It's raining... somewhere... as a man
writes a note while sitting in his truck. He tried to make something
right, and failed, now he's asking for forgiveness. Then he goes to
the glove compartment, grabs his pistol and - will he kill himself,
or someone else? Well, the pistol has tape all over the handle, which
might be intended to repel fingerprints, but who knows?
The man - you may recognize him as the
reclusive nerd from Real Genius, or the other guy in Napoleon
Dynamite, but to me he'll always be Broots from The Pretender - sees
some kids in coasts walking to a gazebo to get out of the rain.
Apparently he's in a public park?
The show cuts away before we see him
decide to kill someone else instead of himself, and suddenly we're in
Joe's office, as he stares at a gun lying on his desk. It's an
old-timey semi-auto, and it came with a note. Maybe an old army
buddy? I've got to stop making guesses about things that aren't
related to the plot, and just watch the show.
Turns out Joe is worried because the
gun is a gift from Mescach Taylor (his army buddy from the homeless
burner episode) - it's a Vietnam-era army sidearm with custom-made
handgrips designed to look like the Vietnam War Memorial! But how
could a recently homeless fellow have afforded that? Did he liquidate
all his assets and buy extravagant gifts for his friends prior to
committing suicide? Joe has tried to get in touch, but Mescach has
disappeared, not showing up to work or his at his housing unit! Greg
tells Joe to fly out to LA and check on him.
Back at the park, the three youths
start harassing the old men playing checkers in the gazebo, and when
they flash their guns, Broots appears and shoots them to death! Two
of them, anyhow - the third is smart enough to run away full speed.
It's time for the team to get involved!
Although they really shouldn't, given the details of the case - he
killed the two guys at the gazebo, and chased the third to a gas
station a mile away and shot him. That really does sound like the
kind of standard gang violence that the FBI is profoundly
disinterested in. So they add another person getting shot at a bus
stop a little while later to justify the team's interest. It's off to
Cleveland!
Where Broots his back at his flop,
pouring out his whiskey because he's found self-actualization through
murdering scumbags! Just like that Death Wish movie! Then it's off to
the gun store to buy boxes and boxes of bullets for his gun!
Hopefully some extra magazines as well, because, you know, it's kind
of awkward to ask the gang toughs to just hang out while you reload a
clip.
What's he going to do with all that
ammo? Let's find out after the opening credits!
On the plane is able to figure out that
they're dealing with a vigilante because the three gang members were
gang members, and the fourth kid had just snatched a lady's purse. I
guess they didn't hear the part where the two checkers guys just told
them that Broots intervened to stop a mugging. Seems like that would
have been a tip-off.
Greg and Reid confirm the vigilante
theory by talking to the purse-snatched lady, who confirms that the
guy saw the mugging, and while no one else moved to help her, he
asked which way the guy went and gave chase!
At the park, they notice a space with a
bunch of dead leaves under it, suggesting that the person who was
parked there must have been either the killer or a witness, since the
parking lot was swept just fifteen minutes before the killing!
That seems like something of a stretch,
considering that the sweeper would have had to go into the parking
area, drive really close to the car, back out, go around it, and then
sweep those two spaces beside it, which the sweeper would probably
have trouble fitting into. Wouldn't it be way more likely to just
ignore the spaces if there was a car parked in one?
Also, don't street sweepers sweep the
streets by using brushes and jets of water to push debris into
gutters? The parking lot doesn't have any of those, so where did the
debris go? I feel like it was raining in the shooting scene because
originally the idea was that the parking lot was going to be wet,
except for one dry space, because he'd been sitting there so long,
and the rain stopped right as he killed the guys, but they couldn't
make that work from a production standpoint for one reason or
another, and they just went with this slightly odd leaf solution
instead.
In LA, Joe is looking for Mescach -
there's a ticking clock because he'll lose his spot in the veteran's
home if he's not back in one day!
This vigilante couldn't have any better
timing! He stops for a school bus, and just after a woman has put her
daughter aboard, the woman's abusive husband turns up, planning to
beat her up right on the front lawn of her house! He's not psyched to
have had a restraining order put out on him, and he's decided
strangulation is the answer!
Broots obviously has something to say
about that, so he saunters up and tells the guy to scram. The guy's a
thuggish moron, so he doesn't, and gets shot a bunch of times. This
naturally freaks out the woman, who screams as Broots walks off.
Over at the police station, they're
having a spot of trouble - there were no cameras at the gas station,
and all of the witnesses are saying they didn't get a good look at
the guy. Because, you know, people like vigilantes more than they
should. Then they get word about the new shooting!
The 'vigilantes are good' sentiment is
shared by the woman, who reveals that she wears turtlenecks because
her scumbag ex scalded her with burning oil! Jeanne wins the Prentiss
Award for this line:
Yes, she got a restraining order, and
when he found out he showed up and tried to strangle her to death on
her front lawn. That's why he needed to be shot - are you not paying
attention, Jeanne?
Joe finds Mescach in an abandoned bar
that served as their haunt back in the day. Mescach is despondent,
and doesn't want to go on living, for reasons I'm sure we'll get to!
Broots heads into an apartment building
- getting caught on a security camera - and walks past a lady who's
just come from a door with loud music blaring out of it - she's
nervous to have been seen there! This attracts his attention, so I
guess this is his building, and now he's identified some criminals
super-close to home?
He knocks on the door, and the drug
dealers open it when they see a harmless-looking old dude, even
though their drug-packaging operation is literally right out in the
open, fully visible from the front door, which it's like ten feet
away from.
Gosh, these guys are bad at crime, huh?
Broots announces that he's been waiting
a while to kill them, shoots everyone, then leaves. So maybe it's not
his building, and he had a specific grudge against these crooks, to
the point where he was keeping track of where they were?
Next we see the team arrive, and
confirm that the dead guys were all degenerate criminals. They have
footage of Broots going to and from the crime scene, including him
standing at the apartment door of the drug dealers and shooting
everyone. That's right, the degenerate drug dealers who operated out
of this building were fine with having a security camera pointed
directly at their door, catching the comings and goings of everyone
who visited their crime hovel.
Doesn't it seem like that camera would
have been smashed like five seconds after it went up?
More with Joe and Mescach: Joe opens a
fortune cookie, and quotes a joke proverb that - in an amazing
coincidence - showed up in a video game I was playing yesterday.
Weird. Anyhow, Mescach sees no value in life because he doesn't think
he's going to be able to reconnect with the son he abandoned decades
ago during his extended 'drunken loser' phase. Joe then drags Mescach
out to see him.
Then it's over to the police station,
where JJ is on a secret phone call about her dealings with Esai, but
then pretends it's child care stuff when Reid walks up. How many more
episodes are they going to keep us waiting?
Garcia finds video footage of Broots'
car and gets an ID! His wife and son were killed by a scumbag meth
head a decade earlier in a home invasion robbery gone wrong! Somehow
the guy got just ten years for a double homicide, including a rape of
the mother and the murder of a teenager, and that was presumably one
of the guys Broots killed.
Seriously. He got ten years for that.
But he wasn't one of the guys in the apartment - that was just the
dealer! The double murderer was killed in prison right before his
release, which is presumably what triggered Broots' self-destructive
tailspin before he found vigilantism.
The team gives a profile, which seems
like a waste of time, since they know who the killer is, and it's
just a matter of getting his picture out there until he's spotted,
which psychology can't really help with.
Then they find Broots' car, and the
suicide note he left in the car, figuring out the plot we saw twenty
minutes ago. Not useful, but at least they're finally up to speed?
They also find a notebook where he was
counting down the days until the murderer got out of jail so that he
could shoot the guy! They correctly intuit that since he's started
killing the meth-head friends of his target, he's probably expanded
his targeting criteria outwards, and is only going to get more
violent and clever from here!
Back at the station, they make a list
of all of the double murderer's known associates, and say they should
start rounding them up. Also the jury and the judge on the case with
the stupidly small sentence. Although really only the judge is to
blame there. Seriously, ten years? Was he bribed or something? That's
crazy.
Joe check-in: He goes to see the
estranged son to try to talk him into seeing Mescach.
Back at base, the team starts
addressing the 'second killer' theory - could Broots be trying to
track down the double murderer's partner in crime? The one that the
double murderer swore didn't exist? I mean, maybe, but a good way to
do that would be to talk to his meth friends instead of shooting
them. They can't give a lot of leads if they've been shot.
Broots continues not asking people for
information as he shoots a guy just as he comes home from jogging,
announcing that he's been wanting to kill him for a long time. Could
the guy be a lawyer? Jury member? Probably not the judge. He's
middle-aged, though, so who knows? Weirdly, he confirms that he's got
the right guy by asking if he's 'Mister Hines'. Is Broots an alien?
An agent from the Matrix? Who talks like that?
JJ and Derek go to the latest crime
scene, and discover that the couple in the house only recently moved
there from Hawaii - what could the connection to Broots be? Derek
worries there might not be one, and he's just killing random people
now. Of course, since he knew the name of the guy and was lying in
wait, we know that's not the case.
Mescach check-in! The son doesn't want
to have the grandson be disappointed over and over again the way his
father did. Joe's advice: teach your son to keep giving people
chances over and over again no matter how many times they prove to
not deserve them.
I mean, I know we like Mescach and all,
but I get why the son is annoyed. Joe tells Mescach to be patient and
keep trying, rather than just killing himself, and he agrees to go
back to his veterans' home.
Back to Broots, who's sitting at a bar,
trying to figure out what to do next. Then the guy at the next stool
talks about getting back at parents for something their son did, and
he leaves, I guess to kill the parents of the guy who killed his
family?
The team notices that Broots didn't
have any pictures of his son, just of his wife. Then they discover
that after his son got in trouble at school, he took him on a
parental bonding/scared straight nature hike! The team comes to the
conclusion that the son must have met the double murderer on the
hike, set up the robbery, only to wind up being killed by his partner
when it started going south.
Based on what, exactly? The fact that
the kid's wrists were tightly bound, but there was no ligature marks
or bruising? So they're saying it was a team crime, then he killed
his partner and tied him up to make it look like he wasn't involved?
Why would he do that? I honestly have no idea what the killer thought
he was accomplishing by tying up a corpse. That doesn't make it look
more like a robbery gone wrong - the teen could have been beaten to
death at any point during a robbery gone wrong, and not needed to be
tied up. This is terrible evidence they're using.
The team now believes that the reason
Broots was going to kill himself was because he knew that his son got
his wife killed, which made him feel like he was guilty of the crime.
Which is just a huge stretch. Why would he believe that? Wouldn't he
need some evidence of the crime to suggest that, which the police
absolutely didn't find? Or was the son still alive when Broots got
home, and he confessed, and Broots killed him? That would explain the
guilt, I suppose.
Okay, the show just got real, real,
stupid. Broots has his conversation with the mother of the killer,
and talks about loss and how this wouldn't have happened if they'd
both been better parents. I still have no idea how he knows his son
was involved in the robbery/murder. Then the team busts in and
announces that he killed the wrong jogger! He'd been looking for
Morton Hines, a DA who took a bribe to suppress evidence at the trial
to ensure the killer didn't get life in prison - but he wound up
killing Jeffrey Hines, that guy's innocent brother who recently
bought his house!
Okay, so that's why Broots rather
strangely asked if the guy was 'Mr. Hines', because if he'd done what
any sane person would have done in that situation, and said are you
'Morton Hines' the guy would have just said 'no', and not gotten
shot. Also, how did Broots know about this guy's bribe-taking, and
where he lived, yet not know what he looked like? And since he was
confirming his identity before shooting, why not use his first name?
Seems like some pretty preposterous
steps to go to in order to make Broots look like a bad guy, because
they were worried the audience might be on his side. Which, you know, we were.
Anyway, Broots kills himself without
shooting the mother first, and the show ends!
THE END
Except for more with Joe! The son has
come to the veteran's home in order to have his son meet his father!
Oh, and JJ goes to a clandestine
meeting with Esai to discuss their spy stuff, but instead of a secret
conversation, she gets abducted by someone we don't see! In the
middle of a public plaza! I predicted all of this JJ stuff would come
out in episode 15, but it looks like I was one episode off, and it's
going to be addressed next week! Does that mean more Josh Stweart?
Please?
1 - Was profiling in any way helpful in
solving the crime?
Not really. I want to give them points
for figuring out that he'd get around to targeting the mother, but it
was such a stretch! There was no evidence that his son was involved
in the crime, so it's impossible to think that Broots would have
believed that to be the case. Yet everyone immediately jumps to that
conclusion! The crazy thing is, this all would have been believable
if the show hadn't been so desperate to include twists - if the
killer had just said that the son was involved in the crime at the
trial it would have explained Broots' guilt and given them a reason
to direct their attention towards the surviving mother.
But he didn't claim that at trial, all
so everyone goes around acting with certainty based on evidence they
couldn't possibly have had. It's a mess of an episode. A messisode,
if you will.
2 - Could the crime have been solved
just as easily using conventional police methods given the known
facts of the case?
Probably, although there wasn't a lot
of 'solving' to be done. After all, Broots plan was to kill a bunch
of people, and then kill himself, and he managed to do that. I'd say
you can credit the team with saving the mother's life, but honestly,
the way Broots was playing that scene, it was fifty-fifty he just
wound up killing himself in front of her whether or not they showed
up.
Also, it's possible that competent cops
would have, while they were rounding up a bunch of criminals, jury
members, and a judge - literally every single person involved with
the case - remembered to round up the mother of the killer as well.
So, on a scale of 1 (Dirty Harry) to 10
(Tony Hill), How Useful Was Profiling in Solving the Crime?
.5 out of 10.
That's right, it's a rare half-a-point,
because I can only credit them so far for the partial save at the
end, and they get no points for the figuring out the son was
involved, because there's no way anyone could have done that.
Seriously, though, what possible
evidence could the guy have covered up to affect the sentencing by
the judge? The casefile lays out that the guy - during the course of
a home invasion, sexually assaulted a woman, then beat her and her
son to death. That's the facts the judge had, and he gave the guy ten
years? What more evidence would the judge have needed to give him a
sensible sentence?
Wow, would this plot point have made so
much more sense if it was the corrupt judge who was bribed - but in
that case, Broots couldn't possibly have gotten the wrong man for
their terminally stupid twist, so they had to generate a preposterous
situation even worse by raising the pointless question of missing
evidence.
Two weeks in a row the show's terrible
writing absolutely let down wonderful performances from their lead
killers.
You're the worst, Criminal Minds.
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