The Biggest Mistake Garcia Ever Made On Criminal Minds
In her 321-episode run on Jeff Davis' 15 seasons of "Criminal Minds," hacker-turned-technical analyst for the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, Kirsten Vangsness' Penelope Garcia (aka "Garcia") has made her fair share of missteps, not all of them having to do with her excessively loud wardrobe and aesthetic. There was the time, in Season 1 of the series, when using her personal laptop at work allowed a dangerous hacker to infiltrate the system (via Reddit), and the numerous times she overstepped her bounds when it came to looking into things she had no professional incentive to investigate.
It's in this latter category that Garcia makes her biggest mistake, particularly since it says more about who she is as a person than a simple slip-up would. Rather than making an earnest faux-pas, in Season 4, Episode 23 ("Roadkill") Garcia proactively abuses her power with an act for which she sees no repercussions, and one that many fans felt spoke volumes about the type of person she really is.
Garcia ruining Kevin's job prospect hit many fans the wrong way
In a post on the series' subreddit, user ladyreyreigns asked fans to share their thoughts regarding this revealing mistake. "Does anyone else think it was super ****** up for Garcia to ruin Kevin's chances of furthering his career?" the viewer asked, explaining that when Garcia's boyfriend Kevin (Nicholas Brendon) reveals that he's applying for a classified job overseas, she "hacks the program and the whole job goes away, and he immediately forgives her for it...She was acting incredibly selfishly."
Many fans agreed with the user's disgust at Garcia's manipulative meddling. User geeweeze called her actions "indicative of a little girl entitlement she had that seemed to escalate as the years went on," while Ffsletmesignin wrote "the fact she didn't lose her job and it never came back to bite her is also pretty surprising." (In the episode, Kevin quickly realizes that the project was scrapped because Garcia, and not a random hacker, broke into its database, but he's extremely cool with it because he's her boyfriend, and the FBI never investigates the matter).
In another thread on the subreddit, user No_Seesaw_5789 lists Garcia's destruction of Kevin's job prospect as an example of the character once again overstepping her bounds, while sycamore_under_score called the move "controlling and manipulative," and wondered what would happen is the genders were reversed in the situation. For Kevin to squash Garcia's potential promotion to keep her at his side would have caused a major backlash, "But lol it's just quirky Garcia so we will just laugh it off, I guess," the user wrote.
Clearly, many fans weren't willing to laugh it off, or to ignore the fact that when Garcia showed her true colors, they were much darker than those of her sunny, neon wardrobe.