Criminal Minds Season 11 is going to start at the end of September of this year and now that the premiere is closing in, the spoilers are starting to hit the web. For season 11 of the show, CBS ordered 22 episodes, which is a lot to fill when one of your main characters have left and there is a major whole to fill on a whim. Jennifer Love Hewitt left the show at the end of last season due to her pregnancy.
If you remember, at the end of season 10, the character Kate Callahan handed in her resignation papers. Now with that huge blow to the casting, it was also revealed that A.J Cook, who plays Jennifer “JJ” Jareau on the show, is pregnant in real life, but the show just wrote that her character is also pregnant. With that being said, she will be missing the first five episodes because of that. In order to replace Hewitt, the show announced that Aisha Tyler would take on the job as her role of Dr. Tara Lewis.
Tyler was not a main cast member up to this point and only had a few recurring roles under her belt. The ratings for the show have been pretty good and they are even better when you take a look at the DVR ratings for it. The show is on CBS, at 9 P.M. on Wednesday. With the Criminal Minds Season 11 about to start, there was some worry about how the fans would react to Hewitts character leaving the show.
Main characters leaving television shows does happen on a regular basis, however, Hewitt was only a main character for the tenth season, so the reaction should not be that bad. With a hole in the cast, it was announced that the show would like to bulk up the cast a little bit and it appeared that the front runner to do that was Paget Brewster. The sad news regarding Brewster is that her schedule is very busy right now so the odds are slim that she will be fit into season 11.
Brewster was hoping to sign up for the first five episodes, but she said that the timeline did not work for her. Part of the reason that the time does not work out, is because she is going to be getting ready to appear in her new show, “Grandfathered” which starts around the same time at the end of September. That show will be shown on the Fox Network and is a comedy starring a character played by John Stamos and Brewster being his baby momma, Sara. Brewster has many friends from Criminal Minds and she said she would love to work with them, but the timing was not there.