This week’s episode finds the team heading to Georgia, a state they’ve become quite familiar with by this point in the show’s run, I imagine, considering how often they seem to have cases there. Savannah is the lucky (?) city in question, as the team investigates a case of love gone horribly, horribly wrong.
The Case:
Two women come into a flower shop, all giddy and excited. One of them is getting married soon, you see, and they’re there to look for some ideas for the ceremony. A nice-looking young man comes over to talk to them, and there’s a little bit of flirting and friendly chatter. Turns out the man is a photographer named Ryan Becker, and he’s in the business of wedding photography. He also works in connection with two sisters, Nicole and Dana, who run the flower shop. The guy seems nice enough, but we’ve watched this show enough to have our radar up anyway.
It’s soon revealed that the woman getting married is named Madison, and we see her celebrating at a bar with her friends for her bachelorette party. Unfortunately, once she goes outside, she becomes the latest in a string of women who’ve been taken, and later killed (via strangulation), just before getting married. The gap in time between the murders and the wedding days are getting smaller and smaller, too, so time is clearly of the essence for the team, and Madison’s chances of survival.
“He’s taking these brides on the eve of what should be the happiest day of their lives.”
One of Madison’s friends recalls a man getting rather aggressive with her at the bar after she turned down his advances. That information fits with the team’s initial assumption about a male unsub, as men who are jilted tend to let their anger turn to violence towards women in general. Eleven seasons in, the team’s certainly dealt with their fair share of violent female unsubs so it is a little surprising sometimes when they still go to default “male unsub” mode. But I still wind up sharing their train of thought, too.
The first suspect is the guy who got aggressive with Madison. His name is Karl Ulrich, and he certainly fits the bill of who they might be looking for. His fiancé left him three months before their wedding (and is getting married to someone else soon, no less), and he went into quite a nasty a downward spiral afterward, getting drunk and rough at the local bars and being kicked out of all of them (and from what a friend who lives in Georgia tells me, Savannah’s got a lot of bars, so getting kicked out of all of them would be quite impressive, in a really pathetic sort of way).
To top it off, he also broke a restraining order his ex-fiancée had on him. He claims he just wanted to get his ring back. His belligerent demeanor and history, however, leaves Rossi doubtful that that violation was as innocent as Karl makes it sound. However, he’s very quickly ruled out, as he has an alibi for the time of Madison’s disappearance that checks out, and his DNA doesn’t match the DNA found on the sash of one of the victims.
Unfortunately, Madison’s body is discovered shortly thereafter, with the word “slut” scrawled on her forehead in lipstick. Tara notes that that’s a common word for women to use as an insult for each other (sadly true), and that information, combined with the fact that the women are all strangled with their bridal sashes instead of the unsub’s bare hands, as well as the lack of sexual assault, leads the team to realize their killer is actually a female.
Prior to Madison’s death, we discover she’s been held captive in the basement of the flower shop. Who’s holding her captive? One of the people who works there! Our unsub’s name is Dana Seavers, and it becomes very apparent very quickly that she is not mentally stable. We see her talking to Ryan – yes, that Ryan. Is he involved? Are they working as a team?
No. Turns out these conversations she’s having with him aren’t real. She doesn’t seem to quite realize that, however. Instead, Dana actually believes he’s secretly communicating with her, and telling her to kill these women. So that’s disturbing.
“Remember our first dance? How it felt to be in each other’s arms?”
Her issues go deeper than that, though. Apparently Dana’s been madly in love with Ryan since they were in seventh grade. She has a photo from a school dance they attended together that year, and that night still holds very special memories for her. In and of itself, that story doesn’t sound so bad. A little on the obsessive side, perhaps, but many people have memories of “the one that got away”, or still think fondly on their first crush, kiss, or relationship from their school days.
The problem is, Dana firmly believes she and Ryan have been conducting a secret relationship in the years following that brief fling. She’s got notebooks with drawings of their home, and writings showing how their names would read when married. There’s even mention of the names for their future children. I like the way they show how dark and creepy such a seemingly innocent activity can turn here, the twisted outcome of women being taught from a young age to fantasize only about marriage and children instead of other aspects of their lives.
Dana also doesn’t respond well to other women flirting with her man. Her jealousy flares up every time they come into the shop and talk with him, even just look at him. These interactions seem to be how she targets her victims, and I find it interesting that she doesn’t blame Ryan for flirting with them. Rather, she believes he’s leading them on in the hopes of getting them to reveal their true colors. It’s him who "urges" her to write “slut” on their foreheads, which adds a new and intriguing level to Tara’s remark about women calling each other that word. Has it been ingrained into women to refer to each other that way because we’ve heard men call women derogatory terms for so long, to where such name calling seems natural?
Targeting complete strangers and making unfounded accusations towards them is bad enough. But then one night, Ryan invites Dana to come out to dinner with him and Nicole, because he has some romantic plans in mind. Dana’s all excited and hopeful, thinking this is the moment where she’ll finally be able to hear Ryan tell the world how in love and happy they are…
…except what really happens is that Dana gets to be witness to Ryan proposing to Nicole. Ouch. Needless to say, Dana does not take this news well, and Nicole is now next on her target list. We also learn that Dana’s upset that after their mom died, Nicole got control of the flower shop instead of her, so that’s just another thing to add to her pile of bitterness and resentment.
She proceeds to kidnap her sister and holds her captive at the greenhouse where they tend to the flowers. Dana walks around decked out in a (very pretty) wedding gown, and decorates the place for her and Ryan’s wedding, which Nicole will be witness to (before, presumably, being killed). Eek. Fortunately, the team figures out where Dana took Nicole, and tracked Ryan’s phone to know he got a call to come there. Once they arrive, Hotch and Tara play into Dana’s fantasy by getting Ryan to tell Dana he loves her, and the team manages to save Nicole and stop Dana from adding another victim to her list.
I appreciated that this episode’s unsub didn’t turn out to be Ryan, whom I’m sure most viewers initially suspected. It’s always particularly interesting when the show features female unsubs, especially if their victims are also female. The behavioral patterns and motives tend to be notably different, and it was good to see the show touch on that fact a little bit. The nail biting was another unique, icky touch (especially since Dana apparently bit one of the victim’s nails, which, ew). Nail and finger biting is symptomatic of a much larger issue, and we learned a little more about that particular disorder as well.
I also liked the sympathy shown for Dana’s mental issues. This woman needed a lot of help, and the realization that the help she was getting wasn’t doing much for her was rather heartbreaking, especially with the addition of her hormonal issue into the mix. Tara rightly notes at one point that Dana’s hormonal problem isn’t responsible for her becoming a killer, but it does factor into her overall insecurities and depression over seeing “conventionally pretty” women getting the attention of the man she loves, which just makes the whole thing sadder.
Ultimately, though, the case seemed pretty predictable in how it played out as a whole. That’s not always a bad thing, but in this case, I don’t think the predictability really worked. There were some creepy moments on the way to the final showdown (notably anytime Dana “talked” to Ryan, or looked through her scrapbook of cropped photos), but it was pretty easy to tell early on how the storyline between Ryan, Dana, and Nicole would go, which took some of the suspense out of the story.
Also, I felt the way the team played into Dana’s fantasy as they did seemed a little…off somehow. I kept comparing this situation to Reid talking to the Cinderella unsub from last season, and playing her Prince Charming. That “play into the fantasy” scenario felt much more sincere and honest, whereas in this case, the team’s words came off rather patronizing. Unintentionally so, of course, but that’s how it read regardless. All I kept thinking was, how might Dana react if and when someone tells her she’ll likely never see Ryan again, save for perhaps an occasional visit if he accompanies Nicole when she comes to see her? She’s always going to struggle with these mental issues, sure, but I don’t know that the team’s attempt to talk her down really helped her much with her delusions.
The resolution also felt rather abrupt, as did Dana’s jump from wanting to hurt her sister to wanting to hurt herself. And while Nicole was likely trying to be brave for her sister’s sake, she seemed way more composed while being held captive than I think I would’ve been. I also found Ryan’s “What the hell?” reaction to all of this oddly amusing, too, which I’m guessing wasn’t the intended response. This was an interesting idea for a case, and there were some good avenues it nearly went and could’ve gone. I just think the end result turned out rather rote overall.
On a positive note, this episode was directed by Mr. Rossi himself, Joe Mantegna, and I thought he did a good job with that part of things. I also read online that a song featured in this episode was done by his daughter Gia (who you may remember from her appearance in the episode “3rd Life”), which is a rather sweet familial connection.
The Dirty Dozen:
“When we get a break in the case, we’re gonna put away all the bad guys just like we always do.”
Ah, yes. We also touch base with the mysterious storyline set up in the season premiere. Hotch calls Morgan and Garcia – and only them – for a meeting before the team briefing that leads them to the wedding case. Hotch informs the two that Montolo, who’s in jail by this point, is refusing to cooperate and give them any further information on this Dirty Dozen. As a result, much to Hotch’s dismay and frustration, they’re currently at a dead end in their investigation.
This news upsets Garcia very much. Innocent people (relatively speaking, perhaps?) are in danger, a fact that never sits right with her, and she expresses her fears that she may not be able to save them in time. Morgan’s right there to reassure her, however, giving her a little pep talk and reassuring her she’ll be able to find and save these people. Garcia still seems to have doubts about that, though, and that seems to trouble Morgan.
This scene only furthers my belief that Morgan, and now possibly Garcia, will get heavily personally invested in this case as the season goes on. Perhaps the two of them will go rogue? I’d love to see the entire team taking this gang on, of course, but the idea of Morgan and Garcia doing their own little side thing does hold some exciting potential, too.
Meanwhile, on the personal front…:
All the talk of love and marriage leads to a few members of the team discussing their own personal love lives. First, we learn that Tara has a fiancé! He keeps trying to call her while she’s working, yet she doesn’t seem eager to answer. Trouble in paradise?
No. She loves him, and proudly shows off her ring at the end of the episode (she doesn’t wear it on the job, which is entirely reasonable). Instead, it looks like she’s struggling with a familiar conflict: the job versus the relationship. Since Tara’s time on the show is limited for now, I’m presuming she may make a decision on that issue one way or another soon. She also mentions feeling uncomfortable with women finding her fiancé even more attractive now he’s engaged, but Morgan reassures her that’s nothing to worry about.
“When Derek Morgan says, ‘I do’, it’ll be a national day of mourning for single women everywhere.”
Speaking of Morgan, by the way, we get a moment at the end with Rossi teasing about the possibility of wedding bells for him and Savannah in the future. Morgan immediately protests the idea…but it won’t surprise me if we do see the two of them walking down the aisle someday. The above quote from Reid on the subject of Morgan getting married was a particularly entertaining touch to that discussion. I’m sure many female viewers were nodding their heads in agreement. Either that or they were yelling at Morgan to marry whichever team member they ship him with, one of the two.
The whole conversation ends with Rossi’s hilarious story about his third failed marriage, an elopement, done in Vegas, presided over by an Elvis impersonator (of course). We learn said third wife’s name, too: Krystall (yes, with two “l”s – a bad sign, Rossi says). Once he and his wife “sobered up”, however, they ended things fairly quickly. I love Rossi’s attempt at an Elvis impersonation afterward, and Hotch’s little asides and smirks indicating he’s already very familiar with this story.
We also got a scene at the start of the episode involving Morgan and noted Cowboys player Michael Irving working together for a sports program that emphasized good health and exercise habits for kids. This was a good nod to Morgan’s football past and his desire to give back to the community and help children. I’ve always liked Morgan’s interaction with kids, and I can easily see him getting involved with programs like this. And yes, this was blatant product placement benefitting the NFL, but it was fun to see Morgan all giddy while talking to a professional football player, too. And I’m not even a sports fan.
What did you think of this week’s episode? Did you sympathize with Dana’s struggles? Did the case bring up some interesting thoughts on marriage? Where do you feel this “Dirty Dozen” story is going? Were you equally entertained by the team’s discussions about marriage, and Rossi’s story? Share your thoughts in the comments!
