As the review title implies, family, both biological and otherwise, proves to be a big part of this week’s episode. One family is destroyed by their strange and complicated bonds, while another is strengthened thanks to the return of a beloved character. Let’s jump right in and you’ll see what I mean.
The Case:
As per usual, we begin with a seemingly innocuous scene. A group of young boys are poking around what appears to be some sort of junkyard or dump site,, talking about this and that and teasing each other about girls.
Obviously this is not the safest place for these kids to be – tetanus risks, getting lost, and the like – but in the end, they’re not the ones in danger. In fact, their being there actually proves helpful, albeit in the most horrifying way imaginable.
Because thanks to them, the body of a missing woman has finally been discovered.
Thanks to Garcia’s case presentation, we soon learn that woman’s name is Lisa Barkley. She was in her thirties, and she was a single mom who had a thirteen year old son. She’d been missing for the past week, and thanks to those nosy boys, it’s revealed she’d been dumped in a barrel and covered in concrete. The only reason the local investigators were able to identify her body was because they got fingerprints off the few fingers that managed to escape getting stuck in the substance. The team wonders if she’d been sexually assaulted as well, but there’s no info on that aspect of things yet because they’re still working on prying her out of her concrete tomb. Eesh.
To make matters even more disturbing, the investigators also made an ultrasound of the barrel while Lisa was still inside. Based off the expression of terror on her face, it’s revealed she was still alive when she was put in there. Wonderful.
Lisa’s not a lifelong resident of the area, either. She moved to the area with her son after her divorce a number of years prior. Her ex is instantly ruled out as a suspect, though – his and Lisa’s divorce appeared amicable, he’s remarried since, and he’s consistent in his child support payments. The team also investigates her job as an assistant bank manager, in case she was about to bring attention to any shady dealings, but as the episode goes on, that angle doesn’t pan out to anything of note.
There’s another aspect of this case that puzzles Luke. How did their unsub even manage to carry that barrel in the first place? Solid concrete ain’t exactly a light substance, after all. Could there be more than one unsub involved?
The team’s examination of Lisa’s life is set aside for the moment, however, as Garcia informs the team that another woman’s body was found in virtually the same sort of setup. The dump site is different, but it’s not too far from the area that contained Lisa’s barrel. So clearly that spot’s got some importance to the unsub in general.
Emily and Rossi investigate the latest crime scene and expand on Luke’s question about how the unsub got the barrel to the area. A truck? A dolly? They also start to concoct the theory that this guy is actually creating his own private burial ground.
Reid and Luke, meanwhile, visit the M.E. and learn a few more things about Lisa. She was likely entombed in the barrel for about a week, meaning she died shortly after being abducted. She was also restrained, and died through being smothered with concrete. The most interesting part, though, is that despite being the first body discovered, Lisa was not the unsub’s first victim. Turns out another woman, Sharon Landon, had been killed a full month before Lisa, and she has virtually all the same qualities Lisa did, the only difference being the women’s skin color (Sharon’s black, Lisa’s white). That implies their unsub doesn’t have a specific type in terms of physical appearance; rather, his issues seem tied to their being single moms.
Emily and JJ talk to Sharon’s son, whose name is Malcolm. He tells them he’s seen men working around their neighborhood, but he’s never noticed anything suspicious. Sharon’s sister also shoots down any possibility of her having had a boyfriend who might be seeking revenge – according to her, Sharon’s main focus was her son. This leads Malcolm to remember some of his favorite memories of his mother, and it’s impossible for one’s heart to not go out to the poor boy. Easily the most heartbreaking moment of the episode.
It’s at this point that Luke informs them that another woman’s gone missing. Her name’s Kim Contey, and just like Sharon and Lisa, she’s a single mom. There were signs of a struggle at her home, and a neighbor reported her missing after she didn’t pick her son and his friends up from a day out.
It doesn’t take us long to see where Kim’s wound up. She’s in what looks to be some basement area, tied to a chair. Said unsub is revving up what looks to be some sort of drill, and demands of Kim, “When are you gonna tell the truth?” Despite Kim’s pleas, it’s clear the team will be dealing with victim number three very soon.
And so it is that the next day, the team has a whole new crime scene to investigate. While Luke and Emily turn their focus to figuring out why all three women were dumped in this specific geographical zone, Reid returns to the M.E. and observes Kim’s body. His part of the investigation turns up something odd about Kim’s nose. There’s chemical burns there. Reid’s starting to believe concrete wasn’t the only means by which Kim died.
In fact, it appears their unsub is actually performing chemical lobotomies, and that may have played a role in aiding in the women’s deaths. Apparently, this guy drills up through the victims’ noses in an attempt to destroy their frontal lobes, which, yikes. They feel it’s some sort of attempt to control them somehow.
Garcia notices something interesting, too. The communities all three women worked in had the same sorts of contractors working for them. She does her usual narrowing down, focusing on the pool contractors, but that’s still a pretty long list. The team is also still mystified over why their unsub is choosing these specific dumpsites, and what their meaning is to him.
To try and get answers, Luke and Emily wind up on a stakeout of their unsub’s dumping ground, and eventually notice a car pulling into the area. The car belongs to a local contractor, thanks to Garcia’s running of the license plate, and once Luke and Emily hear a woman’s scream, they come running. Could they finally have their unsub?
Nah. Just a couple young teens coming to this area to make out. And the car? It’s the boy’s father’s, and he let him borrow it.
Oddly enough, though, the teens’ appearance there does prove helpful in another way: it leads the team to think there must be some romantic element to the unsub picking that spot. Maybe a rejected lover? Perhaps his attempt to mess with their brains is his way of getting them to “comply” with his sexual desires?
That theory hits a possible snag, however, when the team learns there was no evidence of sexual assault on any of the victims. The brain issue still lends credence to the team’s theory that there’s a sexual aspect here, however…but in the reverse. Their unsub isn’t trying to heighten his victims’ sexual desires. He’s trying to stop them. And he thinks the only way these women can keep their focus exclusively on their sons is if they don’t have any hint of sexual desires whatsoever.
While all this investigation is going on, we get a few more glimpses into our unsub’s life. The photos in his home indicate a happy family, and his mom keeps reminiscing about pleasant memories of her son’s childhood with his sister.
As is common with this show, however, the reality doesn’t match the photo. This guy’s spent much of the episode upset over lack of contact with a family member, and it’s soon revealed the family member in question is his sister. Despite his mom’s attempts to assure him she’ll return home soon, he seems pretty doubtful, to the point where he snaps at his mom for even believing such a thing.
Setting the obvious issues over his sister aside, this guy doesn’t seem to have a lot of love for his mom in general. He even goes so far as to ask her the very same question he asked Kim before killing her. He wants the truth about something, and apparently the truth he’s seeking is in relation to being made part of the family. He’s adopted, you see, and seems to have a lot of lingering bitterness surrounding that fact.
It’s also eventually revealed that Luke and Emily weren’t the only ones keeping an eye on that dump site the night the young couple arrived. Seems the unsub had been lurking nearby, too, and now has confirmation that investigators are poking around his area. Unfortunately, this adds to his anger, which increases the tension at home. And when his mom doesn’t give him a satisfactory answer regarding the circumstances of his adoption, shocker of shockers, she becomes his next captive.
Back at the station, Garcia comes across some intriguing new bits of information. She tells the team the tragic story of a woman named Lynelle Barker, who suffered brain damage after being involved in a car crash when she was fifteen years old that killed her father. Her brain damage led her to develop Kluver Bucy syndrome, a disorder that affects the frontal lobe of the brain and leads to hypersexual behavior. That’s about as spot on a connection as the team could hope for, no? Lynelle started getting treatment for her behavior right around the time of Sharon’s death...but this begs the question: if she was getting help, why would that bother the unsub to the point of starting a killing spree?
Further investigation reveals the name of our unsub, Stuart Barker. He’s Lynelle’s sister, and there’s a sixteen year age gap between them. That age gap might be a little odd if not for the fact that he was adopted...
...but as Garcia digs further, that turns out to be far from the strangest thing about this family. The woman who adopted him, Gloria, did so the year after Lynelle died in the car crash. The man who died in that crash was Gloria’s husband, thus making Lynelle Gloria’s daughter.
The kicker? Lynelle had had a baby not long before her accident. Anyone want to take a guess who her son is?
Yep. Stuart. Cue the “Jerry! Jerry!” chants.
So the woman Stuart thought was his mom is actually his grandmother, and the woman he thought was his sister is his mother. That’s pretty freaking weird enough. But a flashback moment with Stuart reveals a whole new twisted and disturbing level to this family dynamic.
“I killed her because she wouldn’t have sex with me!”
Back when Stuart thought Lynelle was his sister, he developed a romantic attraction to her. His logic was that they weren’t blood related siblings, after all, so he felt it’d be okay as a result to act on his interest in her. Especially given how sexual she was with others – as he himself notes in the flashback, she even hit on his friends, because apparently this story just isn’t nearly messed up enough.
Stuart took Lynelle into the woods one evening to confess his feelings and try and put the moves on her...and that’s when Lynelle dropped the bombshell that she was actually his mom. If that’s not the epitome of a "cold shower" moment, I don’t know what is.
Needless to say, Stuart did NOT handle that news or rejection well, and ever since then, he’s blamed Gloria for not protecting him and telling him the truth sooner. He also makes the ghastly revelation to his mom that the reason he knows Lynelle won’t be coming back is because she’s dead. He killed her some time back, and she’s buried in their backyard, right in the same area he’s going to bury his mom.
Thankfully, he doesn’t get very far with that plan, because the team arrives in the nick of time and takes him down. Gloria’s got a little concrete on her, and is obviously deeply shaken up, but there’s not going to be a victim number four in the team’s future. How she’ll recover from the damage done to her family, though, is a question the team, and us viewers, will have to wonder about going forward.
This is the third episode writer Karen Maser has done for the show, and I am pleased to see a few changes in the complaints I initially had about her writing style. When Gloria first appeared and started talking to Stuart, I’d initially presumed she was already dead, or he was hallucinating her similar to the way the unsub in “’Til Death Do Us Part” hallucinated the man she was in love with. Much to my pleasant surprise, I was proven wrong with that assumption.
My other big issue with the episodes Maser had written thus far was that it was pretty easy to see the endings coming from the start. In contrast, this episode actually had some intriguing twists to it – I certainly never would’ve expected a case involving single mothers entombed in concrete to eventually tie into such a warped family dynamic. And in regards to the big twist involving the reveal of just who Lynelle was in relation to Stuart, even if one predicted that as time went on (I didn’t up until Garcia started talking about the car crash), the part about him having romantic feelings for her was an unexpected and unsettling angle. So credit to Maser for not going with the typical, “unsub taking his anger out on an abusive mother/recreating a dead mother” setup, and coming up with something a little new and out there.
That said, however, it was kinda hard to get too invested in the creepiness of this case, because the acting of those involved in said case felt a little...eh to me throughout. The actor who played Stuart in particular didn’t really seem to give off enough of a truly menacing, effed up vibe to me.
There were parts of the story itself that felt off, too. Considering the great pains Stuart went to to keep the captivity, murder, and disposal of his victims private, the scene with him digging his mom’s grave in their own backyard made no sense. Wouldn’t some neighbor have heard her screams and pleas, or wouldn’t the unsub have been concerned about that and taken measures to keep her quiet, at the very least? Why not instantly knock her out the way he did his other victims, and then dig her grave? I suppose that could be explained away as part of the unsub devolving, or panicking, or something, but even then, I don’t feel that explanation would be enough. In some ways, like in “Drive”, what should’ve been a tense and unnerving end scene between unsub and victim felt rather rushed and lacking in suspense. So Maser's cases are improving in both structure and premise, but there's still a little work to do.
On a better note, there was another aspect of the episode that I felt Maser handled relatively well, and that was the return of a particularly notable and beloved character.
Welcome Home:
“Some things never change.”
Yes, the moment many fans have waited for is finally here. Emily Prentiss is officially back. he scene where JJ and Reid greet her is utterly adorable – Iparticularly loved Reid running up and hugging Emily, and his reaction to Emily bringing him his favorite donut – and it’s hard not to get swept up in the infectious enthusiasm and happiness of their reunion. There is a brief moment of awkwardness as we see Emily and JJ make mention of Hotch being “on assignment”, to the point where even the cast members themselves look a little uncomfortable talking about it. But it’s over and done in the blink of an eye, and that’s that on the Hotch front for now, unless the show broaches the topic again down the line.
Hotch isn’t the only missing team member in this episode, either. Apparently Tara Lewis is away as well, doing research, so the team’s down two people as a result. Not that those absences seemed to hurt the team’s ability to work the case, mind.
Emily learns that her old desk was given to Luke, and she proceeds to give a profile of him based off the desk’s seemingly bare appearance. No family photos, no personal items, she knows about his military background and tries to expand on that, thus leading her to see him as this loner type who might’ve had a bad relationship or is a very secretive sort…
...and of course, Luke happens to come up right behind her as she’s rattling off her profile. Luckily, he takes Emily’s foot-in-mouth moment in stride. I enjoyed that moment of awkwardness from Emily – it was a fun nod to season three, when Rossi first joined the team and Emily, Morgan, and a reluctant Reid spent time attempting to profile his office. The moment also reminded me of Garcia rattling off Blake’s history when she first met her, only to have a similar “They’re standing behind me, aren’t they?” realization. Sure, it may be a rather repetitive bit, but it was still entertaining and amusing.
Emily’s profile of Luke also lead to a great moment later on during their stakeout, when he profiled her in turn. Their interaction in that scene was enjoyable in general – there was a breezy banter that was sweet and fun, and it was great to see Luke get to know the woman he’d no doubt heard many stories about from the rest of the team. I also liked seeing Emily won over by Luke’s natural charm and friendliness.
And yet, it was good to see them bond over more serious matters, too, notably in relation to Luke’s military work in Afghanistan. Emily proves such a good confidante on that topic, in fact, that at the end of the episode, Luke asks her to keep their talk about his time overseas between them. Sure, this request could just be him simply not wanting to make a thing out of his previous experience, but as we all know with this show, whenever a new team member asks for a part of their past to stay quiet, there’s usually a deeper and more significant reason as to why. Opening up to Emily is wise in the sense that she knows all about the importance of keeping secrets...but of course, she also knows all too well just how hard it is to keep secrets hidden for long. That has me wondering if she’ll play a role in the revelation of his past somehow down the line.
On a lighter note, the end of the episode also gave us a fun moment of the women planing a ladies’ night. Garcia’s still a little antsy around Luke, but we can already see her defenses against him starting to weaken. It’s always great to see Emily back with her old teammates, of course, but this particular return is even more exciting with the knowledge that she’s sticking around the rest of the season. I felt Maser did a good job of making Emily’s return feel natural, and appreciated that there wasn’t any big fanfare around it. Emily came back, she went right into the field, worked the case like old times, it felt like she’d never left. Her previous returns in “200” and “Tribute” were fun, too, but there was some awkwardness around them (which, to be fair, is understandable, given they were only one-off guest appearances and the stories weren’t focused on her specifically).
This time, however, her eagerness to return full-time is easy to see, and I love that the show let her do her thing and give us a glimpse of what to expect from her as the season goes on. Knowing she’ll eventually be taking over the unit chief role adds to my excitement at her return – it’ll be interesting to see how they work up to that rather important moment.
Meanwhile, back at Quantico:
Not a whole lot to share here, other than the fact that we get to see a bit more of Luke’s private life this episode. He goes for a run, he looks to be a bachelor, if the state of his apartment is anything to go by, and he makes a nice little feast for his beloved (and adorable) dog.
Also, the dog’s name? Roxy. Called it!
Elsewhere, Emily informs Rossi that she and Mark, whom we briefly met in last season’s “Tribute”, are “very happy”, and Rossi getting all “protective dad” on her over him was super adorable and made me smile. We also learn that Rossi and Hayden are doing well. So yay for happy couples!
No new episode this week because of the final presidential debate, but if the promo is any indication, episode four promises to be a pretty intense and scary story – and just in time for Halloween, no less! Here’s hoping we get a bit of fun holiday celebration amongst the team to balance out the potentially frightening case.
What did you think of the episode? Did the twist about Stuart’s family’s past surprise you? Was this among the creepiest families this show’s ever featured? On a happier note, how excited were you to see Emily again? Are you liking the new friendship between her and Luke? And what secrets do you think Luke’s hiding about his military past? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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