Have you ever wondered how our lives are connected? Ever think about how much control we do or don’t have over our own actions? Maybe if we didn’t go to an event, we wouldn’t find a new relationship. Maybe running ten minutes late for work is what saved us from being in a potential car accident. Are there some things that just seem meant to happen?
Another topic for conversation: how far would you go to protect your secrets? Or to save what you hold dear? Would there be any limits? This week’s case tries to touch on all of those questions and concepts, and does pretty well overall.
The Case:
We begin on quite the ominous note, with a man digging a grave and the dead body lying close by. Instead of showing anger towards this dead man, or even satisfaction at taking his life, the gravedigger seems rather stressed and emotional. Curiosity instantly piqued.
The next day, Charlie goes to work, trying to act like all is well and acting like he totally hadn’t been busy burying a man the night before. He’s not very convincing to his co-workers, though, and their suspicions only heighten after they see Charlie’s reaction to a news report on TV.
Earlier that morning, we viewers see that a bus full of passengers was dosed with sarin gas, and everyone onboard was killed. Charlie usually rides that bus. Due to a fight he was having with his wife Tracy (who's also his boss - awkward!) on the phone that morning, he did not get onboard. A possible murderer having a sudden stroke of good luck? He should be breathing a sigh of relief.
Except that not long after Charlie sees the news about the bus attack, he gets an unsettling message from an unknown person: “I KNOW WHAT YOU DID.” Don’t really need much coffee after that. Is the message just referring to Charlie's grave digging expedition the night before? Or is it insinuating he's responsible for the bus attack, too?
He also gets some envelopes delivered to him. Now, I don’t know about you, but if I’d been watching the news and saw a gas attack making the headlines, and especially if I’d been busy burying a body the night before, I’d be a little paranoid about opening any mail I received.
Not Charlie, though. Turns out one of the things sent to him was a phone – his wife’s phone, no less – and the person who sent that disturbing e-mail message is on the other line. He taunts Charlie, telling him he’s pretty much got no choice but to do as he says, otherwise he’ll go to the police and tell them what he saw Charlie doing the night before. I believe that’s what they refer to as “Sophie’s choice”.
By this time, the BAU has come to Los Angeles to start their investigation of the case. Initially, they go to the most logical assumption, that this could be a terrorist attack. They bring up Syria and other similar incidents where sarin gas was used to advance political and terrorist agendas. Their research soon discards that theory, though – this particular attack seems more personal in nature, at least initially. Their first suspect is a man named Johann Geitman, who was let go a couple months ago and did not take his being fired too well. The team still remains on alert, though, because generally people who commit these kinds of attacks tend to have much bigger, deadlier aims in mind.
Reid further proves the team’s concerns about a potential future attack correct by discovering how the gas was spread around. Turns out the unsub uses fish feeding devices to load the gas, and then the devices spread the gas around when triggered. Clearly they’re dealing with a pretty resourceful guy. Reid also knows how long the fish feeders can hold whatever’s put into them before releasing the substance (six weeks, apparently, so our unsub is also very patient). We discover Reid knows that information about the fish feeders because he apparently owns some fish! An amusing little side detail.
“Hot magma of homicidal rage doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
Later, Tara and Rossi get the task of interviewing Charlie, who’s still acting very jumpy. One more piece of good luck for Charlie: Tara and Rossi don’t think he committed the sarin attack. But, they do know he is hiding something. The clock is ticking on their eventual discovery of the body he buried, and he knows it.
If all of Charlie’s current woes weren’t enough, his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day is made even worse by stumbling upon a dead body at a cabin. The dead man is none other than…Geitman! Seems this mysterious caller made Charlie go to the cabin to steal a laptop, and is trying to make it seem like he is the one who killed Geitman, to help keep him in line and do his bidding.
“You’d be surprised what someone with a broken heart will do.”
Soon after that, it’s revealed that one of Charlie’s co-workers, Theo Crossford, is missing. His brother Mitchell came in looking for him, and Charlie’s wife, Tracy, is very concerned, much to his chagrin. Charlie doesn’t much care for Theo, and considering the constant tension between him and his wife, it’s pretty obvious as to why. We learn at this point that Charlie knows where Theo is, too – he killed him the other night after discovering he'd been sleeping with Tracy. He’s the man Charlie was burying at the start of the episode. The plot thickens...
Seems creepy caller guy knows this information, too, because he was witness to Charlie murdering him the other night, hence all the blackmailing. But why would he happen to be witness to the murder, Charlie wonders? The unsub adds to his unsettling knowledge of Charlie's life by constantly making disturbing taunts and threats towards Charlie’s daughter. Then later, he sends him a package that contains a gas mask and a hazmat suit. After all this stuff being piled on Charlie, despite the fact that he is a murderer, it’s still hard not to sympathize with him a little when he finally goes off on the man on the phone and demands to be left alone.
Eventually the team manages to figure out who is responsible for the attack. Turns out it’s Mitchell himself. Seems he and his brother grew up in a creepy religious cult, and developed very extremist anti-government views along the way. They’d planned the attack together, but Theo eventually fell in love with a woman.
That woman? Tracy. As a result, he found he couldn’t go through with his brother’s plans. It makes one wonder now – had Charlie not killed Theo, would Mitchell have found a way to “off” his brother? Let that be a lesson to any would-be criminals: Make sure you or your cronies don’t get romantically involved with the people you’re targeting. Since Charlie was connected to Theo as a result of the murder and the affair, he became Mitchell's new target. We also learn that Mitchell was responsible for Geitman’s death. Geitman sold the stockpile of sarin to Mitchell, and then Mitchell got rid of him so he wouldn’t squawk to anyone else.
Since Mitchell’s patsies, Theo and Charlie, haven’t been playing out as he’d hoped, he decides to go by the old saying of “if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself”. His plan? Come five o’clock, he’s going to spread the gas to the city at large, and target the FBI as well, ‘cause, again, anti-government views. There’s a nice little bit of tension as we see the BAU team trying to clear everyone out and away before five pm arrives (who else breathed a sigh of relief upon finding out that was a mannequin in Mitchell’s car instead of Charlie’s actual daughter?). Garcia searches her screens for Mitchell, too, trying to keep an eye on where he’s going.
Fortunately, Hotch gets to Mitchell in time, and L.A. is safe once more. Charlie is also arrested, because you can’t really just go around killing someone for conducting an affair with your wife. There is, however, a bittersweet reunion between father and daughter before he leaves for jail.
I liked this week’s case – it fit well with the issue of fate that Tara and Reid discuss throughout the episode, and people’s lives connecting in weird, unusual ways. And there was some good tension between Charlie and Mitchell as we waited to see just what sorts of lengths Charlie would go to in order to keep his own crimes a secret, as well as protect his daughter, and just how far Mitchell would push him.
In some ways, I would’ve liked it if the case had focused a little more on the anti-government motive, and maybe given Charlie’s crime a much darker motive, to really up the stakes of Mitchell’s threats and blackmail. But of course, it’d be harder to root for or sympathize at all with Charlie as a result if the show did that, and as many true crime stories prove, often the motives do come down to very personal reasons. The ideology, as noted during the team’s profile briefing, is often just a really good cover story.
It was nice to see Rossi and Tara working together a bit this episode – he’s always been good at interacting with the “newbies” over the years, helping make them feel comfortable within the team. And this was another week where Reid’s unusual knowledge came in handy as well. Tara seems to be fitting in well, and there was a good balance between her involvement and that of the rest of the team throughout. I liked the tighter dynamic from last week a little more, I think, but everyone still worked well together here.
Meanwhile, on the personal front…:
“Maybe the events in our lives were set in motion a long time ago.”
We learn a little more about Tara this week as she shares with the others a story about her unusual connection to a notable serial killer she’d helped capture some years back. Turns out his mom and her mom went to school together! Cue the “Twilight Zone” theme music.
At the end, she and Reid have a nice little chat about the concept of synchronicity (“It’s my favorite Police record”, she says in response to Reid asking her about the concept – haha, cute, Tara), and the concept of fate. Reid muses on how the strangest part of the story was that each mom’s child turned out very differently and they eventually crossed paths, just as their mothers did. Something interesting to mull over, and no doubt a question that the team in general has wondered about and debated over the years.
Reid then tells Tara of the Buddhist belief that when you meet a soulmate, the act to bring you together was 500 years in the making. And when you meet a true friend, you are bound together through space and time for 500 years. Awwwww. I enjoyed that conversation quite a bit. It’s nice to see Reid being able to engage in a bit of philosophical discussion with someone, and have them showing genuine interest in the topic. Also, props to the show remembering Reid’s interest in Jungian philosophy – his dismissal of Freud amuses me for some reason.
We also learn that apparently Morgan played a prank on Reid the week before, and due to the belief about “true friends” that Reid mentioned above, that means that in the year 2200 Reid will finally get him back for said prank. Morgan tells him to “bring it. I’ll be waiting”. Which of course now begs the questions: What was the prank Morgan played? And how will Reid seek revenge?
What did you think of this week’s episode? Did you sympathize with Charlie, or was this all karma coming back to bite him for his own misdeeds? What are your opinions on Reid’s discussion about fate and destiny? Theories on the prank Morgan played? Share your thoughts in the comments!
