The episode opens with an old station
wagon driving up to a farmhouse where a party was recently thrown. At
least we can assume that, because there's a balloon person floating
above the mailbox on the way in. The car's radio is playing a twangy
bit of cowboy music, so I'm going to go ahead and assume this is a
Matt Gubler episode, since this is the first song I've heard used in
anything but a sad montage in ages.
The driver takes a child out of the
back seat of the car and carefully carries him into the house. Maybe
the party was somewhere else, and he's coming home from it? The guy
makes the mistake of closing the door without locking it, almost as
if he thinks he lives in a safe part of America, or something! Fool,
this is Criminal Minds - no part of America is safe! The guy puts the
kid to bed, but then he's woken up by a noise from his closet!
The kid runs into his dad's bedroom to
hide from the closet monster, which doesn't bother the father at all!
So he turns off the light and goes to bed. Then a killer clown slides
out from under the bed and looks at the camera!
No, seriously. That happens.
So yeah, this has to be a Matt Gubler
episode. It's weird, but for a show about serial killers, he's the
only one who cares at all about horror movies.
Garcia has facts to offer! The killer
clown has killed two guys in two states (apparently the kid is fine),
and after beating both men to death, he sliced open their cheeks to
give them permanent smiles, Joker-style!
Then we get the report from the kid -
his dad was killed by a clown! But the kid is only like five, so
they're not ready to take that literally just yet.
We skip the flight scene, which is a
little weird, and head straight to Oklahoma where the last crime was
committed! I hope the guy hasn't already moved on to another state,
the way he did after the last murder, or this is going to be a waste
of fuel!
Reid and Emily go to check in with the
sheriff, and learn that he was the one who found the kid hiding in
his room! That's going to be a rough one to get over. Hopefully
they're not chasing this kid down in fifteen years. More importantly,
the credits finally get to director, and yes, it's a Matt Gubler
episode, as if we needed that confirmed.
Reid goes to talk to the boy, hoping to
get some details about the attacker! The boy flashes back to the
father being murdered with a tire iron, and then tries to draw a
picture of it!
At the crime scene, JJ and Aisha notice
that the garage door has been 'jimmied' open, although it's not clear
what they mean by that. Aren't garages normally locked using a
central handle that you have to turn to retract bars from slots at
the side? I'd believe one could be easily picked, but the idea that
you could use a pry bar to force a garage door open seems like a
stretch.
Garcia has found a good lead! The
killer robbed three houses before the murders started, carving clown
faces into the front doors as a signature to let people know he'd
been there! He stopped carving doors when he started carving faces,
it seems. Then, we get as bad a production error as the show has ever
featured. Check this out:
Also, there's a conflict with the
dialogue, which states that the crimes all took place along
Interstate 385, until the killer headed east after entering Oklahoma,
but the map on the wall behind them-
Shows the first murder taking place not
in Campo, which is just a wide spot in the road on I385, but rather
in Kim, Colorado which is more than an hour away.
Just unbelievably sloppy work all
around, people.
Speaking of maps, the killer has one as
well! He's drawn clown faces on all the places where he's committed
crimes! Also, he's got a list of tour dates for a circus! Probably
not a circus he's currently associated with, because all of the dates
we see are in July, and this episode is set in February. I can't
imagine many circuses touring Colorado in the dead of winter.
That's right, this is the second killer
clown in the show's history! I don't know if the first one
technically counts, though, since it was supposed to be a killer
santa.
We get some facts about the first
murder - just before being killed, the man was nearly in a car
accident, and the driver of the other vehicle freaked out and started
screaming at him. Could this have triggered the clown's violent rage?
He didn't mention a clown, but it's not like he'd have to dress like
that 24/7.
The team gets ahold of the kid's
drawing of the killer, and it's a clown! They act like this is
confirmation that the kid wasn't just talking about a figurative
killer clown. Which they somehow thought was a possibility, even
though the victim had white greasepaint on his fingers from when he
fought the clown.
That night, a family comes home late,
and since Garcia's map from the future already told us that the
mother and father will be killed and the children left alone, let's
move on!
When walking out of the crime scene, JJ
and Matt observe that the mother must have been collateral damage
when she tried to save her husband. It's weird that she would think
that, though, since in both previous cases of murder, the fathers
were the only parents around, so you have no data on which to base
the idea that he doesn't want to kill the mothers.
They talk a little about love maps, and
the possibility that the killer is reflecting his own scarred face on
the fathers, but then some real evidence turns up, in the form of a
neighbour who saw a clown run out of the house and get into a van
driving by another person! See what happens when you investigate
instead of brainstorm?
We head over to the killers, who
discover that they're trapped in the town by a roadblock! The driver
is annoyed that the decision to stay in the same town is likely going
to get them caught, while the clown does have the scarred face that
JJ predicted! Also, the driver doesn't know about the murders, he
just thinks they're doing home invasions. Neither character is played
by a recognizable genre celebrity, which is weird for a Gubler
episode.
At the hospital, Reid tries to offer
some grief counseling info to the mother about how to help the boy,
but it boils down to 'live in denial as long as possible', so it's
probably not great advice.
The team offers the profile, but as
usual, it's just a rehash of things they've already said - other than
the accurate age guess, which is based on zero information. Then they
get word that someone reported seeing the killers' van, and the team
rushes out there to go searching for it!
Weirdly, we then cut to three kids
breaking into a graveyard for some reason! I know kids like to do
late night adventures, but this is a very small city, and there was a
brutal murder last night, so it seems like parents would be better at
maintaining curfews. Also, it's way past these kids' bedtimes. The
murdered family only got home after ten PM, and this is at least two
hours later - so it's after midnight on a school night, and kids are
running around in a graveyard? That seems fairly ridiculous!
Hey, remember when I used to point out
that episodes set in places like Oklahoma and Colorado in February
had shockingly small amounts of snow in them? Good times.
Anyhoo, the kids see a balloon in the
graveyard, and they're attacked by two clowns! But it turns out it
was just kid prank clowns, not the killers. Back at the station, Matt
asks the prank clown if he knows anything about the murders, but he
claims not to know anything. This was a useful diversion!
Then we see the driver with his family
in a motel! Wait, they're staying in a motel? Presumably with the van
parked outside? How have they not been caught yet? There are only ten
motels in the entire city, 8 of them on a short stretch of road along
the interstate. It would take an hour for the police to check all of
them and find the van they're looking for.
The point of the scene is that the
driver sees a bit of news footage about the dead families, and
realizes that he's been working with a murderer! But what is he going
to do about it? Probably go and talk to the killer, which is maybe
the dumbest thing you could do in that situation.
He does, in fact, go out to see the clown, whose van is parked in the motel lot. Seriously, how have they not been caught yet? The driver demands that they stop being criminal partners, and asks for his half of the money. The killer says that he lost it all gambling, but they can get even with a big score tonight! He also promises not to kill anyone else. This is not a believable promise.
We get a brief check-in at the
hospital, where the kid remembers that the clown was wearing denim,
then it's off to the new house, which the killers attempt to rob in
broad daylight! Obviously the homeowner is there, and pulls a
shotgun, which winds up being used against him!
In the next scene we find out he wasn't
killed, though - just injured, and the killers ran off. I guess this
is why Garcia's future map listed just this address, and not the name
of a person who was killed there.
Okay, something amazing happens now. I
want to make it clear that, within the narrative of the show, we are
currently 48 hours past finding out that the killer was clown-themed.
It's only at this point, when Eric shows up and announces that the
greasepaint was high-quality stage makeup that they consider the
possibility that the killers are dressing up as clowns because that's
their profession, and have Garcia start looking for circus work in
the area around the murders.
I don't want to harp on this too much, but how was their first guess not 'look into people who work in the clowning field during the summers'? That's still not the search they do, however - instead Emily asks Garcia to check if there are any traveling Carnivals near where the murders were, assuming that the killers were working at them. I mean, obviously the answer is no, it's February, but let's see what she manages to come up with!
Then it's back to the motel, where the
killers still haven't been caught somehow! The cops know that they've
only gotten to town three days ago, and can assume that they don't
live in the area, and now there's even video footage of them from the
last house they attacked. Yet they haven't been arrested. Oy.
The killers have a falling-out! It
turns out they're brothers, and that's why the driver feels like he
has to look out for his psycho clown partner!
Thankfully, Garcia isn't able to find
any carnivals in the area, but then Emily remembers that the kid said
the killer smelled like horses, and they realize that rodeo clowns
are also a thing! There's a rodeo that night, so JJ and Matt head to
the fairgrounds to look for their killers! Matt worries that it's
going to take forever, because rodeos employ hundreds of people.
Sure, Matt, that's true, but how many clowns do they employ?
The Rodeo Owner immediately recognizes
the killers, giving the team their names and everything! He says
they've been banned because the killer is a psycho who keeps trying
to slash people's faces, but maybe they're working at a dangerous,
unregulated rodeo!
That's exactly what they're doing, as
we learn when we see the driver and his wife headed out into the
middle of nowhere! He just wants to pick up a few dollars so he can
head to Florida and get away from it all! Obviously that's not going
to go well.
While the driver is working at the
rodeo, the killer comes to attack his wife, who's waiting out in the
van! Then the son sees him, so he stops the attack, because he
doesn't want to be thought of as a bad person!
The team rushes out to the ranch where
the rodeo is being held, just as the killer pulls a gun on the owner
and tries to rob him! The driver stops him, grabs his gun, and
prepares to shoot the killer, but then the team talks him out of it.
THE END
Then we get a scene at the police
station, where the driver's son colours pictures with the dead guy's
son! Hey, what about the two kids of the next family? They're never
mentioned again, obvs.
Then we get a scene where the driver
tells his family to go to Florida without him, because he's going to
be in jail for a decade, and it'll ruin their lives if they stick
around. Good call, dude! About time you made one!
1 - Was profiling in any way helpful in
solving the crime?
Nope. No way to put a good spin on
this. It wasn't.
2 - Could the crime have been solved
just as easily using conventional police methods given the known
facts of the case?
They knew that the killers were
transients getting around town in a van. They could have found that
van at the motel with no trouble at all.
So, on a scale of 1 (Dirty Harry) to 10
(Tony Hill), How Useful Was Profiling in Solving the Crime?
1/10 - Such a weak outing, enlivened
only by Matt Gubler's love of staging horror setpieces! He only did
two of them, and the episode was largely a drama about stupid
criminals being bad at their jobs, but still, his passion for the
genre shone through!
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