We may only be at the second episode of this season of “Criminal Minds”, but apparently the show doesn’t believe in gently easing us into things. This week’s episode involved an unsub who was a pyromaniac, a race against time to save multiple victims, JJ having a breakdown, and it was also a team member’s last episode. Whew! Also, Will LaMontagne was there, being a desperately needed pillar of support.
The episode also employed a method they’ve used before – start in present day and work backwards to tell the story. The most notable examples of this are “100” and “It Takes a Village”, where the team had to answer to higher ups explaining their actions during particularly personal cases. Thankfully, there’s no higher ups and their scrutiny here – the only two people talking about the case are JJ and her husband Will.
She doesn’t make it easy, though. She’s already in a rough mood when she gets home, and she gets even more agitated upon learning that her youngest son, Michael, is sick with croup, which is apparently a respiratory illness, as Wikipedia informs me. Will’s been holding down the fort, but JJ is persistent in wanting to be with her son, and it leads to a bit of tension between her and Will.
(On the note of Michael’s illness, by the way, did anyone else have immediate flashbacks to season 7’s “There’s No Place Like Home”, or was that just me? The argument between JJ and Will was even similar.)
“Remember what the Bureau therapist said?”
After finally managing to get her focus back to him, however, Will encourages her to start talking. I liked the implications with his mention of the Bureau therapist. It’s heartening to think JJ’s been getting some help after all she’s been through since her ordeal with Askari and Hastings – it’s a storyline I would be rather interested to see the show touch on again from time to time.
Anywho, once the couple settle in with some food and drinks, JJ finally begins telling her story. And boy, is it a doozy...
The Case:
“You don’t look fine. I’ve seen you look fine, and that’s not it.”
Our very first glimpse of JJ is her sitting alone on the jet. Her wrist is bandaged and she’s staring out the window. Suddenly, we’re bombarded with flashbacks to a fire and the sounds of somebody screaming for help. Between those images, JJ’s injury, and the look on her face, it’s already obvious something very bad just happened.
Not long after, Luke comes up to check on her. He’s noticed the expression on her face, and is concerned. True to form, JJ tries to brush It off as nothing, but Luke ain’t buying it. He doesn’t push, though. He simply reminds her that he’s there for her if she needs him, and leaves it at that. That seems to put JJ at ease a little, to the point where she actually thanks him “for what you did back there”. So there’s another piece of the puzzle filled in – whatever happened, Luke had a role in it, too.
So how did JJ find herself at this point? Well, it all started with the plane doing something it rarely does – turn around. The team had been on their way back from a case with a spree killer in Seattle when news of a new case forced their plane to make a trip back, this time towards Los Angeles. Two kids had recently gone missing not far from the city: fourteen year old Hannah Robertson, who’d disappeared five days ago, and eleven year old Max Watchman, who’d disappeared the day prior. Hannah was on her way to school, Max had been returning from a tae-kwon-do class. Nobody witnessed the abductions, either, despite both children being taken in daylight in public places.
Things get creepier when the team learns that two foster children had disappeared in a very similar fashion two years prior. They were older than the current missing children, and of a different racial and economic background, but the M.O. is precisely the same otherwise. The team immediately thinks the two cases are connected somehow, and decide to pursue that angle.
Sadly, it doesn’t take long for them to find out what happened to Hannah and Max. They get the horrible news that both children have been burned to death. Reid, JJ, and Luke take a tour of the crime scene, and make some very disturbing observations in the process:
1. The kids were made to lay there and look at each other as they burned.
2. Since Hannah was held longer than Max, given the sadistic nature of this unsub, it’s believed that she was tortured for days before the final tragic fire.
3. Max’s body was “incinerated”, as JJ informs Will. If there’s any sort of good news in this increasingly depressing information, the fire department did manage to arrive at the scene before Hannah’s body was totally destroyed.
4. The children were still alive while being burned.
So basically, this unsub the team’s looking for is a true sicko, and if they don’t find him fast, God only knows what other horrors he could inflict. The team also believes that he’s got extreme pyromanical tendencies, and likely works at some job that would involve things being burned (a cook, a firefighter, etc.). They also figure he’ll have a vehicle that has space to transport his victims – a van, a truck, perhaps even an RV, and he’s exceedingly smart, since he’s been able to avoid being caught by police and can abduct children without anyone noticing.
Unfortunately, despite all the team’s efforts and searching, despite Hotch giving a press conference to ask for help, despite putting out Amber Alerts and the forensic teams trying their best to investigate with what little evidence they’ve got, the guy is nowhere to be found. Could it be he’s taking another break, now that he’s dealt with his most recent victims?
Sadly, no. In fact, it doesn’t take long for him to zero in on his next victim, a sixteen year old girl by the name of Francesca Morales. He approaches her with the age-old ruse of asking for help. She’s friendly at first, but the more she talks to him and takes a proper look at him, the more her spidey senses tell her something’s off. She quickly comes up with an excuse to get away, but it doesn’t work. The guy ambushes her and they’re in the wind. And like with all the other children, nobody notices her being taken, much to JJ’s immense frustration. To make matters worse, the team knows there’s a young boy in the unsub’s sights, just waiting to be taken as well. Talk about feeling the pressure.
JJ pulls out her old media liaison skills again, and meets with Francesca’s mom, Renee. Renee is raising her children alone – turns out her husband was killed in Afghanistan years ago. So she’s already experienced one tragedy in her life. Now she’s on the verge of another, and her guilt for not being there with her daughter is painful and overwhelming. JJ tries to reassure her, but Renee can’t let go of her blame.
We also meet another member of the Morales family: Francesca’s brother Roberto. He’s home sick. JJ tries to talk to him, but he’s not all that interested in speaking to her...until JJ starts commenting on his comic book collection. Apparently all JJ knows about comics she’s learned from Henry.
Thankfully, her strategy works, and Roberto starts opening up a little bit. Not about the case – he didn’t see or hear anything of note that could be helpful in that regard. But he does admit to JJ that he wasn’t really sick. He just wanted to stay home. We never find out why, but judging from his closed off behavior, my guess is whatever his reason is for not going to school, it’s not a good one.
Back at the police station, Reid studies a map of the state, and stumbles upon an interesting theory. He doesn’t think their unsub will leave Los Angeles. He’s taken notice of the travel patterns for the previous abductions, observed the direction they’ve all been going, and his conclusion is that Los Angeles is their guy’s endgame. The team also reexamines the victimology and believes this isn’t just random “older girl, younger boy” abductions, like they’d initially thought. Rather, this is meant to be a specific sibling setup – older sister, younger brother. Much to their dismay, they then realize this means that Roberto could be the unsub’s next target.
The team informs JJ and Luke of this, and the two agree to go back and take him into protective custody. Unfortunately, by the time they get back, they discover a horrifying scene. Renee’s been attacked (but thankfully is still alive), and Roberto? He’s gone. Turns out the unsub had been watching the Morales’ home, waiting until JJ and the other investigators left. He then set a car on fire in an area nearby to distract the police, thus giving him plenty of time to break into the home and take his next victim.
So just who is this creep, anyway? Thanks to Garcia’s searching, she reveals his name is John David Bates, and he’s originally from Nevada. He moved to Los Angeles recently, and currently works for a company that repairs fire damage to homes. Aha.
Oh, yeah, and when he was twelve, he tried to set fire to his home, with his fourteen year old sister Trisha still inside. I believe that is what we call the jackpot. Luckily, his plan failed, but he actually tried to commit the very same crime a couple years later. After that, he was rehomed, went into juvenile hall, and went into the foster care system until he was of age to go off and do his own thing.
“She basically told him to ‘go have sex with himself’, and then she deleted that e-mail account.”
In his adult years, John tried to reconnect with Trisha, but since people generally don’t appreciate their siblings trying to burn them and their home to the ground, not surprisingly, Trisha rejected his attempt to reach out.
And when did that rejection happen? Two years ago...aka, around the time of the very first murders and abductions. We have our trigger.
Thankfully, it’s around this point that the team gets a tipoff about an abandoned building that looks to be their unsub’s latest hideout. JJ and Luke head out there, and they’re instantly greeted by flames galore. The bad news: the kids are there, along with Trisha. The good news: they’re still alive. Screaming and pleading for help, yes, but they’re alive. There’s still hope.
At this point, JJ’s in no mood to just hang back and wait around. She barrels right on in, while Luke focuses his attention on taking down the unsub. It doesn’t take him long to nab the guy and pass him off to the police (who’ve arrived just in time). After that, he returns to help JJ rescue the kids. They manage to get Roberto out first, with Trisha following right behind. All that’s left is Francesca, and JJ is doing her absolute damndest to try and break the chains holding her. The fire’s getting closer and hotter, and JJ’s injured, but she does not care. She WILL get this girl out.
Or so she thinks. Luke can already see that the fire is spreading and time is basically running out. Despite JJ’s protests, he practically drags her out of the building...right as an explosion hits.
“I didn’t want him to be alone.”
The next thing we see is JJ sitting in an ambulance, with Luke checking on her. Trisha is wheeled past, and not covered head to toe in a white sheet, so she’s likely going to survive. Roberto’s also sitting in another ambulance, a mask on his face, but looking fairly unscathed otherwise physically. JJ can’t stop staring at him, and it’s at this point that my heart starts to sink.
By the time she actually walks over and kneels down by Roberto, however, we know. We know there isn’t going to be good news about Francesca. I don’t know which part of this scene devastated me more, JJ comforting Roberto or taking it upon herself to break the tragic news to Renee, who immediately breaks down in sobs. Just suffice to say the entire thing was heartbreaking as hell and your heart is stone if there weren’t tears in your eyes.
Back in the present day, JJ’s in tears at this point, too, in her story. All her defenses, all her attempted show of strength, it’s gone. She’s hurting and sobbing and blaming herself and taking responsibility for Francesca’s death, and I’m seriously wishing I could jump through the screen and hug her myself. Will does his best to comfort her, though, reassuring her that she is not to blame for Francesca’s death, and she did everything she could to try and save her. He reminds her over and over and over that she’s a hero, and he’s proud of her, and two people are alive thanks to her efforts. His words obviously don’t take away JJ’s pain, but they’re the words she deserves and needs to hear, and for now, that’s enough.
I REALLY liked this episode. The cases that stick with me the most are the ones that elicit some sort of intense emotional response from me. The little girl going missing at the mall in “Seven Seconds”. Sarah’s search for her long-missing son Charlie in “Mosley Lane”. Adam and Amanda’s painful struggle in “Conflicted”. The women being terrorized by a rapist in “Aftermath”. Just to name a few examples.
This case fits right in alongside those sorts of cases. My heart couldn’t help but go out to poor Roberto as he struggled to deal with his sister going missing, and later dying. And Renee...the thought of a woman losing both her husband and her daughter, and being attacked, and having her son briefly kidnapped as well...some might see that as an excessive amount of pain to throw at one person, but there are real life stories of people who’ve been through multiple traumatic events. I felt the episode made her plight just believable and sympathetic enough to where I truly cared for her, and shared in her hope and despair.
Kudos to the episode for also making me immediately care about Francesca, despite only knowing her for a brief time. She came off as a very smart, sensible, tough girl, and her last minutes were full of both admiration for the fight she put up and empathy for the sheer terror she no doubt was feeling. I think the fact that we only got to know her for a short time worked in the context of the episode, too – it further drove home the poignancy of JJ’s rant about how easy it is for children to go missing and die before most even realize they’re gone in the first place. It was a chilling reminder of how dramatically one’s life can change in the span of a few short days.
The setup of the episode was handled well, too. I tend to like the “start off in present day, tell a story in flashbacks” mode of storytelling, and I think it fit well here. We got to see JJ trying to process and work through her memories of the case, instead of just using the typical format and leaving us only seeing a brief glimpse of her emotions at the end. Sometimes the best way to handle a horrible event is to walk oneself back through the chain of events, and look at it with a bit of distance and perspective. Hopefully that method managed to help JJ come to believe the reassuring words of comfort Will offered.
I also think the format added to the suspense of the case itself. Yeah, when we saw JJ bandaged up and looking troubled at the start, it was obvious this case was not going to be a happy one, and would probably even have a tragic ending. But they kept us guessing right up to the end as to who among the children and Trisha would make it out, if anyone, and that gave the reveal of Francesca’s death an added gut punch.
My main critique is that the unsub’s methods seemed kind of haphazard. If he was focusing on a specific sibling relationship, why not just go for actual siblings from the get-go? Why pick kids that weren’t even related to each other the first couple times? Maybe it was harder for him to find siblings that were exact surrogates for himself and Trisha in the past? I dunno.
And his escalation seemed a bit haphazard for someone who the team profiled as rather controlled in his methods – his first victims were two random kids months apart, then it was two kids at once, then two kids plus his sister. It’s not surprising that someone as disturbed as him would escalate his crimes, of course, and unsubs change their M.Os all the time with little rhyme or reason. But it just seemed an odd contrast to his careful plotting and ability to evade police detection.
I think it was wise for the show to not try and paint him in a sympathetic light of any sort, though. The only thing we know about his childhood is the creepiest part – his attempts to kill his sister – and we don’t know why he wanted to kill her or what other problems he may have had prior to that, or after. All we know is he just likes to kill people seemingly for the hell of it out of a deep hatred for them or himself or both. That made him even scarier, and added to my anxiousness over how this case would end.
I also think this was a great episode for JJ. We all know cases involving children are a personal button for her, of course, but the ways in which those sorts of cases have affected her over the years has changed and developed, and I like that the show’s reflected that. Before Henry was born, her concern was about the sort of world she was bringing a child into. When Izzy Rogers posed a threat to Henry, that was JJ’s first taste of the danger of her job being brought directly into her home.
And now that Henry’s older, JJ has to deal with the fear of sending her son out into the world and trusting he’ll be safe. Add in the fact that she’ll have to go through the cycle of all those worries again with Michael, and this case involving siblings being taken, and it’s even easier to see one of the many reasons why she was so broken and unnerved by the outcome.
At the same time, however, these cases also remind us of what makes her such a valuable part of the team. Her motherly instinct, her ability to relate to and sympathize with grieving families, her headstrong determination, all of that was on display here, and it was great to see JJ’s strengths being highlighted like this. I also thought her comparison of her days as a media liaison to her current role as a profiler was an interesting touch, especially since she admitted to feeling she wasn’t as helpful as a liaison as she is now. I would disagree, of course, but in some ways, I can understand why she might feel that way. JJ’s used to being right in the action and taking control of a situation, and sometimes, at her old job, I can see where she might’ve felt like there was more she should’ve done or wanted to do, but couldn’t, for whatever reason.
Either way, though, this was an honest, moving look into what JJ (and the rest of the team, for that matter) have to bring home with them sometimes from their work. We know they struggle, they’ve spoken of it and made allusions to that fact before. But I like these moments when we actually get to see how they cope. It’s a good reminder of why they care, and why they do this job, and how they deal with the tough days.
Tender Love and Care:
JJ may have been the main standout in this episode, but honestly? Will gets an MVP award here as well. We’ve seen so many team members’ relationships fall apart and be destroyed throughout the course of this series – dead girlfriends and ex-wives, breakups, and, in the case of Emily Prentiss, being romantically involved with the most wrong kind of man imaginable. We saw a sweet glimpse of stability in Kate Callahan and Alex Blake’s relationships with their husbands, but of course, neither woman stayed on the show long enough for those relationships to be further explored.
With JJ, however, we’ve followed her relationship with Will from its unusual beginnings, and watched a strong, stable relationship develop over the course of the series’ run. Meeting on a case isn’t exactly up there on the most romantic ways to start a relationship, but in JJ and Will’s case, it makes perfect sense. JJ gets to come home to a man who will understand firsthand what she’s feeling and dealing with on cases like this, because his job as a detective is similar to hers. That shows in his patience when she snaps at him, his understanding of how exactly to calm her down and bring her out of her dark thoughts, and his deep empathy for the pain she feels when a case doesn’t end well. It was also great to see him actually listening to her, and knowing precisely what questions to ask, and when to take a break. Clearly that therapy has been working.
I was also happy to see him back off on pressuring her to quit the BAU. That issue had often been a main source of debate and tension between Will and JJ over the years, but despite Will’s (valid) concerns about the impact of the work JJ does on her, he’s come to truly understand and respect her devotion to her job and her teammates. Even when he does express frustration at finding out the risks she took in a burning building, it’s out of simple obvious concern for her safety. And JJ understands his concern, because she’s felt it, too (Will walking into a hostage situation at a bank, anyone?). It’s just so nice to see a couple making it all these years, and not letting this job rip them apart, and it’s comforting to know that JJ’s got someone like Will in her corner.
I also greatly enjoyed the moments where they reminisced about the early days of their relationship – early morning breakfasts, the simpler days when they’d visit each other, before the kids were part of their lives. It made me want to sit with them and listen to them share some more happy memories, and those sorts of moments were a much needed break from the heartwrenching nature of the case.
The end scene with Henry and Michael coming to see their mom was lovely, too. It’s been fun to see her children grow up over the course of this series, and while the reason for her break from work may be a sad one, it’s also understandable, and I’m glad that she will get to have a few days to spend time with her family and refocus.
So Long, Farewell…:
The tragic case, as well as JJ’s struggle to cope with the aftermath, weren’t the only sad events of the hour. This episode is also notable for being the very last time viewers would get to see Aaron Hotchner on the show, as it was around this time when Thomas Gibson was suspended, then fired, from the series. Viewers who haven’t been following the behind the scenes drama of the past two months would be forgiven for not knowing this, however, because the episode, understandably, didn’t give any hint of the sudden change in cast to come, save perhaps for Tara mentioning this case was one Hotch had been consulting on at the start of the episode, since he notably was not with the team as they flew to California.
Other than that, while he may not have been front and center this episode, Hotch still had a few lines, he was clearly shown to be involved in working the case (we even saw him giving a press conference at one point), and he even had a brief talk with JJ as the case wrapped up, ordering her to take a much needed week’s break from work to get her head together.
And I am glad that we did get that brief scene between him and JJ at the end. It may not have been up there among Hotch’s best heart-to-heart team talks, no, but it was still a nice example of what made him such an important character, and such a good leader. Always looking out for his team, always seeing to it they took a break when necessary, and knowing how to be firm yet sympathetic and understanding in his orders.
Obviously, it would’ve been lovely if Hotch had been able to get a proper goodbye scene, but circumstances being what they were, that couldn’t logically happen, so this is about as good a final scene as we could hope or ask for. Here’s hoping that as the season goes on, the show will be able to better sort out a proper goodbye storyline for Hotch, one that lets viewers know he’s alive and well and happy with his son somewhere.
In the meantime, just as one character exits, another arrives: Emily Prentiss is coming back! And if the promos for the next episode are any indication, she’s not wasting any time getting right back into the swing of things with her old team. Look forward to discussing her return with all of you!
What did you think of the episode? Did the format of the episode work for you? Was the ending a shock, or was the outcome kind of obvious from the start? Did you enjoy seeing Will again? Is Luke settling in well for you? Did the final scene with Hotch and JJ work for you? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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