The episode beings with a masked man
graffito-tagging a wall while a guy lies nearby, bound and gagged!
The killer then hoists his victim up against the wall, places a giant
comedy mousetrap around him and sets it off, so the bar hits him in
the stomach. Obviously a mouse trap this big couldn't function, so
this obviously couldn't be fatal, but I guess we're just supposed to
assume that it is?
So the criminal is a comedy street
artist/performer? That's a weird way to go, show.
Aisha is busy listening to her therapy
tapes with one her serial killer patients, as she tries to dig into
what internal processes made him feel like he had to kill. He's
evasive, and unwilling to ascribe any particular motive to his
actions, beyond kind of passively wanting to do them. So...
delusional, or a liar?
She goes home to talk to her fiancee,
who's been waiting up for her! She talks about how her work with
interviewing inmates is vitally important, because it will bring
profiling 'to the next level', whatever that means. Her fiancee says
he's leaving her, because all she has time for is work. Which is
true. Like, Aisha, the interviews don't help anything, and you're
already spending your days on casework. How can you work two jobs and
expect to still have a relationship?
Aisha says that he's being terrible by
not continuing to work on the relationship, but obviously they'd
previously talked about her working too much, or he wouldn't be
acting like this. I feel like Aisha's probably the problem in this
relationship, exactly the same was Greg was when this thing happened
to him.
Proving my point, Aisha goes to work
the next day and makes a joke about her fiancee leaving her! Yeah, so
you got into this field of study because you were already screwed up,
right? It's really starting to look that way.
Garcia lays out the case - the killer
is Banksy! The victim was a community figure who was pretending to be
against gentrification, but was secretly taking bribes! So Banksy, or
a guy effectively pretending to be him, decided to kill the guy to
make a point!
But how do you find a killer who's
famous for his anonymity? I don't know, call his art agent or the
documentarians who made a movie about him?
I know I'm talking about this killer as
if he's actually Banksy, rather than the show's fake version of him,
but since the show is capitalizing on the idea of Banksy, I think
that it's fair game.
Speaking of Banksy, he sneaks into a
house in the middle of the afternoon and steals a baby!
The episode opens with cuts between
some teens getting murdered in a diner while Garcia describes it.
They were shot to death and then the place was set on fire! This
happened outside Las Vegas, NM and the team is working on it because
unlike in the crime it was based on (Las Cruces Bowling Alley
Massacre), this is the second crime committed with this exact MO.
Robbery, sexual assault on female victims, executions, arson.
We're in for a yucky week, folks.
Especially since the last gap between crimes was 6 years, but
presumably this time it will be 20 hours!
Then we cut back to the crime again,
and see that bikers were the killers! Then the show cuts to inside
the diner where the fire is set, and focuses on the face of a
teenaged girl with a bullethole in her forehead! Because the makers
of Criminal Minds hate decency and humanity!
The episode opens in a bridal shoppe
where a photographer chats with one of the women who works there. A
wedding party comes in, and he offers his services - he winds up
being invited to the bachelorette party at a bar that night, which
doesn't please the store's employee!
We cut over to Derek, who's doing some
kind of a 'helping kids' thing with a guy who's probably a real-life
football player. Then he's called in for a case - I can only assume
this is another one so urgent it has to ruin his weekend!
In the office, Greg updates Garcia and
Derek about the assassin from the season opener - he's still refusing
to talk about the 'dirty dozen' victims that his League is targeting.
You know, it's possible that he was just lying because he was pissed
about being caught. This is a guy who was self-destructively
theatrical, remember?
Garcia is worried that they won't be
able to find the targets in time - of course they won't, they're not
good at their job - but Derek reassures her, based on their terrible
history of failing to save more than 50% of the people targeted by
killers after the team has started hunting them.
It seems that in Savannah, two brides
in the past few months have been murdered on the night of their
bachelorette parties, had their 'bride to be' sashes wrapped around
their heads, and their bodies tossed in dumpsters!
Confusing the timeline some, we then
see the bride from the visit to the shop get murdered by someone
large enough to carry her body away. He's able to attack her because
she wandered out of the bar alone, and drunk. Is that something
brides-to-be do? I've never been to a bachelorette party, but do
brides generally go wandering off on their own while drunk?
Is this something that could
realistically happen three times in just a couple of months, all in
the same city?
Also, is the team already in Savannah
at this point? It was the middle of the afternoon when they came in
for the table scene, and Savannah's like a one hour-flight, and since
this woman isn't murdered until that night, it would be weird if we
did a plane scene after the opening credits.
Out in an arid waste somewhere, a guy
hurriedly digs at the dry earth, presumably to bury the body lying
next to him! He`s doing it with a tiny shovel insuffiecient for the
task, so this is presumably not a well-planned crime.
Then it's over to Los Angeles, where
Cho from The Mentalist (Tim Kang, looking weirdly doughy, presumably
because he's playing a shaken dude), the man who was burying that
body earlier, is sitting in a parking lot, looking at a bus! He gets
a call from his wife, who's asking where he is! He responds, asking
if she's on 'the bus', and she says that she's not, and badgers him
to get into work.
They're having trouble because she
cheated on him and then got a promotion! Is that her lover that he
killed? More importantly, was he planning to blow up that bus,
assuming she'd be on it, and now a bunch of people are going to die
for no reason at all, rather than just a bad one?
Cho watches the bus leave and at the
next stop the bus doesn't, hitting the curb and almost running into
the people waiting for it! It seems everyone on the bus is dead,
foaming at the mouth! Oh, so Cho put a gas bomb on the bus and then
set it to trigger right after his stop for some reason! Weird that he
wouldn't set it to trigger at the stop he was waiting at, so he could
confirm his wife's death. Or, like, stalk the bus station where she
catches the bus, and only trigger it when she saw her get on.
What a terrible plan this was!
Over in Quantico, we see Aisha and Reid
talking about weirdos she counseled while trying to understand the
criminal mind! Then the team hears about the bus attack, and they
rush from the plane. The Om Shinrikio cult is mentioned in passing,
because of the subway attacks. What isn't mentioned is why the team
is being sent on this case, rather than the FBI's huge
counterterrorism organization.
Of course, I didn't point that out
during the bus bombings back in season 1, so it looks like I missed
my chance!
Cho gets to his desk, and everyone in
the office is staring that the wall-mounted TV - the bus poisoning is
all over the news! No one thinks Cho is any more nervous and shady
than normal, though, so he's not immediately suspected.
Then he gets a text from someone
mysterious on his computer - it say "I KNOW WHAT YOU DID" -
damn, looks like Cho's in a world of trouble!
The episode opens in Seattle, Washington as action-packed music plays! Will we jump in on a footchase? If not, this is badly-wasted music. It is, in fact, wasted - we just find two cops arriving at a meth lab. Yawn. They find a dead body at the crime scene with ridiculous black and white face paint. The cop is happy to assume that it's an OD, but Joe strides in and announces that it's murder!
The whole scene is set up to establish why the BSU are the best, because Joe was able to link this case to one in Albany, New York the previous day. Except, you know, the detectives are just arriving at the crime scene. Which, given that it's a drug lab, would be fairly high priority, so the beat cops must have been there just an hour or two earlier - how on earth did info about the specific face paint already get into the kind of national database that would be required for VICAP to notice it and Garcia to inform the team?
Not to mention how long it takes for Joe to actually fly out there. I mean, maybe he was visiting his daughter in San Francisco when he got the call, but still, there's no way he could possibly be there this fast.
A theory confirmed by the fact that Derek is also there. Yeah, their appearance at this crime scene makes zero sense. Oh, and they found a giant syringe that the killer used on his victim, then left behind for some reason.
They immediately fly back to Quantico for a meeting - they acknowledge that they're two profilers down, so this will be harder than usual. Because, you know, the quickest way to solve a complex, multilayered problem is to throw a bunch of people with the exact same skillset at it. Also, I guess JJ is on maternity leave?
Do you think they're ever going to mention her PTSDing so hard that she murdered a guy ever again?
Then Joe says something that makes me super-sad-
No offense intended, but Garcia isn't a 'brain' in the way you mean it. She's a database. Well, technically she knows how to work a database, but that's it. There's no reason to have her in the room with you, looking over files. Right now she should be scanning travel records to find anyone who could have gone from Albany to LA and committed the murders with that incredibly tight timeline.
Meanwhile, in a basement somewhere, a man loads a pistol! Then a blonde woman comes downstairs, looking for him. She offers him a manilla envelope she was told to bring, and then he lets her leave! Notably, his disguise is a black scarf pulled up to his nose, which obscures the bottom half of his face, and mirrors the makeup that he put on his victims, which had blacked-out skin below the nose, and a white mask-like effect above!
The woman goes upstairs and freaks out - why does she have a murderer living in her basement if she's obviously not happy about it? Does she owe money to the mob or something?
The killer uses a fingerprint scanner to open a briefcase and looks over his murder tools, which include more of the horse syringes from earlier! Why leave that at the crime scene? Do you want to get caught? Although he's going out of his way to link two crimes from opposite sides of the country with the face makeup thing, so maybe yes, he does want to get caught?
The episode opens just where the last one left off, with Love's daughter and her idiot friend getting abducted! Seriously, woman, you went to meet this guy without confirming he even exists? You all have videophones and laptops; you could have demanded a video chat with him at some point before meeting him in an alley.
Meg and Idiot start to get suspicious about the creepy situation, and when they try to escape the van, they're grabbed by the goon hiding in the back seat! God, if this organization is just a single family, I'm going to be very, very annoyed.
Meg managed to text most of her emergency code to Love, and she immediately checks with Idiot's mother! The girls are officially missing, so Love goes to Garcia to start an immediate phone trace! Hilariously, when Love walks into the room and demands that Garcia track Meg and Idiot's cell phones, Garcia instantly does it without having to ask for either of their numbers! Creepy, Garcia!
They unleash all of the surveillance abilities of the FBI to track the two girls down! And Love announces that she's not going home to wait for a kidnapping call, she's going to be working the case, while seven months pregnant!
The episode opens with a kid in a hoodie running through a damp parking lot! You know, last episode I pointed out that it never rains on Criminal Minds, but conversely, whenever they shoot at night on a road, it's always just stopped raining! If you've ever noticed constantly wet streets in night scenes of movies and television, there's actually a reason for it - dry black pavement kind of sucks up light and looks ugly as heck, so dousing the streets with water right before rolling the cameras creates a nice reflective surface for the fake moonlight to bounce off of!
Where were we? Yes, sprinting! He's running away from a cop car, and hides in an alley, just out of sight! Things aren't looking good for him either, because he's got blood on his hands! When the guy gets back to his apartment, he runs into a young woman on crutches, and asks to see her mother. The mother asks Danny (because that's his name) what's going on with the bloody hands and frantic look?
We cut away before getting an answer - to a woman running through the woods, glancing backwards! But it's obviously just JJ, so we know there's no reason to be scared. Yup, she's doing a morning jog with Derek! Naturally, they get a call about a case.
In the past three days, there have been three murders in Hollywood! The previous night a man and his sex worker were shot while they were sitting in his car! Somebody had a lot of bullets, and felt they all belonged in their faces. Ick.
Two days prior, a banker was also shot in a luxury car with the same gun! What's the connection, other than people in fancy cars getting shot on skid row? Actually, you know, what? That's a pretty good connection. Carry on.
At his apartment, Danny is a mess. Blood-soaked shirt, gun on the table, drinking straight booze to comfort his terrible headache - yet for some reason the lady on crutches drops by to give him a head massage! That's a good friend, people.
A good friend who's putting him up to murder, I guess? He talks about missing his mother, and the lady explains that he's going to have to keep going out until he gets the guy! I'm intrigued to see where this is going!
The episode opens on a dark and stormy night, as a man in one of the Quantico interrogation cells - wait, why would an FBI training facility have interrogation cells? How is this the first time I'm noticing how weird that is? Anyhow, the guy is claiming that he's innocent of whatever he's been accused of. Greg enters to talk to Mr. Merrin, as he's named, and confirms that he's been read his rights.
Greg confirms that the guy knows where he is, and he does, but he doesn't know why. Is this a case of multiple personalities? They don't go to that well very often, so this could be refreshing! Greg asks him to tell the story of what happened two nights ago, and he does!
We're into a flashback immediately, where Merrin's wife tells him to check downstairs because she heard a noise. He did, and remembered smelling burning sage and seeing a demon crawl out of a closet! How is this not the Halloween episode?
One demon runs upstairs to murder his wife, while another dragged him away when he tried to save her! Greg is obviously not persuaded by this story of a murderous shadow monster. By the time he got upstairs his wife had been slashed to death! He claims he passed out, and when he woke up, the cops had him under arrest! Greg explains that this isn't the truth - he just stabbed his wife to death with a kitchen knife!
He's got scratches on his chest from where she tried to stop him and everything - the neighbours heard the screams and called the cops, who found him with the knife still in his hand. This is pretty open and shut, but he seems genuinely confused by it!
Things get crazy a moment later, when Greg pulls out a file - two other people claim to have been attacked by a shadow monster! One stabbed his mother, the other her boyfriend! Is this drugging, mass hysteria, or an amazing plan three people cooked up to get away with murder!
Greg's theory? There's a killer out there who can trigger psychotic breaks in people! But is that even possible? Hopefully we'll find out after the credits!
The episode opens with an old-time recording of Jingle Bells being played as the camera takes in a well-appointed house full of antiques, ending on a push into a family portrait where pointedly zero people are smiling.
We then see that the furniture has been upset by a struggle! The cops enter, are startled by a cat, and then notice the blood trail that the cat left on the carpet! They follow it into the dining room, where the family's mother, grandmother, and two of the children have been tied up and slaughtered at the dining room table!
Then it's over to Greg's house, where he's thanking his sister-in-law for looking after a field trip after his day off was canceled by this brutal mass murder! He notices that she's troubled by something, but is too preoccupied to do anything about it! Has she finally decided - after five years - that being a live-in nanny to her nephew isn't a fulfilling life, or is something else going on?
In the briefing room, they do a virtual walkthrough of the crime scene for some reason. Like, I have no idea why they're doing this. Bethesda is a one hour drive from Quantico if you have the ability to run sirens, which they do. What could possibly be so time-sensitive that they need a video feed right now?
It's not like they're deciding whether or not to take the case - the mother of the family was an heiress, obviously they've been called in. Why aren't they already there? Unless they want to do a jump scare where they see something surprising through the video feed? Of course, that can't happen, because they'd have secured the house before phoning the FBI.
Oh my god, that's exactly what happens. The other son runs through the back of the frame and is tackled by the cops, so they can do a found footage thing where the camera is kicked and suddenly we go to a snowy screen! Because that's a thing that still exists.
So, anyhow - family murdered at a dinner table, son as a suspect, Holiday music in the background - I'm calling it now, this is an adaptation of the book Scavenger, which I have a very complicated relationship with. Seriously... it's... troubling. Then again, this could be a complete coincidence, because the father wasn't also killed, and I was so traumatized by Scavenger that I'm seeing it everywhere!
Let's find out if it's a rip-off, after the credits!
A family gets off a plane somewhere, excited about their vacation! The father is somewhat famous actor Tom Everett Scott! The miss the last shuttle to the resort of the night, but just after it leaves a mysterious man in an unlicensed shuttle shows up! This wouldn't bode well, even if this wasn't an episode of Criminal Minds.
The driver gives them all some drugged water, and they promptly fall asleep! It turns out they were from DC originally, and that's why the team will be involved!
Okay, it turns out that this is the backdoor pilot for the Gary Sinese spin-off, because the next shot is him training in the FBI's famous shooting range. No, not the Hogan's Alley thing, just a regular shooting range.
He gets a text on his phone - the Aruba killer has returned! Gary and Esai (who we haven't seen in AGES) go to talk with Greg and Joe about helping out with the case in the Barbados!
Then we meet Lambert (Breaking Bad's Anna Gunn!), the woman in charge of Gary's team - it seems to be her job to deal with the thorny legal issues of the FBI working abroad! They call Matt, the team's Asian guy - specialty yet to be announced, and tell him to meet them at the airstrip! It's all hands on deck, people! Some of the team will search the house in Virginia to see if there's evidence that he's stalking them before they go on vacation, the rest will go to Barbados! They've got two full teams, isn't it worth also double-checking that there isn't more evidence at the sites of his other murders, Florida and Aruba?
Also, you don't need an excuse for Love to stay in DC. We know she's not going on a plane to Barbados, she's five months pregnant. Just have her work the phones on something. Especially since this family couldn't have been pre-targeted. They were only grabbed by complete chance when they were too late out of the airport to catch the official resort shuttle - something the killer couldn't have possibly arranged or planned on.
That's the killer's MO - he kidnaps American families on vacation, kills them, and dumps their bodies! But why, and for what reason?
Oh, and Garcia asks if 'Monty' will be on the case, since she's going to need some help! Wow, they listened to the people who complained about how putting her on the previous spin-off made the show feel too much like a second hour of Criminal Minds every week, and actually got them their own tech person?
Wait, did they listen to me? No, I'm sure everyone made that exact same complaint.
Sucks that Xander couldn't pick up that job, though.
Down in Barbados, the family is being held in a garage somewhere! The father is dragged off by the killer!
Speaking of Barbados, that's a Caribbean island, which makes it weird that at the start of the episode the father promised a mile-long lazy river and 'roaring rapids'. I checked, and there's no hotels with the kind of giant water parks on the island like the one he's describing. Also, Barbados has a giant international airport that huge planes land on, it's not a tiny regional airport as suggested by the show.
Also, all of the resorts are on the southern shore, near the airport, and there's no possible reason to have to drive through a forest to get to any of them. Gosh, this episode is getting everything about Barbados wrong! I wonder if it's going to get better from here?
The episode opens with a woman walking down a tunnel and then disappearing through a door - this becomes security footage, and we're told that the woman is a congressman's wife, and she's been missing for twelve hours! She left lunch with her husband, and then mysterious disappeared!
The congressman shows up, and the show is weirdly coy about announcing what party he's from. When listing his enemies, he says that the oil lobby is after him, as is the NRA and PETA. He describes this as being a 'equal-opportunity offender', which is kind of hilarious. You're obviously a Democrat, dude. They wouldn't let you into the Republic Party if you're against guns or oil. As for PETA, they hate basically every elected politician other than Corey Booker. And that's just a guess because he's vegan. They might hate him too, though. It's hard to tell with them.
Of course, it's doubtful that this is related directly to lobbying interests, because this isn't an episode of Scandal or Damages, people don't get kidnapped and murdered to make sure a bill passes.
Garcia drops in with some info - the Library of Congress' video setup was hacked and the footage set to loop - so someone with expertise had planned her disappearance! Of course, that someone had to have known her exact planned route leaving lunch with her husband, so they'd have to be very close. Was she in on it?
I'm worried that they're going to drop the surveillance angle, though, since they have Garcia say that it 'wouldn't take a lot of brainpower' to get into the DC Metro's surveillance system and loop the video. Which is, of course, ridiculous. You'd have to be incredibly skilled at computer hacking to get into a system like that and make the changes without anyone detecting them as they were happening, and you'd have to be even better to do without leaving a trace for Garcia to follow. I'm guessing the show just doesn't want us to think about that, though, so let's move on.
The news has been tipped off about the kidnapping - but by whom? JJ arrives with the last phone message that the wife left - she was calling a lawyer, and we hear her saying 'what are you doing - let go of me!' Unfortunately they don't let us know when this phone call was made, so we can't easily compare it to when she was last seen.
Also, no one has mentioned the GPS in her phone, and how vital it is to know when and where it was shut off.
CR
The team ponders how a woman could have been abducted from the Library of Congress, although they haven't established that she was, since they gave us no info about the call times. Let's say she was, though, that still makes Reid's comment about it being easier to grab someone from a public place kind of silly. He says that if she was drugged it would just look like family members helping a sick person out of the building.
Except no, it absolutely wouldn't. First off, we heard her yell and struggle on the phone call. Secondly, DC government buildings are swarming with police and security all the time. They've been hyper-vigilant since a certain event involving a plane and a pentagonally-shaped building. If the woman was awake at all, the security forces would have seen her struggling, if she was asleep and being dragged, they would have intervened to get medical attention. This isn't a carnival somewhere - this is the Library of Congress.
The only possible way to get it done is if she's still inside the building - every exit is guarded in a meaningful way, so unless all the guards were in on it, this kidnapping couldn't have happened the way the characters are assuming it was.
Greg goes over the congressman's voting record. Is his opposition to fracking causing the oil companies to turn to kidnapping? Obviously not, that would be insane. They announce they're going to bring his family into protective custody - this includes his mother, and his brother, who has lived with her since he got out of rehab. Oh, a dirtbag brother? Will that come up again, or is it just a red herring?
Joe calls in with a lead from organized crime! Russian mobsters were planning a kidnapping today, but there were no specifics on the wiretaps, so the FBI didn't know who to warn? So, wait, it was large burly Russian guys trying to drag a woman out of the Library of Congress? How would that have been possible?
Also, I just looked up the Library of Congress, and - no surprise - they have no public parking. So how did these guys get the woman out of there? There's no street parking at any time, there are gatehouses with guards, and again - no one would put up with you dragging a lady down thirty steps, then shoving her into a stopped car. None of this could have happened like we're being told.
The team recognizes that the Russian connection is their best lead yet, so Reid goes to talk to the agent they have surveilling the operation. Reid is the natural choice to help out, since he has a good memory and speaks Russian, in fact, the local agent says it's a waste for him to have come if he doesn't, suggesting that all the mobsters speak Russian on the phone to each other all the time - which makes it a little hilarious that we already heard two guys speaking English to each other in thick Russian accents.
You don't care about basic consistency at all, do you, Criminal Minds?
Also, just to be a dick, when Reid finds out that the agent is reading Great Expectations for the first time, he spoils the ending for her. You're the worst, Reid.
Joe goes to check on the congressman, who thinks that if he'd just walked his wife to the car and gotten her a cab, this wouldn't have happened! Joe tells him not to beat himself up, but he's not good at comforting people.
Why is no one asking who knew the wife's schedule? This kidnapping would have had to have been extensively planned. There's no way to follow and grab her in the congressional tunnels, meaning they'd have to know exactly where she was planning to leave and when - this requires a minute-perfect understanding of her movements that a couple of Russian mobsters wouldn't have access to - even if the rest of the plan made sense, which is absolutely doesn't.
JJ takes the mother and brother to a secure room, and the brother is weirdly jittery, announcing that he's got a soup kitchen he's supposed to be volunteering at. Also, he's got massive scars on one side of his face. What's going on with this guy? While the mother talks about what a great marriage the couple has, the brother is a sarcastic dick the entire time, and shows no concern whatsoever about the possibility that his sister-in-law has been kidnapped and possibly murdered. Time to get this guy alone for an interview, I'm guessing.
It's almost comedic how shifty they're making the brother - as if the script said that he wasn't able to meet anyone's gaze, and the actor decided to take that as literally as possible. In almost every shot of the guy he makes a point of turning his face away from someone.
At the deer blind, Reid watches the cleaning lady make a phone call home, and the show does something a little clever! By focusing on Reid, they let us know that we're going into his head, and then the audio fades from an African language to accented English. So when we next hear the mobsters we can assume that they're actually speaking Russian, and Reid is just translating for us. Doesn't explain that first scene, though.
The Russians say that they'll be needed very soon, and have to be ready with a truck to go to the 'office'. Instead of immediately calling their superiors to get them ready to tail the vehicles, Reid and the Agent chat about languages and coffee for a few seconds. Then the show cuts away, making them look terribly unprofessional.
Back at the office, Derek reports that gun lobbyists claim that they don't bother with first-term congressmen like the victim's husband. Which is kind of a crazy thing to say - even if the NRA didn't aggressively go after every anti-gun measure at every level of government all the time, the phrasing makes it sound like the NRA is saying that the guy wasn't important enough to have his wife kidnapped, but they'd totally do it if he was more prominent. Which might not be the best message to be sending, lobbyists. The phrasing is even more hilarious, because Derek says he doubts that they'd use the Russian mob if they were involved - because he figures they could get plenty of local crazies to do it, I suppose?
Do the show's producers realize just how anti-NRA this episode just became?
Things get even dumber, though, when we get this exchange, which we'll have to take on step-by-step:
First off, oil isn't 'slimy'; that suggests a level of viscosity that oil doesn't possess. Moreover, your idea about motive doesn't make sense. The guy is against US domestic oil and gas production. Russia is a major exporter of oil and gas. If they want anything at all, it's for there to be less oil and gas production in America, so that prices will rise and they'll make more money. Yes, Russians have involved themselves in American politics recently, but it's not to get Americans to drill for more oil, it's to remove sanctions so that American Mega-Corporations can help them get more oil out more cheaply and efficiently. An anti-fracking bill covering the west coast would be the best possible thing for Russia.
Just then, a reporter appears, demanding an interview with the congressman in exchange for the ransom video she just received? Greg threatens her, but doesn't just take the video and arrest her, since she's actually committing a crime.
The video is simple - wire 20 Million Dollars to a bank account or she'll be killed at midnight!
The bank routing number is in a Cypriot bank that Russians use to launder money! There's some discussion about why anyone would think that the Congressman has 20 million dollars to turn over - perhaps it's because there was a recent announcement that he has a campaign 'war chest' of 50 million dollars? The team brings up the important point - who would be smart enough to engineer a preposterous kidnapping, but dumb enough to think that a politician can pay ransoms with campaign money? Is there something else going on here?
The Congressman is flustered and has no idea what do to - but Greg has a plan! It's to ask for proof of life and to have the kidnappers phone for purposes of negotiation. So his plan is to do exactly what the kidnapping negotiation handbook tells you to do?
Wow. Much professional. Such FBI.
Then it's over to the interview with the Congressman, who breaks down in his interview with the sleazy reporter.
Over at the deer blind, Garcia calls in with some info - the crook they're watching is a brutal murderer! Yeah, no shock there. Reid asks her to check his communication since he arrived in Washington two years ago - whoever talked to him most and helped him out would likely be the "Uncle" he referred to on the call, since "Uncle" is frequently used as an honorific for any senior member of a crime family.
After the broadcast about the 20 million dollar ransom goes out there's some chatter at the deer blind. It seems the kidnappers - that's right, the Russians were involved, this wasn't a red herring - only thought that the ransom was going to be two million, and they're feeling betrayed! This can't go well for anyone!
Back at the office, Love wins a Prentiss Award for this line:
She's absolutely right, of course. Why am I giving her the Prentiss Award for saying something correct? Because it's so obvious that it shouldn't have had to be said aloud. Anyone with the most basic understanding of the concepts of supply and demand knows this. Yet there she stands, holding a legal pad and pen, as if she's been crunching the numbers and has just proven that if there's less oil and gas on the market, then prices will go up!
Dear god, this show.
The kidnappers call in to demand the money, but when they put the wife on to talk, it's through a voice changer, and she isn't able to answer a simple question about their first date - so is the wife even alive at all? According to Love, the call was routed through Chechnya, so it couldn't be traced!
The team goes over the wording of the note to see if they can glean any info from it. Damn, if only Jeanne hadn't quit the team, she could have solved this in a second! I'm kidding, of course, she was never useful.
They notice that the kidnappers mentioned the Congressman's family, and referred to the original amount as 'pocket change'. Was the scummy brother in on the plan, and that's why he's so shifty all the time? Turns out that the brother recently went to jail for trying to rob the restaurant he worked at - he was going to use the money to pay back Russian drug dealers he owed money to!
This is a good lead, but why didn't they have it yet?
Like, the moment you found out the Congressman's wife had been kidnapped, shouldn't doing a background check on everyone involved have been your first priority?
They go to the brother and demand to know where he got the money to pay off the mob - was it by setting up the kidnapping? At the same time, they confront the mother, and Joe uses the word 'jealous' over and over again when he really means 'envious'. Interestingly, we learn that he got the scar when an upstairs neighbour poured a pan of boiling oil out a window. The kid was five at the time.
Was he growing up in the distant past? Who throws boiling oil out a window? Isn't this family well-to-do? Why did they have neighbours living close enough for that to happen? Is that just a story they tell because he was actually badly burned by a family member? Is his brother a monster, and this is all a plan to embezzle campaign money and disappear?
Okay, that last one's a bit of a stretch, I'll admit.
The brother claims that the Congressman paid off his drug debt, but it wasn't because he's a great guy! He actually did it because the brother threatened to reveal that he'd been cheating on his new wife with an intern, and he's actually a dirtbag!
Garcia tracks the phone call and it turns out that the call came from a warehouse abutting Rock Creek Park - perhaps not coincidentally, that's the same park that the Congressman and his wife went on a walk through on their first date, and the caller claiming to be her failed to mention that?
I guess that's why he didn't just ask her what restaurant they went to, which is a much more rational question - if he'd done that, it wouldn't have been a clue for later! Unless, you know, she was being held in a warehouse across the street from the restaurant.
The team searches the warehouse, and finds nothing but a gift laid out on a table - they wait until it's been checked to see if it's an IED, a term I still hate the sound of people using. Just say bomb. It's more honest. Finally they open it, and find a severed ear inside, with the wife's earring! But is it her ear?
Ears are as unique as fingerprints (meaning a decent amount, but not really that much), so it shouldn't be that hard to check if they've got a picture of the side of her head.
Back at the base, the team wonders what the kidnappers' game is - they could have made the call harder to track, but they wanted the team to find the earring, so they'd know who was in charge! Apparently there are no witnesses around the warehouse, either, but no one mentions the proximity between the warehouse and the park the Congressman mentioned earlier.
The intern is brought in, and before they even start talking to her, Greg and JJ go to the Congressman and accuse him of planning the kidnapping with his mistress! Weird place to jump off of, guys, but okay.
They tell two competing stories - the mistress says that they've carried on their affair for the past year, and that he said his wife would be gone soon, while the Congressman says that the intern is unstable and had been stalking him, and he only saw her the previous night because she threatened to kill herself if he didn't come over. So who's telling the truth? Psychology doesn't seem like it's getting the job done, so I guess they'll have to resort to actually investigating!
Hey, does the intern speak Russian? Just a thought.
At the duck blind, Reid overhears the mobster attempting to rape his maid, and he wants to intervene, but the agent explains that if they do that, they'll never get a lead on the kidnapping or the missile launchers that the Russians are supposedly selling!
More importantly, though, the Russian mentions that the maid doesn't smell like cleaning products as she usually does, but rather like flowers or the woods - could she have been out in the park, taking part in the kidnapping?
Has Reid figured this out? Probably not, since he doesn't know about the park.
The team meets up to look over new evidence, and Garcia has found something juicy! It seems that the Congressman bought bullets with his credit card recently, and shipped them to a post office in Virginia! But why, since no one has been shot so far? Or is it the wife or mistress framing him, since they'd both have access to his credit card information!
Before we move on to him being interviewed about this, I just wanted to say wow, Love's baby is growing fast!
She was wearing a baggy jacket all last week to conceal her stomach, so I didn't realize just how pregnant she was! Is this a situation where Love got pregnant during the season and they quickly had to write it into the show last week? Just a quick check...
Yup, she'd just had a child when she started the job, and got pregnant again during the season! Good for her!
They confront the Congressman about the gun, and he claims that he bought it to protect himself from the intern. The intern says that he's lying, so Love comes up with a plan to figure out the truth! She said that they had unprotected sex the night before, and Love says if she consents to be medically examined, they can prove it, one way or another!
More at the deer blind - they get a call to get the truck and some ski masks ready! Then they find out that the maid was hiding in the closet, listening in! This is looking bad for her!
It turns out that the intern won't be medically examined, so she might be lying! Joe checks with Reid to see if they have any way to contact the kidnappers, and just as he's doing it, the kidnappers prepare to murder the maid for eavesdropping - Reid wants to run over to attempt to save her, but we hear a gunshot!
Naturally, this was the one Russian shooting the lecherous one - as predicted, the forest smells were a big clue. He confesses to a bunch of stuff and Reid hears it all - they identify that the contact was pissed off about being asked for more money, but they're convinced that she'll pay if the wife is killed!
That's right, the person who hired the Russians is a woman! So is it the crazy stalker or the mother? Where would the stalker get a huge amount of money for a professional murder, and why would the mother want her daughter-in-law dead?
They remember that the Congressman said that his mother was a harsh monster, and they go to interview her. The theory? She thought that the woman wasn't a suitable wife for a future president, so she wanted her executed! Which was apparently going to cost two million dollars and involve a ridiculous kidnapping ruse? Couldn't they have just shot her in a parking lot and stolen her car? It's not like there was a time limit on this crime, was there?
Seriously, what was the whole kidnapping ruse meant to accomplish?
They decide to pressure the mother by threatening to arrest the Congressman. What for? Weapons possession and the intent to murder his wife. Okay, here's the thing, Greg, first off, you don't know where the gun is, so the weapons possession charge will be hard to make stick, and secondly, intending to murder your wife isn't a crime. Like, at all. This is gibberish.
Still, the threat of hurting her son's political career gets her to cave - which is weird, because the wife being kidnapped by the mother will also ruin his political career. I'm not saying she shouldn't talk, I'm just saying the there's three ways this can go - the FBI ruins his career by arresting him on bogus charges, the FBI ruins his career by arresting his mother for an elaborate kidnapping and attempted murder scheme, or they somehow get away with it by saying nothing. Why not just roll the dice and hope you get away with it, since the charges against your son won't stick anyhow?
Anyhoo, they rescue the wife, and yes, her ear was cut off. Ick.
THE END
The next day, everyone is watching the Congressman thank the FBI, and they comment that his approval ratings are up! Could he have a bright political future after all? Probably not, what with the mother going to jail for life in a giant scandal.
Over at the deer blind, Reid and the agent chat some more, and then he asks her out on a date!
There's a final scene with the Congressman, who visits with his mother! He's grateful that her plan had the intended effect of making people love him, and now he wants her help in planning the next steps of his career!
So he really was evil, after all! Are we sure he didn't burn his brother's face off as well?
1 - Was profiling in any way helpful in solving the crime?
Not really. They just surveilled the Russians until they found out that a woman paid for the kidnapping, and then looked into the two women involved in the case. Only one of them had the means to pay for the crime.
2 - Could the crime have been solved just as easily using conventional police methods given the known facts of the case?
They did.
So, on a scale of 1 (Dirty Harry) to 10 (Tony Hill), How Useful Was Profiling in Solving the Crime?
1/10 - So, this episode made no sense, huh? It's actually hard to figure out exactly what any part of the plan was. Like, why did the mobsters ask for more money? Were they planning to give the wife back if the Congressman had come up with it? They knew that it was a fake kidnapping, and the mother was going to pay them to kill the wife, so why risk screwing everything up by changing the terms of the deal?
You can say it's greed, but we're told that they changed it because they found out about his campaign money - but the mother didn't have any access to that, and they were working for the mother, not the son.
Also, let's not forget that kidnappings are much harder to get away with than murders - if the whole point of this was to get sympathy, a wife murdered in a carjacking is just as high-profile as one killed by vicious kidnappers - and it gives the cops less to investigate afterwards.
More importantly, why did they do the kidnapping in the most public place, in the most public way? Couldn't you have just grabbed or killed her in a parking lot? Or was there some cachet in kidnapping her in a way that would almost certainly have wound up with the criminals being captured?
Again, why was any of this necessary?
Absolutely nothing in this episode could have happened, and it was just a mess of an episode all around, Criminal Minds.
The episode opens with a woman jogging! Is this finally a return to the Matchmaker storyline? Maybe not, because she successfully makes it home after her jog. While she's showering, a creep sneaks into her bedroom and grabs her underwear - but how did he get into the house?
The same way every killer on Criminal Minds does? Magic?
The lady goes to bed, unaware that the killer is in the room with her! He puts on some night-vision goggles and poses with the sleeping woman, then takes out the rope he'll be using to do something to her!
We don't find out what, because we immediately cut to the next day, where Love is dealing with the continuing adventures of having a daughter who's growing up too quickly in this crazy modern world! This time, the girl has tried to do a bellybutton piercing herself, and it's causing problems! Luckily Derek's girlfriend was able to see her immediately, because she works at a hospital that takes the FBI's insurance!
Love heads out to work a case, and her daughter is left with Derek's girlfriend. Yes, girlfriend, because he somehow still hasn't proposed. Derek. Ugh. The doctor offers to counsel the daughter on how hard it is to have a loved one who's always traveling and fighting crime! What a sweet gesture!
At the office, Derek and Love talk about the trials of parenting, where Love complains that her daughter has never been 13, and she's never parented a teenager, so she doesn't know what to do! Echoing Ron Howard, Derek points out that there are literally thousands of books on parenting, but I'd go a little farther, and remind Love that she's already been a 13-year-old girl, so she should at least be able to empathize with what's happening here.
Also, it turns out that Love is pregnant, and they think that's why her daughter was piercing her bellybutton! Wow, way to make everything about you, Love.
Garcia goes over the details of the case - in the past two weeks, three women have been tied to their beds, raped, and strangled to death! That's right, the woman last night knew that two women who lived within a mile of her had been brutalized inside their own homes by a serial killer who was on the loose, yet she was still out jogging alone.
Because no one in the world of Criminal Minds takes even basic steps towards self-preservation.
The team goes over their usual wild guesses about the crime, then we gut over to the killer, who's smelling a souvenir elastic from his victims, before he's interrupted by his daughter, who needs a ride to school! He adds the elastic to the others hung around his rear-view mirror, and then they head off to face the day!
Fun fact: This episode is set in March, in Wisconsin, but all of the trees are covered in leaves!
The episode opens in a prison or mental hospital in the middle of the night. A guard wonders where one of his fellow workers has disappeared to, but doesn't seem as concerned about it as you'd think he would be. Then the guy finds a trail of blood leading into a closet! He goes to check it out without waiting for backup or turning on the lights in the room. Because he's an idiot, I guess?
The guy finds the missing guard - he's been stabbed in the neck and had a sock stuffed in his mouth. Weird!
The next day Greg and Joe field a call about the crime - this is the second such murder of a guard within three months! Wait, the guy who killed the previous guard wasn't caught? How is that possible? Are there not security cameras all around the place?
Joe asks the question, which, thanks, and the warden doesn't have much of an answer - he says that the first guard was killed during a riot, and the prisoners had briefly shut the cameras off, but that doesn't explain this second murder not being on film.
It seems that the prison is one of those awful private affairs, which is why the cameras weren't working - absolutely everything at the prison is done terribly in the hopes of maximizing profit!
So the team's going to a Texas prison! Hopefully this episode will be the scathing indictment of the prison-industrial complex that the subject deserves!
CR
On the plane, they talk about how it was almost certainly a gang that did the crimes, since the guards were overpowered and went down without any injuries suggesting a fight. A month before the murders a notable gang boss was transferred to the prison... coincidence?
Reid spouts some statistics about how private prisons are a good money-maker, and the company running this particular jail has quadrupled in size in just a couple of decades! Joe's reaction, while it's supposed to be a joke, still wins the Prentiss Award of the night:
Running a private prison is legal, Joe. It really, really, really, shouldn't be, but it is. And you're terrible at jokes. Especially since, you know, you've become a millionaire exclusively by exploiting the victims of crime.
Fun fact, the criminals who work in the prison are being paid just pennies an hour, because slavery is still legal inside of prisons!
At the prison, the team is met by the head of security and the warden. They lock their guns away, and head in to see the crime scene! Suspiciously, the head of security doesn't go with them, claiming he has things to do first. Also, he's played by William Ragsdale, star of best vampire film ever Fright Night and the titular Herman in TV's Herman's Head, the show that inspired Pixar's Inside Out!
They get a rundown of the prison - notably, cell phones don't work there. Too many people were smuggling in phones to the prisoners, so they set up some jammers!
In the morgue, they learn something interesting - in addition to the sock and neck wound, both victims had exactly seven fingers broken! Could that be significant? And why didn't they have any other defensive wounds? JJ goes to find the criminally lazy prison doctor and demand a full autopsy.
Derek and Love point out the lack of security cameras in the hallway leading up to the place where the guard's body was stuffed, and Herman explains to them that the suits in charge of the prison won't spend a dime that isn't essential, and to them, saving the lives of guards isn't essential. Of course, even if the guards don't have a union, this is the kind of massive oversight that multi-million dollar lawsuits are made of, so hopefully the team finds enough evidence to give the families of the dead guards a rock-solid case! After Herman leaves, Derek and Love bring up the previously unspoken possibility that guards could have been involved in both crimes!
Shouldn't this have been a bigger possibility from the start? I don't know about the first murder, but the second crime seems to have taken place after lights out and lockdown - so how could a group of inmates have possibly done it?
Over in the prisoner area two guys are complaining about their situation - the whole place is on lockdown until the guard's killers are caught! The old con who drops off lunches takes a moment to threaten one of the prisoners - don't tell the feds anything, or else. It's more likely that this is a contraband ring than part of the guard murders, but who knows?
Derek and Joe go to talk to the gang leader, who claims ignorance about the murders - but he has details that weren't supposed to be released outside of law enforcement, like the socks in mouths! He implies that the two dead guards were especially brutal, and no one's sad to see them go, and then we get a weird bit from Joe - he says that the gang leader should help them because he's already a snitch, and when he was convicted he turned on his compatriots to get a 'lighter sentence'. Except the guy's in jail for life+30, so he didn't get a lighter sentence, he just avoided the death penalty. So why not say that?
We get a look at the workspace within the prison - there's files stacked all over Reid's table, but I can't imagine what they're of. It's not all of the prisoners, since there's nowhere near 2000 files, but it can't be the guards, since there's way too many for that. Maybe it's every violent incident that happened in the prison in the past couple of years? There's an embarrassing montage of Reid speed-reading, the result of which is there's a prisoner who disappears from the records! Just before the first killing a prisoner stops appearing in files, but he isn't recorded as either dying or being released!
Elsewhere in the prison the threatening old con is somehow alone in the showers, enjoying a relaxing spritz. Suddenly the lights turn off, he has a sock stuffed in his mouth, and has his hands and feet bound with duct tape! So yeah, there's obviously more than one guy doing this. They don't stab him to death, though - instead they lie him under the shower and adjust the temperature behind the wall so that he'll be scalded to death! Which is one hell of an escalation.
Herman has an answer for the missing prisoner - apparently he was transferred to Florida, and record-keeping at the corporation sucks. Oh, alright then. Then they hear about the newest victim, and once again, seven of his fingers are broken! Also, he was the first victim to be raped! The team asks how he was out so late, and he's told that the guy was a snitch, so he had special privileges in the prison. Greg and Reid are forced to face up to the possibility that this newest victim was meant specifically to taunt them!
Over in the guard's locker room, one of the guards finds that a picture of his daughter has been defaced! A threat to keep quiet, no doubt!
Derek heads out of the prison to get on the phone with Garcia - I'd suggest that he should have just used a land line, but since they're prison phones, they'll all be tapped, so this is probably the best choice. She's discovered that the two dead guards had specific matching bank activity before the first one died. One would take out a certain amount of money, and like clockwork, the other would deposit it! Almost as if, she posits, they were paying off debts!
Wow, this is a ridiculous stretch. We're expected to believe that whatever kind of business these guys were doing, gambling or whatever, they always made a point to immediately deposit the money they were given in the bank, and only ever took out the exact amount they had to pay? That's just madness.
Let's say I owed a guy 400 dollars because I'd lost a bet. I'd have to take that money out of the bank, sure, but wouldn't I grab a couple of extra dollars for when I bought lunch or went to a bar? Likewise, wouldn't the other guy, being handed the money, occasionally pick up a pack of smokes and a tank of gas using the cash he was given, rather than heading straight for the bank?
If they paid each other with cheques now and again, you'd notice suspicious transactions, but supposedly most of these were cash, so why would they match up so perfectly?
Also, in a fun note for those who pay too much attention - yes, they're using the bank template I pointed out a couple of episodes ago:
But this time they've actually remembered to give the bank a fake name! They also slightly changed the formatting of the second statement to make the whole template thing less obvious!
The team breaks down the latest info - once again the lights were all turned off, and the cameras avoided. Since you need keys to access the lighting grid and the water room attached to the showers, obvious a guard must be involved. But is it a conspiracy of guards, or just that guy being threatened? Well, since the way the guy was threatened was by someone defacing a photo in a guards-only area, it's probably the conspiracy.
Then we find out that the missing prisoner used to be the cellmate of the latest victim! Also that he'd had no history of violence before coming to the prison, but after he got there he was extensively picked on by the dead guards and frequently sent to the infirmary for fighting-related injuries!
So I guess the guards are running a fight club where they bet on the various prisoners, and the missing guy died, and this is all part of a cover up? Will that be their next guess, or am I right, so they'll play it out a few more scenes?
JJ and Joe go back to the talk to the lazy doctor - apparently the missing con was regularly beaten up, and even raped one time! But he would never tell anyone who was responsible... So the team goes to talk to guys he knew - the first one says he was an alright dude, and the second turns out to be the guy that the latest victim threatened!
It seems the threatened con used to work in the library with the missing con, but he was recently reassigned by the dead guards. Suspicious! He also tells a long story about how the missing con was a great guy - so Joe confronts him with all of the disciplinary reports! Joe asks the threatened con what's really going on in the prison, but he refuses to talk. Part of the problem might be the guard standing right over Joe's shoulder - they're operating under the theory that corrupt guards are involved in the murders, right? So why not go to talk to these guys in private?
The threatened con goes back to his cell and looks at his prized possession - a copy of the Count of Monte Cristo (get it! Because he's a prisoner!) that the missing con smuggled to him from the library! Sweet of him to have done that.
In a nice note, the cover of the book is missing - books that aren't sold can be returned to publishers for a refund, but publishers generally don't want them back, so the deal is, if you tear the front cover off of a paperback and send that, they'll refund your money. As a result, no books can be legally sold without a front cover, and these coverless books are frequently donated to charities and prisons!
The team finally gets around to the possibility that the missing guy was part of a fight club that the guards are running! It's about time!
Meanwhile, Herman has two of his goons toss an inmate's cell. Is this part of a pretext to execute him and frame him for all the murders? No, it's a little more complicated! Herman gets him alone and demands to know who's working with him - so the inmate is trying to get revenge for the missing con? This is seemingly confirmed when the gang boss mentions that Herman was responsible for his disappearance!
Not psyched about having his authority questioned, Herman beats the inmate to death with a nightstick.
The team is not convinced by the setup at all - they find it weirdly convenient that the guy's cell was filled with socks, knives, and duct tape. How could he be the killer when they profiled that it was a group of people!
Except that it wasn't really the 'profile' that said that - they haven't actually done a profile yet. No, it was the fact that victims were obviously restrained by multiple killers, all of whom had access to secure areas of the prison. So how could it have been this guy?
Interestingly, the new dead inmate was in jail for a non-violent offense, and then had his sentenced increased from five years to twenty when he killed someone inside! More sudden turns towards violence - but what, specifically, was the cause?
Reid has a theory - no, more of a guess - the room that Herman was taking the inmate to is isolation cell 34 - could the seven broken fingers be a reference to that cell, since all three times it was three fingers on one hand, four on the other? If that's the case, is there some significance to that cell, which would make it the perfect place for Herman to hold his human cockfights?
Now certain that Herman is involved in a series of crimes, the team has to re-assess its plan, and call in some serious backup, since no one at the jail can be trusted! I'm kidding, of course, that would be the smart thing to do. No, instead, they just plan to keep doing interviews and hope someone talks before too many more people die.
Fantastic plan, guys.
Then we get a scene of Herman threatening to kill the nervous guard's daughter. Because we needed a second one of those to get the point, I suppose?
This encounter has made the guard extra-nervous, so when he goes to talk to Love and Derek, he's practically sweating bullets! They comment on his nervousness and keep badgering with questions, but these supposed masters of human behaviour somehow don't notice that he keeps glancing at the security camera in the corner of the room, through which Herman is watching and listening to the proceedings.
Finally the guy cracks and begs them to protect his daughter. This sends Herman into a rage, and he rushes down to bring a proposition to a convict! But what could it be? Other than getting them to kill the guard, of course.
The nervous guard spills the beans - Herman and his goons were running that fighting club, and when that missing prisoner died, they cremated his body in the building's furnace!
Because the team is terrible at their jobs, while they're getting their confessions, Herman has opened up all of the cell doors in the area next to the interview rooms, which allows the group of hardened criminals to attack the room! They stab the guard non-fatally and take Love and Derek hostage!
Luckily the gang boss from way earlier has a good head on his shoulders, and arrives with his entourage to remind everyone that if they kill FBI Agents, they're all going to get the death penalty. Herman sees all of this and knows the jig is up - so when Joe comes knocking onto the control room door to arrest him, Herman kills himself!
Happy Ending!
Except for a couple of vignettes where they find the burned skull of the missing dead guy, the library convict gets his books back, and Love flees the prison, traumatized by her threatened rape at the hands of the inmates.
1 - Was profiling in any way helpful in solving the crime?
They never actually got around to doing any profiling. They just asked who did it until an incredibly shifty guy told them.
2 - Could the crime have been solved just as easily using conventional police methods given the known facts of the case?
Um... yes? You'd just have to look into who was where at the time of the crimes. It wouldn't be that difficult at all. Of course, in the real world, it wouldn't have gotten that far, since the corrupt guards would have murdered the inmate who was forced to kill his friend the moment one of the corrupt guards turned up dead.
So, on a scale of 1 (Dirty Harry) to 10 (Tony Hill), How Useful Was Profiling in Solving the Crime?
1/10 - They literally just asked people who did it until someone told them. They didn't even catch the vast majority of the killers.
Seriously, here's the plot of this week's episode - the guards were running a fight club, and they forced buddies A and B to fight each other. A killed B, and was traumatized by the act. Nervous guard witnessed the crime and felt guilty. Weeks later, nervous guard gave A a set of keys and info about when the worst of the corrupt guards would be alone, and A and his friends - who are never identified - murdered the guard. There was apparently no retaliation from the corrupt guards. Months later, they did it again, bringing in the team, and escalating things until A was murdered by Herman and the whole thing fell apart.
We still have no idea who the other killers were, or what the significance of '34' was. You see, 34 was just one of the cells, and the fight happened in the secure cell hallway, not any one of the cells. So why fixate on that number? Especially when it wound up having nothing to do with how they solved the crime?
And how on earth can the team justify not calling in backup and securing Herman once they were 100% sure that he murdered that guy downstairs to keep him quiet?
The episode opens with a reminder about Love's daughter, and said daughter's online flirtation with what might be a regular pervert, or what might be an operative for the Matchmaker. They show the whole scene with her and her friend, including the ridiculous idea that this guy:
-could be a high school senior. The number 24 is in his screenname, people.
Now it's on to the prologue, where an OCD dude is making his bed just so and setting up his breakfast plate in an incredibly fastidious fashion. Could he be the Matchmaker? We're fifteen episodes in without any real movement on that case - who the hell knows how many female joggers have been abducted in California without anyone noticing?
The guy eats his breakfast while glancing, annoyed, at the front door of his house. We find out why that is as he does the dishes - there's a thump from the door as a paper hits it! He's annoyed that it was late! As if paper delivery people can be counted on to do a minute-perfect job every day.
Also, it's broad daylight outside, shouldn't paper deliveries be done by dawn?
OCD guy heads down into his basement, puts on a bloody butcher's apron, and goes to menace his tied-up victim. Oddly, she's not bloody at all. I guess he kills a lot and doesn't wash the apron much?
The woman's hands are almost out of her zip-ties, so maybe she'll turn the tables on him? Anyhoo, the guy turns on a record player and makes the woman play-act a performance where she's a negligent wife apologizing for not having his dinner ready for him when he gets home from work.
Sounds like he's repeating patterns he saw as a child from an abusive home!
Anyhoo, he smashes her head with a baseball bat, so I guess the loose ties were there for no reason?
Over at Love's house, the daughter asks her and her husband (TV's Greg Grunberg!) if she can go to the mall with male friends after school! Love isn't cool with it, but Chris (that's the character's name, I'm not going to muddle things by adding another Greg) signs off on the plan.
Garcia announces the case - two victims in small-town California. She also badly botches sentence construction in a way that makes me quite sad. The team goes over what they know about the two dead women. There was a three week gap between the first victim and the one found this morning, but the show doesn't even bother pretending that the killer isn't already after his next victim.
So, is this guy grabbing the women himself, or is he buying them from the Matchmaker?
No clues yet, but we do get a shot of the victim bashing his head against a cabinet over and over again while listening to something on a child's tape recorder! Not a stable guy, even by the relatively low standards of serial killers.
We open with a 'previously on' letting us know that people are still going to be sad about Mandy this week. And why wouldn't they? But will there be any follow-up about Joe and JJ murdering people in recent weeks? I'm guessing not.
Also, am I forgetting someone, or is Reid the only core team member that's never murdered anyone? Derek set up his molester to get killed, Greg crushed the Reaper's skull with his bare hands, Joe's got two bodies to his name, and JJ murdered that rando two weeks ago. Garcia's basically never in the field, so she doesn't count. I'm thinking everyone but Reid has killed someone in cold blood.
This is not a stable team, nor is it a particularly good place to work, I'm thinking.
On his way out of the office one night, Joe notices that Reid is still fiddling with a chess board, perhaps trying to game out how his and Mandy's final game might have gone. Which is kind of sad, especially because he stopped playing chess because he missed Mandy.
Again, he could have gone over the guy's cabin at literally any time and just played a game of chess, but I'm not going to pretend that this isn't touching.
Joe points out that Reid is working too late, and Reid explains that he likes to wait until rush hour is over so the subways won't be crowded. Joe points out that it's 10PM, and Reid has lost track of time, but I'd like to focus on something else: Do the writers of the show think that these people work in Washington DC?
I always joke about their stupidity in using an establishing shot of the capitol building to suggest Quantico, when that's an hour away, but this suggests to me something beyond laziness... do the people working on the show actually not know where Quantico is?
Where do they think Reid lives? Because the closest subway station to Reid's workplace is two hours away - and you have to take a train and two buses to get there. It's only a 40 minute drive, apparently, but why would he have a car just to take him from the subway station to work and back? Do they think he's commuting from downtown DC out to Quantico every day?
To be fair to the people working on the show, there actually is an FBI building in the middle of downtown DC. It's the headquarters. Fun fact: because it's old and insufficient for the Bureau's needs, it was going to be torn down and the lot turned into a luxury hotel, but then Donald Trump became president, and he had them cancel the plans because he didn't want another hotel near the White House competing with his own!
So I get why a person just throwing a script together might get confused about which FBI building the team works in, but that's what editors are for. The show was developed under the title 'Quantico'. They have an airstrip on the premises. How could anyone not realize that they work out of the training facility in Quantico?
Anyhoo, Reid spends all night staring at the chessboard.
The next morning, in Indianapolis, we find a busy diner where a demanding crowd is being served by a single overworked waiter! Based on the arrangement of the door at the corner of the building, I'm wondering if this is just a redressed version of the bar that suicide kid shot up a while back. I'll try to remember to check later!
The diner might not be important, though, since it's a building across the street that explodes! Making me wonder why we just spent a minute inside the diner. Is one of the characters involved in the explosion, or was the production just psyched about throwing money away?
It would be hilarious if they thought they were making a misdirect, and tricking the audience into believing that it was going to be an episode about a harried waiter who shoots his impatient customers.
The team gets word about the bombing - it was in a coffee shop, and six people were killed! The week before, a custodian found a bomb planted in a school and was blown up! Tragic way to go, but he's kind of a hero, since if he hadn't found the bomb during his overnight shift, there's a chance plenty of other people could have been killed during school hours!
Then JJ says this, and I'm forced to just shake my head all over again:
Fundamental groups. They couldn't do another take of that so she could say the right word? Or did the person writing the script make the mistake, and everyone was in such a rush to get the episode out that no one noticed? It's 'fundamentalist', Criminal Minds. Jesus.
Reid mentions that bombs are relatively easy to make, and namechecks the Anarchist's Cookbook - which it seems like the killer is working from when we cut over to Indianapolis. He's got a workstation all set up and opened to the page about Nitroglycerine-based explosives! On his wall, there's a list of targets - museums, landmarks, war memorials, all targeting the basements for some reason! Does he want to hit a gas main, or is he actually trying to minimize damage to the structures?
Oh, and in case you're wondering how much they're going to focus on calling this terrorism, the killer is white, so I'm guessing not a ton. Despite white right-wing people being the largest cohort of terrorists in American history.
