Criminal Minds is expanding its world again -- by going around the world.
Five years after launching the short-lived Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, the CBS procedural will air the backdoor pilot to Beyond Borders Wednesday (9/8c, CBS) -- or as executive producer Erica Messer describes in a nutshell, Criminal Minds International.
"In its simplest form, that's what it is," Messer tells TVGuide.com. "[Executive producer] Mark Gordon had been wanting to do another spin-off and I felt like we just needed to wait until we found the right idea. Certainly going the international route felt like it was the right thing to do, the right time to do it. We are 10 seasons in. It answers that spin-off dilemma, which is: How is this show the same but different from the mothership? And I think we were able to solve that nicely by saying that [the two shows are] the same in that they're profilers solving crimes via behavior, but it's different because they're doing it outside of our country when Americans are in trouble."
That was the main lesson producers learned from Suspect Behavior, which saw Forest Whitaker lead a team of rogue agents around the U.S. -- basically what Hotch (Thomas Gibson) & Co. already do. "I felt like it was too similar because they could be in Cleveland the same week we're in Cleveland solving a similar crime. The element of being rogue didn't stand out for me as being different enough. I think that was the misstep," Messer says. "You always...
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