'Criminal Minds' has always been one of my most-watched shows and was a personal favourite for a while. Seasons 1-5 was its best period, Season 4 was especially great. It did get hit and miss from Season 6 onwards, with a mix of good and more episodes and disappointing and less episodes. Season 11 was, apart from about 5 episodes, pretty weak. Season 12 was inconsistent but generally an improvement, its weakest episodes nowhere near as bad as the low-points of Seasons 6, 9 and especially 11.
Season 13 so far has not been too bad, in fact it's been quite good. It is already so much better than Season 11, which started off well actually but quickly went downhill, and has generally settled quicker than Season 12. As far as the previous Season 13 episodes go, the only one to be less than mediocre was "Annihilator", a season and show low point and the worst episode since Season 11 with "Inner Beauty". Most of the episodes actually ranged from decent to very good, though there aren't any classics.
"All You Can Eat" is one of the season's weakest episodes. Would go as far to say for me it was the second weakest with only "Annihilator" being worse.
Of course there are obvious good points. As always with 'Criminal Minds', the visuals are stylish and atmospheric. The music is not too over-bearing or low-key. There are intriguing moments in the writing and some of the direction is alert and accommodating.
All the acting from the leads and support is without complaint, Kirsten Vangsness does have patchy moments but her performance is fully committed.
The team work is nice and the start intrigues.
For all those good things, there are some debits too. The case for me was underwhelming, definitely one of the weaker ones of the season, though still much better than "Annihilator". It did from personal opinion lack tension and suspense, sometimes going the unintentionally goofy route. The story was fairly routine, the unsub was not one that was particularly interesting or menacing and this is another episode where an unsub's motivations for such elaborate crimes and methods are rather ordinary and "killed for that?"-like. Some of it was on the vague and under-explored side too, as well as messy and sometimes ridiculous.
It does play second fiddle to Garcia's subplot. Unfortunately this was something of a problem, for me it was a subplot that had too much prominence and was not interesting, rather soap-operatic and melodramatic actually. Some of its sentimentality was not easy to stomach and Garcia was written in a melodramatic way reminiscent of how she was written in "The Black Queen" and "Burn", even Kirsten Vangsness' acting on occasions was forced.
Pacing at times could have been tighter, a lot of it was dull. The writing can be sloppy and goes overboard on the sentimentality in Garcia's subplot. The climax was somewhat too pat and could have done with more tension. The team work and procedural aspects within the team worked well, would though have liked to have seen more of it more character moments and little things, also that all that balanced better with the case which is overshadowed by the personal life subplot (a big problem when both are flawed in execution). There were for my liking not enough and what there is are not very memorable.
Concluding, disappointing and under-cooked. 4/10 Bethany Cox