What is the price of revenge? How far would you be willing to go to avenge a wrong? Where does the line between vigilantism and becoming a criminal begin and end?
These are questions the show has dealt with multiple times over the past eleven seasons, and this week’s episode is no exception, with a story of a man driven to desperate measures in the wake of a personal tragedy. The episode also touches on the blurred line between delusion and reality, both in relation to the victims and the unsub, in some very creative and unnerving ways, providing us with some intriguing twists along the way. We also continue the show’s version of musical chairs with the team, with yet another team member being away for a short period of time.
The Case:
Another scary scene to kick things off this week, with a glimpse of a man who’s bloodied and chained and screaming for help. Shortly after, Garcia breaks down the situation for the team. Two men have been taken from the Phoenix area recently. One, a man named Steven, was found dead, but the other, a man named Lance Coleman, is still missing. Steven was held captive for days and horribly tortured via various means, the attacks seem like they’ve got a deeply personal motive to them, and both men were business travelers. Outside of that, however, there’s not really much else to connect them, thus making the case that much tougher for the team right off the bat. But knowing that Mr. Coleman might still be alive is enough to give them hope.
Their hopes may be well-founded, too, for we do indeed soon see Lance escaping the confines of his captivity. He sees a helicopter overhead, and becomes very excited. It could be a search helicopter, come to rescue him!
Then we get a nice harsh, cold bucket of reality dumped on us. That helicopter Lance saw was nothing more than a desperate hallucination on his part. Seems sleep deprivation is another of the many torture methods our unsub loves to use on his victims.
After the team gets to Phoenix, JJ speaks with Coleman’s wife in the hopes of learning more about her husband and his recent whereabouts. According to her, they’ve been happily married for years, and just to dig the knife in further, Mrs. Coleman mentions that she and her husband were planning on celebrating their anniversary very soon. There’s no way he would’ve missed that special occasion, she insists. He was a wonderful, caring man, and he wouldn’t have just up and left her. The last time she’d heard from him was three days ago, but he was on a business trip at that time, so that wasn’t unusual. When she couldn’t reach him recently, however, she began to panic. She’s clearly distressed, and it’s hard not to feel incredibly bad for her. I love the way JJ sits with Mrs. Coleman and quietly comforts her here. It’s a sweet throwback to all the times in the early seasons when she was the one staying with the families a lot of the time.
Meanwhile, thanks to the examination of Steven’s body, the team learns that this unsub’s torture methods are especially gruesome. One of his notable methods involves stapling his victims’ eyes open…while they’re still alive. The team’s theory is that he wants them to be witness to their own torture. He did it to Steven, and now we viewers get the oh-so-wonderful pleasure of seeing him prepare to do it to Lance, too. OWWWWWWWWW. Later in the episode, he also blares loud noise into people’s ears via headphones, causing their ear drums to bleed, so, yeah. We’ve got a real piece of work here.
But why is he torturing these people? Apparently our unsub has been under the impression Coleman (and earlier, Steven) knows where “she” is. The question now, of course, is, “Who is ‘she’?” A wife? A daughter? A girlfriend? Coleman, of course, claims to have absolutely no idea what on earth this guy’s on about, which unfortunately only angers the unsub that much more. Is Coleman telling the truth, though? Could his wife’s description of him have been too good to be true?
While the team gives the profile of who they’re looking for, we see snippets of a happier time in the man’s life, and start learning just who this “she” is that he’s looking for. He’s sitting in an audience full of parents, watching on with pride as a little girl dances onstage in a school recital. It’s a sweet, tender moment, standing in sharp contrast to what we’ve seen this guy do thus far. So clearly the “she” is his daughter, and something bad obviously happened to her. This scene of total innocence with the unsub and his daughter seems to run very counter to the team’s initial assessment of the unsub as a sadistic man who gets off on the torture he inflicts on his victims, but perhaps he’s holding a darkness that nobody knows about.
Later, an investigation of Steven’s apartment indicates to the team that the unsub must get his victims as they’re traveling between home and work. Coleman missed a flight and had to take an alternate route home, putting him on the same road Steven had been abducted from. This brings up a new theory: the unsub is the sort who preys on good Samaritans. He puts on some kind of ruse – stranded along the side of the road, claiming a flat tire, perhaps – and when someone comes along to help, he kidnaps them. So basically this is a traveler’s worst nightmare come to life.
The next time we see Coleman turns out to be one of the most heartbreaking moments of the entire episode. Initially, we see him coming home, his wife in tears of relief as she runs up to embrace him. She and her husband are reunited at last.
Until, that is, she starts saying menacing things and points a gun at his head. Yep. Coleman’s experiencing another cruel hallucination. In reality, he’s actually staring down the barrel of the unsub’s gun, pleading for his life.
Surprisingly, however, the man pauses. He asks Coleman if he has any children. Perhaps the unsub will show remorse if he learns his victim does have a family? Coleman seems to think so. He immediately says he has a twelve year old daughter, and more teary, desperate begging and pleading follows. It’s an incredibly tense, “hold your breath” sort of moment.
Maybe our unsub thinks Coleman is lying (since we saw no evidence he and his wife had children). Maybe he envies the man having a child of his own. Whatever the reason, it’s clear the mere mention of children is striking a chord for him. He points the gun again…and there’s a gunshot. Coleman’s the next victim down, and my heart immediately goes out to his poor wife.
There’s a flashback to a rainy late night drive on a dark road. Father in the front seat, little girl in the back, coming home from the dance recital. A haunting version of “You Are My Sunshine” is playing. Tatiana begs the father to sing with her, which he does. It’s another sweet moment, albeit also an unsettling, jarring one, given we know the violence her dad’s capable of as well as the fact that something bad is going to happen to her.
On that note, did anyone else immediately assume they knew where the sad story with the child was going? My theory was that the father would fall asleep at the wheel and veer off the road, thus killing his daughter. As a result, he’d be struggling to accept responsibility for his daughter’s death, hence the whole “sleep deprivation” aspect of his torture. Sort of a twisted means of punishing himself without fully realizing it, kind of like the ‘Road Warrior’ unsub in “Normal”, who kept having hallucinations of his family, whom he’d shot and killed.
To my (rather appreciative) surprise, however, that’s not what actually winds up happening. The real story, thanks to Garcia’s sleuthing, goes like this: Noticing he’s starting to get sleepy, the man pulls into a rest stop parking lot, in the hopes of getting a brief bit of shut eye before continuing the ride home. Normally that’d be a wise, safe decision, but upon waking up, he realizes with horror that his daughter isn’t there anymore, and immediately reports her missing. As a result, he’s been trying to hunt down who took her ever since, in the hopes of getting her back.
The unsub’s interrogation of his latest victim gives us another potential clue for the case. At one point he asks the man he’s holding captive where his tattoo is, implying he must’ve gotten rid of it somehow. Garcia’s research further elaborates on this detail. When the unsub reported his daughter missing, he claimed he was briefly awakened at one point during his nap by a man with a skull tattoo on his hand. This man with the tattoo told him his taillight was out. Since that was the only person who’d crossed his family’s path at that point, he came to the obvious conclusion that the man with the tattoo was the man who must’ve taken his daughter.
As the episode goes on, we also eventually learn both the name of the missing child as well as that of our unsub. The daughter’s name is Tatiana Taylor, the unsub, and father, is William Taylor.
There’s another tragic possibility, too: the kidnapping could be nothing more than William’s hallucination. A theory begins to form among the team that perhaps the man’s daughter slipped out of the car on her own for some reason, and got lost. As a result, due to the nasty, cold weather, she succumbed to the elements. And the father, in his sleep-deprived state, merely imagined a man with a skull tattoo, and spun a story from there. If that’s the case, then basically, this man may well have spent a week torturing and killing people for absolutely no reason at all, which would make his crimes even more terrifying.
So what did happen to Tatiana? Sadly, Hotch soon gives us the answer: she’s dead. William found her body in a field a week ago. Unable to deal with this devastating news, he turned his anger on others instead. When the team finally catches up to William as he attempts to escape in his truck, JJ tries desperately to tell him the truth about his daughter. He refuses to believe her, though – the potential kidnapper got away, and he’s hellbent on driving off and tracking the man down. JJ and Tara immediately begin shooting at William’s truck, however, quickly bringing it to a halt. JJ checks the driver’s side with a knowing dread. Now William’s dead, too. Whether it was her bullets or Tara’s that killed him is never made clear, but it’s still a frustrating, upsetting end to the case all the same.
On the ride home, there’s further discussion of the theory that William hallucinated his daughter’s abduction. That story just doesn’t quite sit right with Tara, though. Something about it seems off to her.
The final scene flashes to another dark, rainy night, and an empty road far away from Phoenix, Arizona (Jackson, Mississippi, to be exact). A mother and her little girl are inside their car, and they’ve stopped momentarily for some reason.
A man walks up to the car.
He taps on the window.
We see a skull tattoo on his hand.
You can guess the rest. An appropriately eerie, chilling ending.
As noted earlier, I liked the unpredictable twist with the unsub’s backstory. Not only was it just neat to have a twist in and of itself, but it explains his brutal killing methods much more clearly. He’s not stapling his victims’ eyes open just for the hell of it; rather, he’s doing it as a frantic means of keeping them awake, the way he wasn’t able to stay awake the night his daughter went missing. I can sympathize with his despair over the loss of his child, but given the sick torture methods he’s using. There’s desperation, and then there’s just plain flat out going way off the deep end.
Also, if the tattoo is such an important defining feature, one would think the unsub might find another means of covertly checking the men he encounters, to see if any of them have that tattoo (or tattoos in general), and going from there. Obviously, though, the implication is that he’s so desperate at this point, and he accused one of them of getting rid of his tattoo, too, so ultimately, he obviously didn’t seem to care too much either way.
That said, I think the case in general worked fairly well this week overall. The creepiness worked, and unlike previous episodes, where the twists built to almost ludicrous levels, this one had just enough of them to make people wonder where the story might go next, without making everything too needlessly complicated. I also thought the vivid hallucinations the victims experienced was an interesting (and in the case of Coleman in particular, wrenching) touch, as a means of further letting us connect with the people being held captive, and share in both their hopes and their terrors.
If I had one major complaint, however, it would be that the extreme torture methods were tough to watch, and an example of the overuse of graphic imagery that many have come to complain about with the show in recent years. Yes, this show does focus on studying the worst criminals out there, but so often, what we don’t see, and what’s implied, is often scarier than what we do see. So it would’ve been preferable to tone down the visuals of the graphic torture a little, and simply mention the horrible things he did instead, thus allowing our own imaginations to fill in the blanks from there.
Plus, the team’s profile was off yet again in some ways, since William didn’t use the torture as a means of sexual release. Rather, he was seeking revenge. Again, the show itself has acknowledged that profiling is an inexact science sometimes, but still, it’s strange to see them be wrong in some notable areas yet again in such a short time span.
Still, overall, this episode is quite the opposite of how I felt last week, where the personal stories caught my attention way more than the case of the week did.
Meanwhile, on the personal front…:
The most notable, dramatic personal development this week is that Garcia now has a guard protecting her at all times, thanks to her recent revelation about being the target of Montolo’s gang. She was apparently initially supposed to go into witness protection completely, but Hotch managed to get it so she could still work and the team could still keep her close, and look out for her that way. I liked the way Garcia tried to make a list of all the things she needed and wanted to get from her apartment (including Sergio! Nice to hear she’s still taking care of Emily’s old pet), even going so far as to hesitate over the thought of someone poking through some of her more personal items.
For such a fearful situation, however, she seemed to manage to be her usual jovial self the rest of the episode all the same. Defense mechanism, perhaps? Given the theme of revenge as well as the unsub’s “everyone’s a threat” mindset, I think it would’ve helped to further expand on those concepts by touching on how Garcia’s dealing with being watched by both the good and bad guys, as well as Morgan’s desire for revenge.
It’ll be very interesting to see how this protection detail storyline with Garcia will play out. After Emily’s whole “going into hiding” thing when Doyle was on the loose, I can see why Hotch would be wary to have a complete repeat of that, despite the fact that, unlike Emily, Garcia obviously wouldn’t be pretending to be dead. But somehow I have a distinct feeling this attempt to keep her close will still backfire on the team eventually anyway. After all, Foyet still managed to get to Haley and Jack after they went into complete and total hiding.
As for Reid, the biggest news regarding him this week is the fact that he wasn’t in the episode at all, due to his being in Vegas to spend time with his mom. On the upside, she’s doing well, according to a text he sent to the team. So yay for that! Here’s hoping that continues to be the case. On the downside, I still definitely missed him this episode all the same. This certainly isn’t the first time we’ve gone a full episode (or more) without a main cast member, of course, but it was still very weird not having him around regardless, especially given how involved he’s been in previous cases this season. It was hard not to wonder what sorts of clues would’ve jumped out at him, or what information about sleep deprivation (or, heck, torture – he’s sadly got some firsthand experience with that) he could’ve brought to the case. At the very least, it would’ve been nice if we’d gotten one scene showing him calling the team, or perhaps heard his voice on speakerphone or something. He’s going to be in Vegas for a short while longer, so I’ll be curious to see how the show continues to deal with his time away, as well as the situation with his mom.
We also learn that JJ is understandably exhausted from being up with a colicky Michael all night, and the stress of raising two children instead of one, and…that’s pretty much it with her this episode. I did like how her sleepiness inadvertently helped the case, with her mention of caffeine being a method to keep victims awake (rather neat and tidy though that revelation seemed), but I would’ve thought Hotch would’ve observed how out of it she was and insisted she stay back at the station instead of be out in the field. Course, if she’d dozed off at the station, and they needed to reach her, that would’ve been an issue, too, I suppose. But still, for her sake at least, it would’ve been the safer route to go.
I liked that she got to meet Tara, though, and that they seemed to hit it off well. Depending on how much longer Tara sticks around, I’d be fine with seeing her and JJ get to bond a little more.
No new episode next Wednesday due to the Thanksgiving holiday, so we’ll meet back here in a week and a half! Hope all who are celebrating this week have a wonderful holiday!
What did you think of this week’s episode? Did you sympathize with the unsub? Did the twist in his backstory, as well as the ending, surprise you? How do you think the team’s attempt to protect Garcia will fare? Did Reid’s absence stand out to you? Share your thoughts in the comments!
