A woman is coming home to her shady
apartment building, and is unnerved by the creepy guy walking down a
dark hallway towards her. She rushes into her apartment, but then it
turns out it was just the super fixing the hallway lights! And the
killer was already in the apartment? Nope - the twist is more
disgusting than that! The woman goes to take a shower, and she's
blasted by disgusting water, because - as the super finds out, there
are two corpses in the water resevoir!
We then cut to Joe, who's vising his
son-in-law and grandson, just a couple of hours away from the crime
scene! Then his ex-wife turns up, and I guess they haven't talked
since he found out he had a daughter? Wow. He probably should have
called her at some point.
Ada, the ex-wife, has decided that her
grandson's birthday party is the best time to have this conversation,
because she's terrible at human interaction! Which is backed up by
the whole 'kept a daughter secret for 30 years' thing.
Joe says that he called and texted her
for a week straight, and she didn't get back to him, so he gave up.
Um... that was a year ago. If she's not getting back to you over the
phone, just fly there. This is too important to leave to her whims.
Joe's also bad with human interaction, though, so there you go.
Ada says that Joe could never be
trusted to put his family over the job, so she just didn't tell him
to avoid causing him guilt! Then Joe gets a call about the Sacramento
murder, and has to ditch his grandson's birthday party, proving Ada
right!
Seriously, Joe, stay for another couple
of hours. Greg asked you to meet the team in San Francisco. It's less
than a two hour drive, and they're not going to be there for six
hours. That gives you a full four hours - at least, let's not forget
that you're an FBI agent and you can speed all you want - to spend
with your family.
Wait, are you using this as an excuse
to avoid an awkward conversation? I feel like maybe you are.
That night in San Francisco, a woman is
getting hassled by a scumbag, when a better-dressed man intervenes!
He tries to offer her a ride in his van, and she at first says no,
because it's a van, then says yes, because he says he 'passed some
guys' a few blocks up. When was this, exactly? You're not in the van
now, after all. Did you park the van and just hang out waiting to
intervene in a street conflict? That's creepy. Of course he
immediately drugs her and throws her in the van.
I don't want to blame the victim here,
but offering someone a ride in a van is like the biggest red flag
imaginable. Don't get into vans with strangers, people. Ever.
On the flight, the team restates things
we knew or assumed - the dead women were drug addicts, so the killer
might hate addicts and sex workers, or he might just like easy
targets! More importantly, how did he get two bodies down into a
reservoir without anyone noticing? It's not like he could carry them
both at once. That's a lot of hassle to ensure your bodies will be
found immediately, so it must be central to his reason for killing,
right? Weirdly, they don't mention it at all on the plane, only
talking about crime rates and high-risk victims. Huh.
Turns out they're flying overnight and
arrive in the morning, so Joe's skipping the party makes even less
sense. Joe could have stayed until the kid went to bed, headed back
to his hotel and set an alarm for 5AM, and he still would have beat
the team to the police station.
Just some weak grandparenting there,
Joe.
Speaking of the police station, they've
identified one of the victims as a known sex worker, so they call in
her pimp to interrogate him! He says that she recently quit drugs and
got off the streets! Which was the case with the woman kidnapped in
the opening, BTW. So that's the killer's thing? Murdering women
getting out of the game?
Also, the pimp confirms that the
clothes the body was found in - a single-colour knee-length dress,
wasn't her style at all, so that's probablt also part of the killer's
MO! Greg has Garcia track down places where the dress was sold!
Dear lord, the episode just got dumb.
Joe and JJ decide they have to dismiss the 'moral enforcer' theory
because that kind of killer would want his victims displayed! What is
a bigger display then putting them in the working water reservoir of
an inhabited building? They're guaranteed to be found almost
immediately! Yet as the scene draws on, we're supposed to accept
their theory that the killer thought of the reservoir as a hiding
place where he planned to revisit the bodies! That would only make
sense if the guy had complete and unobstructed access to the
basement, which he obviously couldn't have!
This entire theory is based on complete nonsense.
We then find the latest victim asleep
in a makeshift cage that a guy has built in his garage! She wakes up,
then he drugs her back to sleep. Thanks for that!
At the morgue, Aisha and Reid go over
the ME's report! One woman bled to death, the other died of sepsis!
One was drugged by the killer, and he cut their faces open while they
were alive with a big, jagged knife, then later used a scalpel to
make slices on their corpses! That's all pretty weird stuff, show.
Oh, and one of the women had blonde
hair dye, but it washed out in the water. But why? We get a scene
with the team restating all of the facts, but since we just heard all
of the facts in the previous scene, I'm not sure why this was
included.
The next day a woman's body is found in
a nice house's backdoor jacuzzi! Reid says that it's strange that the
new disposal site is so public. Again, the previous disposal site was
incredibly public. Arguably more public than a jacuzzi. If the cover
was put on the Jacuzzi, it could be days before the body was found.
The water tank of a large transient apartment block would be in
constant use. Your profiling is terrible.
They notice a stitch left in the body's
face - the obvious conclusion is that the jagged wound was caused by
the killer cutting out all of the parts that had stitches on them!
But why was he stitching people's faces up while they were alive?
Garcia then checks in with an ID on the previous victim, and they ask
her to fill them in on any missing people with rose tattoos on their
wrists (as the corpse has). She's got on, naturally, and it turns out
that both women were turning their lives around and in treatment
programs!
So I guess the killer was specifically stalking the woman from the opening? It's not like he could have just randomly heard some woman talking about how she'd gotten off drugs.
They deliver the profile! The killer
loves torturing women via surgery, and there's probably a woman out
there he hates or already killed who looks like the costumes he puts
the women in! The only piece of actionable information they offer is
that the killer will likely be working in the rehab community, which
is how he's selecting his victims.
Although that doesn't really count as
profiling - if all of your victims were in rehab, start the search in
rehab.
Then the victim wakes up and stumbles
around the room! She finds a table full of items labeled 'your
favorite #', which is presumably part of his attempt to transform
her! Like with the plastic surgery that he's not good at!
While JJ is busy theorizing about the
case, Joe is fixated on his ex-wife! JJ offers her take on the
situation, which is that his ex-wife was right not to tell him about
his daughter. And she's saying that without even knowing that Joe
skipped out on his grandson's birthday party!
Aisha then enters with the ME's report!
The women were full of painkillers, and the latest one had a homemade
saline implant! So now they know that he's not trying to kill the
women, but transform them into something else, and they only die
because he's so bad at it!
Over in the torture dungeon, the killer
cuts off the woman's bandages, and shows that he's cut apart her
cheek and resewed it into some kind of horrific scar! Why is this
allowed on television? The team figures that he's trying to recreate
someone he loved, rather than hated, and now they just have to find a
facially mutilated drug addict and search back until they find their
killer!
Reid points out that there's a
condition that causes large tumors to grow on the side of faces -
could the killer's ideal have had that condition? Garcia decides to
check her drug user database against her 'all medical conditions in
America' database! Will she succeed?
Garcia immediately finds the woman, who
killed herself three weeks ago, wearing the dress in question! Hey...
is three weeks ago really enough time for this guy to have escalated
to crude attempts at surgery and transforming women into his dead
girlfriend? Shouldn't he have had to fester and pine a whole lot
longer than that?
Turns out the dead woman was found by
her boyfriend, who works at a rehab center - that's where he stole
the painkillers from. Also, apparently the vacuum-sealer he's been
using to make implants. So that's obviously the guy.
Time for a delusional interlude with
the killer trying to turn his victim into the dead woman. She does a
little better at playing along, then hits him with a mirror and runs
out into the street! Way to go, woman! She runs up to a jogger, who's
shocked by the horrible open wounds all over her face. The killer
then says that his wife is just out of the hospital, and loopy on
medication. Seriously, giant open wounds and blood pouring down her
face. There's no way this guy doesn't call the cops the moment he's
turned a corner.
We get some background on the killer
from Garcia. Mother with face mutilated in car accident, childhood
sexual abuse. Just a standard monster cocktail. I still don't buy the
immediate jump to serial killing and surgery, however.
As the team is rushing to the scene,
they find out that his girlfriend killed herself because she had a
panic attack when he convinced her to go out in public! The current
victim is starting to ail from blood poisoning, but the ream rushes
in to ask the killer nicely to let her go, and then he does!
THE END
Then Joe goes back to see Ada, and
apologizes to her for resenting her decision! It's sweet!
1 - Was profiling in any way helpful in
solving the crime?
Not particularly. I'd like to give them
more credit, but the forensic data really solved the case this week.
Once they knew about the implants it was easy enough to assume that
he was trying to turn the women into someone.
2 - Could the crime have been solved
just as easily using conventional police methods given the known
facts of the case?
Considering that the guy kept abducting
people in public, and stealing from his place of work, and disposing
of bodies also in public, I don't know how he wasn't already in jail.
So, on a scale of 1 (Dirty Harry) to 10
(Tony Hill), How Useful Was Profiling in Solving the Crime?
3/10 - You know, they didn't really
need Joe this week. He could have just remained at the party and hung
out with his grandson the whole weekend. He would not have been
missed.
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