Matthew Gray Gubler's Favorite Criminal Minds Scene Makes So Much Sense

If you find yourself watching an extra-grotesque episode of "Criminal Minds," there's a decent chance it was directed by series star Matthew Gray Gubler. Although Gubler's character, analytical genius Dr. Spencer Reid, has been largely absent from "Criminal Minds: Evolution" (with one major exception), he was present for all 354 episodes of the original "Criminal Minds" run. That's a massive body of work for any actor, but Gubler also stepped behind the camera for 12 freaky episodes from 2010 to 2018.

In a 2015 Facebook Q&A, Gubler was asked to choose his favorite moment from an episode he directed, and he picked a doozy. "I once directed an episode about human marionettes and a deranged madman turning people into puppets," Gubler recalled, referencing Season 8's memorably messed-up "The Lesson." Horror icon and "Deadwood" alum Brad Dourif guest-starred in the episode as the aforementioned puppeteer, who, in classic "Criminal Minds" fashion, awoke from a coma and became fixated on kidnapping strangers and forcing them to reenact his most traumatic childhood memory. Gubler said he's particularly fond of the episode's macabre-but-elegant big reveal sequence.

"I directed a scene with this, I think, really beautiful but very ghastly dance to a lullaby version of a Pixies song, and I'm really proud of that scene," he said in a video shared by the Criminal Minds Fan Club page on Facebook. While the scene included lots of tricky technical elements, including wirework, fake blood, stage lighting, and paper mâché masks, Gubler implied that the originality of the final product that stands out most to him. "I know we've never done anything like that on 'Criminal Minds,' [and] I don't think anyone's done something like that before, so I'm proud of that," he said. 

It's worth noting that Matthew Gray Gubler has directed five subsequent episodes since citing the scene from "The Lesson" as his favorite, so he may have a different answer today. Still, "The Lesson" is emblematic of the actor's style and favored subject matter; his episodes are often strange and borderline supernatural, from the "Flowers in the Attic"-tinged Season 7 shocker "Heathridge Manor" to "Mr. Scratch," a climactic Season 10 installment involving shadow monsters and a hallucinatory fake-out death scene. Gubler has also been known to contribute some of his original art to the show while directing, and even crafted the bloody puppet used in "The Lesson," as he shared on X.

Gubler's last episode as director was the Season 14 ghost story "The Tall Man." When the series returned on Paramount+ just two years after its conclusion, Dr. Reid didn't come back to the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, but he did surprise fans with an appearance on "Criminal Minds: Evolution" last season. He currently is due to star as Albert Einstein's slacker great-grandson in CBS' procedural "Einstein," now slated for the 2026-2027 TV season.