when it comes to actors making unexpected choices on television. But in the case of Patinkin, no matter how mercurial he may have seemed or how abrupt his departure was, he managed to weather the storm and any initial negative reaction to his leaving “Criminal Minds.” But he certainly didn’t expect that was the case. In the New York Magazine profile, he mentioned that although the show was “destructive to my soul and my personality,” he also assumed that he would never “get to work in television again” shortly after leaving it.

Of course, the exact opposite ended up being the case, as “Homeland” would go on to air for eight seasons on Showtime (starting in 2011), with Patinkin earning four Emmy nominations across its run for his work as the lead character’s mentor. He also remains a beloved figure for his decades of work on the stage, as well as for having one of the greatest lines in cinema history in “The Princess Bride.”

It’s not that Patinkin is wrong about what “Criminal Minds” can be as a show, either. It is an often grisly and intense drama that has to feature death and chaos in any given episode; otherwise, the members of the BAU can’t do the job that the week-to-week audience expects to see them perform. Moreover, the nature of the procedural drama is to create these kinds of scenarios; a law drama has to feature lawyers trying cases, a medical show has to have doctors trying and sometimes failing to save lives, and so on. If there’s anything as yet somewhat unknown, it’s less to do with why Patinkin left this show and more about what he assumed the series was going to be from the start. You don’t have to like “Criminal Minds,” but it’s not cagey about its premise and it doesn’t always offer surprises. If anything, the details of why Patinkin left the show may still be the most shocking element the series has ever boasted.