Happy new year, “Criminal Minds” fans! Hope you all had a lovely holiday break, and are ready to jump back into our weekly discussion of the series. Let’s get this rolling.
The second half of season twelve kicked off with an episode that harkens back to an unsub that we first met in season seven. To briefly recap: in the episode “Profiling 101”, we were introduced to a man by the name of Thomas Yates. He was better known as the “Womb Raider” to the media, and as his oh-so-charming nickname indicates, he was perhaps one of the most violent and brutal unsubs the BAU ever encountered, having been responsible for the graphic murders of numerous women. Forty-seven victims were found, but Yates claimed to have killed over a hundred women, so there’s still plenty that have yet to be identified.
He was also a deep thorn in Rossi’s side. Rossi had spent a good portion of his first go-round in the BAU hunting Yates, only to be frustrated at the way the man kept giving him the slip. The case had remained open for years, and Rossi began to make it his life’s mission to capture this creep. Luckily, Yates was eventually caught by Rossi and his teammates, and had initially been given the death penalty, only to have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment instead. Sounds like a good, tidy ending, right?
Eh, not so much. As we learned in “Profiling 101”, Thomas Yates decided he just wasn’t quite through having fun taunting Rossi. The two men eventually struck a deal: Rossi would visit Yates in prison, and Yates would give him the name of one victim per year, as well as tell him where the victim was buried. Rossi would then be able to add the victim’s name to a list, notify the family, and give them some closure.
The catch? Rossi had to make these prison trips on his birthday. It speaks to the deep dedication Rossi had towards this case, as well as his compassion for the victims and their families, that he’s willing to let what should be a special, happy day for him be sullied in order to get the answers he and these victims’ loved ones desperately need.
Which now brings us to the sequel, “Profiling 202”, and boy, does it up the ante surrounding the Yates case. If Rossi thought Yates was enough of a headache before, this episode was about to prove just how wrong his assumptions were.
The Case:
“I’m back, Dave. And feeling like my old self again.”
Rossi’s birthday has rolled around again, and so far, the day’s been fairly normal for a change. He spent most of the day teaching at a seminar for up and coming FBI agents (more on that later).
That doesn’t mean he’s in the mood to kick back and celebrate, however. After work, he spends the day the way he’s spent every birthday for the last few years – alone, reflecting on the significance of the day and the case, the unsub, that have haunted him for over twenty years.
Unfortunately, his quiet evening in is about to be shattered in the most dramatic way possible. Right on cue, he gets a phone call, and it’s from none other than Thomas Yates himself. He proceeds to taunt Rossi with the old “Happy Birthday” refrain he sings to him every year before letting him know that he’s on the prowl again. He’s even got his latest victim, a woman by the name of Jody Wilson, currently sitting bound and gagged in the backseat of his car.. And to make matters worse, Yates makes it pretty clear to Rossi that she’s not going to live much longer, forcing him to hear her screams.
But how can he be out? He’s supposed to be in prison, right? Well, as Emily informs the aforementioned class at the beginning of the episode, it turns out that Yates was among the thirteen serial killers who’d escaped in the big prison break at the end of last season. Rossi and the team are going to have to chase him down all over again.
The next day, Rossi, Emily, Luke, and new guy Stephen head out to the forest area where Yates told Rossi Jody’s body could be found. Just like all of Yates’ other victims, Jody met a similar horrific end. Clearly the creep takes pride in living up to his disgusting nickname. Stephen notices that there are a couple differences this time around, though. One, Jody isn’t a high-risk victim like many of the women Yates has killed, and two, there’s the fact that Yates made a point of calling Rossi to taunt and tell him about the woman he’d abducted. He never used to do that before. So why is he doing so now?
Rossi theorizes it’s because he and Yates have developed a twisted sort of “mutual respect” for each other over the years. “I actually think he liked me,” Rossi says of Yates. Since the guy didn’t have any close family or friends, since nobody bothered to come see him in prison, he latched on to Rossi, the first person to pay any sort of attention to him. Rossi, meanwhile, equates his respect for Yates to the respect one gives their enemy in war. No matter how much a profiler despises what an unsub does, Rossi feels it’s important that they treat the unsub like an equal on some level, in the hopes of getting what they need and want from them.
The team’s focus then turns to trying to learn more about Jody herself in order to find out why Yates picked her, and they manage to get in touch with her mom and call her down for an interview. As Rossi prepares to interview her, he runs into JJ and Tara, who offer to aid him in talking to Mrs. Wilson. They’re understandably concerned about the toll this case is taking on him, and they want to take some of the heavy weight, so to speak, off his shoulders.
Rossi will have none of their help, though. This case is personal to him, he’s always been the one talking to the victims’ families, and that’s not about to change. It’s an admirable moment, even if I do also sympathize with JJ and Tara’s concerns and offer to help.
Shortly afterward, Rossi sits down with Jody’s mom, and he goes through a small list of basic questions in such a way that indicates he could probably do these kinds of interviews in his sleep at this point. Mrs. Wilson describes her daughter as a sweet girl, and tells Rossi that she’d been happy lately. When Rossi asks her what she means by “lately”, Mrs. Wilson explains that Jody hadn’t been the most outgoing girl growing up. She have much in the way of friends, and she wasn’t married.
Her love life seemed to perk up a little bit recently, however, when she started seeing a man named Johnny. Mrs. Wilson clearly seemed to approve of this new guy in her daughter’s life, telling Rossi about how nice he was. Johnny had even thought to bring her flowers when Jody brought him home to meet her once! Pretty charming, indeed.
Unfortunately, because Mrs. Wilson had only met this guy once, she didn’t know a whole lot else about him beyond that, not even his last name. It’s at this point that I started to feel my antenna going up and I’m sitting here going, “Hmmm...”. Rossi then shows Mrs. Wilson a photo of Yates, to give her an idea of the man he believes is responsible for her daughter’s death, and you can practically see the color drain from her face as she looks at the picture. She knows that man. He’s “Johnny”!
This shocking news leaves Rossi quite puzzled. Yates had a seriously deep hatred of women, and didn’t exactly possess the best social skills to boot. His crimes alone proved he literally didn’t see women as human. So why in the world would he ever want to forge a relationship with a woman? Could he have actually tried to explore what it’s like to live a normal life for once? It doesn’t seem very likely, but as this show has proven many times over, unsubs can take people by surprise. The team’s not entirely on board with that theory, though. They tend to believe that Yates simply took advantage of Jody’s loneliness, and made himself sympathetic to her because of his own lonely life. The fact that Jody’s SUV was abandoned, and her savings account had been emptied, further proves Yates was using her for personal gain.
Just when the team thinks the circumstances surrounding Jody’s murder can’t get any more unusual, they get another surprising bit of news: she wasn’t starved. Yates had plenty of time to abuse her, given he was her boyfriend for a time, he could’ve starved her the way he did his other victims. So to recap, we’ve got Yates suddenly taunting Rossi, Jody not fitting the type of victims Yates prefers, and now a notable part of Yates’ M.O. being skipped over. It’s not uncommon for unsubs to change their criminal methods, but that’s an awful lot of changes all at once. There’s got to be a notable reason behind all these changes.
Before Rossi can delve too deeply into what that reason might be, he gets another call from his ol’ nemesis. He tries to ask him about Jody in the hopes of trying to figure out where he’s going with these recent changes regarding his victims, but not surprisingly, Yates wants to continue to play with him instead. The conversation takes a particularly chilling turn when Yates starts talking about the importance of family, making a point to mention Joy, Kai, and Hayden by name. This immediately has Rossi’s hair standing on end and going straight into protective, angry mode. His attempts to demand Yates leave his family alone seem to fall on deaf ears, however, and Rossi’s left to wonder and worry about his family’s safety. Luckily, unlike the first phone call, this one’s being recorded, so hopefully it’ll prove helpful somehow.
Once again, Yates then goes on to talk about his latest victim, a woman by the name of Amber (though that might not be her real name, as Yates notes that her driver’s license says her name’s Regina Franklin). For the second time, Rossi gets to hear a woman screaming over the phone as he sits there feeling utterly helpless, and cue yet another trip to yet another wooded area to find yet another woman’s body.
To add to the team’s frustration, they learn they’re not alone at this latest crime scene. The media’s there as well, swarming around like flies. Rossi volunteers to deal with them, and when they ask for information on the “Womb Raider”, he simply echoes the same thing we heard him say to the press in “Profiling 101”: he refuses to use that nickname when talking about Yates, demands the media take responsibility for such a flashy name, and will not feed into their spectacle surrounding this guy. I loved that particular callback, and Rossi’s words here made me cheer as much as they did back in “Profiling 101”.
As Rossi, Emily, and JJ study Regina’s body (and yes, it’s confirmed her name is indeed Regina), they discuss what they know about her thus far – she’s a prostitute (hence the alias “Amber”) as well as a drug addict – and like Jody, her murder doesn’t fit Yates’ typical style, either. She doesn’t fit his typical age range, and this murder was a little more sloppy than his usual kills. Yates’ blood is also found on her, indicating he got hurt when she tried to fight him off, and the team believes that he’s responsible for calling the media and getting them to show up, likely as a means of making Rossi and the team look bad.
Later, Stephen asks Rossi to give the recording of the latest call another listen. He’s picked up on something odd in Yates’ tone, and Rossi notices it, too. The moment Yates starts talking about family, he changes from a taunting tone to sounding almost...sad. Resigned. Not exactly the sort of mood one typically shows when they’re making a threat against somebody’s family. He also makes a point of talking about how one “never knows how much time they’ve got left”. Sounds like he feels he’s living on borrowed time.
After obtaining Yates’ medical records from prison, Rossi and the team learn the truth: Yates has cancer. It’s not a surprising diagnosis – he was a smoker, after all, and his grandma died of lung cancer. But with that news, suddenly everything Yates has been doing thus far makes complete sense. He changed his M.O. because he couldn’t afford to spend as much time with his victims as he used to in the past, and he keeps his focus on low-risk victims, because he needed his kills to be quicker. And he called the media, and taunted Rossi, because he wants to go out in a blaze of glory, with his name living in infamy. Of course, this means that now time really is of the essence in catching him.
Later that night, Rossi takes a moment out from the case to call his family and see how they’re doing. Thanks to the potential threat Yates poses to them, they’ve been moved into protective custody. Rossi is understandably guilty over putting his daughter and grandson in that sort of situation, and Hayden...well, this is just another reminder of all the concerns she had about Rossi’s job and the toll it would take on him and their relationship. Despite that, though, he can be rest assured his family is safe and doing okay.
Emily stops by his office to check on him, and manages to cheer him up with some lighthearted humor – quoting his famous sayings to him, reminding him that he’s got the support of her and the rest of the team, and staying in friend mode instead of unit chief mode. She then tries to get him to rest for a while, but he’s not sleeping until this case is done, so she decides to do the next best thing: have dinner with him. And thanks to Rossi’s connections, they’re able to enjoy a nice meal from a place that’s usually closed that time of night.
While that pleasant bit of downtime is going on, we see Yates picking up his latest victim, another prostitute. He starts coughing up a storm when he shares a cigarette with her, and her genuine concern for him makes her all the more vulnerable. And like clockwork, Rossi soon gets call number three. This latest victim’s name is Brandy, and this time, Yates has decided that he wants to “take his time with her”. He doesn’t, however, tell Rossi where he plans to dump Brandy’s body this time. That’s something he’ll have to figure out all on his own.
Rossi then proceeds to use a tried-and-true method to allow him to focus and try and properly get into Yates’ mind. That method? Cooking. Seriously. Cooking reminds Rossi of his childhood, it’s soothing and comforting, and a quiet meal by himself allows him to re-energize and re-focus. He makes up a tasty Italian dish, pours a glass of wine, and settles in for a nice meal.
He’s not alone at this particular dinner this time, however. Out of nowhere, we see Yates sitting right across the table from him, enjoying his own version of this delicious meal. Bwuh?
Obviously, Yates isn’t actually having dinner with Rossi. Apparently, when he cooks while working a case, Rossi likes to pretend he’s having dinner with the unsub. He imagines having a conversation with them, theorizes about the things they might say, thinks up the kinds questions he’d ask in order to guide himself onto the right path, and if all goes well, this imaginary conversation allows him to start getting the answers he needs.
The conversation starts off pretty ordinary. Rossi tries to be sympathetic to the abuse Yates suffered at his grandma’s hands, tries to hit him where it hurts by touching on his feelings of abandonment over his mom’s death, discusses his hatred of women, and muses on what could’ve possibly made his attitude change in prison. Later, when out on the patio “sharing a smoke” with Yates (Rossi also loves a good cigar, a vice he says he picked up during his time in Vietnam), he then turns his focus on Yates choosing to target him as a means of payback for putting him away years ago.
“Yates” is appropriately snarky during these interactions. He mocks and insults his grandma, reminds Rossi he already knows the answers to these questions he’s being asked, and taunts Rossi with the fact that he still doesn’t know where he slipped away to. The real mystery here is where he would’ve taken Brandy. As Rossi mulls this over, he comes to the conclusion that Yates must be wanting to pick a place that’s special to Rossi, as a final attempt to ruin something that’s special to him, the way he did with Rossi’s birthday. He wanted to bury a victim right under Rossi’s nose to really drive him nuts. Rossi runs through all the possible places of importance to him that he’d told Yates about over the years, but none of them prove fruitful. That’s when it finally hits him just where Yates plans to go.
Rossi then begins wandering around his own backyard...and finds Yates holding Brandy hostage just outside his home! There’s a face-off between the two men, with Rossi threatening to shoot if Yates doesn’t drop his weapon. Unfortunately, as Yates reminds Rossi, he’s found himself in a no-win situation here. If he doesn’t shoot Yates, Brandy will likely die, and Yates has a chance to flee, as he refuses to die in prison. If Rossi does shoot him, however, he’ll lose any chance at ever learning the names and locations any of the remaining victims from Yates’ original crime spree, and many families will be left forever wondering what happened to their loved ones.
The choice seems pretty clear to Rossi in the end, though. He fires, and Yates falls dead on the spot. Brandy is clearly shaken up, but she’s survived. It’s soon revealed that her real name is Stephanie, and she ran away from home years ago. At the end, Rossi sees to it she’s reunited with her parents, and he also gets the chance to speak with Regina’s family and let them know what happened to their daughter.
Overall, I felt this was a good episode. I liked the idea of having Yates be among the thirteen prisoner escapees, and I liked the idea of continuing with the Yates storyline. Some of the best storylines with Rossi involve him dealing with unsubs that have dogged him for years (“Damaged” is another great example of this), and the issue of the list of names of Yates’ victims adds a particular poignancy to this case that I’ve always found interesting to explore. Much as I would’ve liked Rossi to continue getting the rest of the names, I think we all knew in the back of our minds that there was a good chance this case would never be satisfactorily solved. Even if Yates had been the picture of health, the fact is that, at one name per year, Rossi would’ve been a very old man by the time he got all of the names, if he managed to live that long. And now with Yates being sick, it wouldn’t have mattered if Rossi had killed him or not.
It did feel a little like Rossi seemed to kind of have an almost “Oh, well” attitude over the fact he was never going to learn about the rest of Yates’ victims, which was a bit surprising to me, given how personal this case had been for him. At the same time, though, I think his learning that Yates had cancer allowed him to kind of take some time to accept this sad fact, and I think the fact he was able to save Brandy helped ease some of that frustration as well. There’s also the fact that there’s always a chance some more of Yates’ victims could be found by other people down the line, and if the evidence matches up to Yates’ M.O., if they can manage to get any DNA from any of the remnants of the bodies, then maybe there’s still an outside chance Rossi can add a few more names to his list. One can only hope that’ll be the case.
It was also good to watch the team work this case in real time, unlike in “Profiling 101”, where we saw the team’s work in flashbacks. I liked seeing how the rest of the team continued to support Rossi on such an important case, and I also appreciated the moments where they looked out for his emotional well-being. Every team member has that unsub, that case, that weighs on them, or a case that had so many loose ends left danging. They get what Rossi’s going through. And it’s just always nice to see those moments where they can bond over the difficulties this job can bring.
Yet at the same time, I also liked that they were respectful of Rossi’s desire to handle certain aspects of the case alone. It’s a good sign of how much they respect and trust him. And I think they just plain like seeing Rossi take charge on a case in general – it’s a great chance for them to continue to learn from the man who’s the reason they’re all in the BAU in the first place.
I enjoyed the back and forth between Yates and Rossi throughout as well. Cancer clearly hadn’t affected Yates’ evil streak – he was just as cruel and creepy as he was when we first met him a few years ago. And yet, at the same time, I did see the mutual respect Rossi spoke of between them. They have such a built up history, and I got the sense that in some ways, Yates was almost relieved to know Rossi was chasing him. I got the odd feeling that if he had to die, he’d prefer it happen at Rossi’s hand. The “conversation” scenes between Rossi and Yates were on the line between interesting and kind of cheesy, but ultimately, I do think they worked, if for no other reason than it was good to get into Rossi’s thought process and to see how well and how deeply he’s come to understand Yates.
There was a rather notable flaw in this episode, though. “Profiling 101” aired in the spring of 2012, thus indicating Rossi’s birthday was therefore in the spring. So why are we having an episode where he celebrates his birthday airing in January? Yes, the air date doesn’t necessarily correlate to the date it’s supposed to be in the time frame of the show, but the change is still a noticeable one regardless. Initially I’d wondered if perhaps it wasn’t actually Rossi’s birthday, and Yates just sang the “Happy Birthday” song to hint to him that he was out, since that was his way of communicating with Rossi before. But that wasn’t the case, and given this episode and “Profiling 101” were written by the same person, that makes the canon discrepancy all the more noticeable and awkward, which is a shame when the rest of the episode is generally pretty good.
Attention, Class:
In “Profiling 101”, most of the storyline took place in a classroom, as Rossi shared the story of Yates’ history with a group of students interested in joining the BAU. This episode continued with that theme, as some of it took place in yet another classroom, this time at a seminar for FBI recruits. Rossi, Emily, and Stephen were the main instructors throughout, and it’s good that Stephen and Emily were there, as Rossi’s interaction with the students got off to a bit of a rocky start. Upon learning it was his birthday, the students all chipped in and got him a nice bottle of scotch.
Given Rossi’s obvious reluctance to celebrate, however, he was quick to reject the gift, leaving Emily to summarize everything with him and Yates to the class. Thankfully, after the case wrapped up, Rossi came back at the end to apologize for his initial reaction. He then proceeds to graciously accept the scotch, and even goes so far as to invite the students to a gourmet dinner at his place! It’s official: Rossi is the coolest teacher ever.
It wasn’t all lighthearted celebrations at the seminar, however. The students also spent the hour aiding Rossi and the rest of the team in solving the Yates case, getting some firsthand experience in what it’s really like to work for the BAU. Rossi spends the hour teaching them how to come up with theories behind why a criminal does what they do, he and Emily present a computer-animated portrayal of the right and wrong ways to handle taking down an unsub during a hostage situation (don’t be so quick to shoot, don’t spend too much time pestering him about his issues, do appeal to their narcissism), and the students themselves ask some valuable questions throughout as well.
At the end of the episode, one young man, Agent Clark, takes a minute to talk to Rossi. He’d been particularly vocal and involved throughout the case, showing how well he truly knew his stuff in regards to criminal profiling. He was one of those bright, eager guys that the team could easily see having a long, upstanding career in the BAU.
Or so Rossi thinks. Turns out the reason Clark wanted to talk to him was because he wanted to announce that he was dropping out of the FBI training program. Not because he doesn’t think he’s capable, not because he doesn’t respect what Rossi and the rest of the BAU do. Rather, he made his decision because he got an eye-opening look at just how emotionally and mentally taxing this job could be. He’s recently become engaged, and he couldn’t bear to imagine putting his family through the kind of stress Joy and Hayden had to deal with, or deal with being haunted by the horrific details of the cases they worked.
Rossi is understandably a little sad to hear this news, given Clark’s credentials and abilities. But he also completely understands and respects Clark’s reasons for backing out, too. He wishes the young man luck, Clark thanks him for all he’d taught him, and that’s that.
Just like with “Profiling 101”, I felt this episode did a good job of balancing and jumping back and forth between the case side of the storyline and the classroom side. Rossi’s interactions with the students were just as enjoyable – he really does make for a great teacher, knowing how to be firm one minute and relateable and conversational the next. I will say that I think I slightly preferred the classroom scenes in “202”, though. I thought having the young recruits actually work the case alongside the team was a fun twist on the concept – I felt we got an even better glimpse into their excitement and interest in this line of work that way.
The conversation between Rossi and Clark was a great moment as well. So often, with these kinds of stories, we see that one student who’s even more inspired after learning from the teacher, and we watch them prepare to move on to this new and exciting life. It was nice to see the flip side of that for a change, with somebody admitting that this work isn’t for them. It feels more realistic. I love the dedication the team’s had to this job over the years, of course, but when you really think about what all they’ve sacrificed and lost because of it, it makes it that much easier to identify with Clark’s stance, and makes me wish the team could have the kind of peaceful life Clark’s going for as well.
And yet, I’m glad Rossi also got to see the positive influence he did have on somebody like Clark as well. Even if he’s not joining the Bureau, he still got some great life lessons from Rossi and the team that he can take with him going forward, and really, you can’t ask for a better outcome than that.
New Guy #2:
We may not be seeing Clark on the show anytime in the future, but ultimately, that’s okay, because we already have another newbie to focus on getting to know, our second one this season. In the last episode, we got a brief glimpse of the latest addition to the BAU, Stephen Walker. He showed up at the very end, being welcomed by the rest of the team, and all we knew about him at the time was that he’d worked in the Bureau for years and knew Rossi and Emily well.
This was Stephen’s first full episode, and it gave us plenty of opportunity to see how he interacted with the rest of the team. Here, we learn that Stephen got into the Bureau his first year, a fact which impresses Emily (she got in on her third), he plays the trombone to de-stress and focus, and Rossi was a mentor to him, praising his abilities from the get-go. Towards the end of the episode, through a conversation with Rossi, Stephen also opens up about his very first case he had – an undercover attempt to take down a terrorist cell in Belgium as part of a joint effort with the CIA. They got the cell, but not without a tragic cost. Stephen’s profile was off, and as a result, three of his teammates were killed.
Not wanting to dwell on the sad moments for too long, however, Stephen takes the opportunity to praise Rossi for all his hard work, and thanks him for the support he’d shown him way back when he’d first started in the FBI years ago. He reminds him that it’s the passion, dedication, and hard work of people like Rossi that makes this job worthwhile, and that for as often as they dwell on the cases that don’t end well, there’s plenty others that do, and many lives that are saved as a result of the kind of work they do. After having seen poor Rossi being stretched to the limit throughout this episode, it was nice to see a smile actually appear on his face for a change.
It was obvious in the last episode that Stephen immediately clicked with the rest of the team. Now that I’ve gotten to properly see him in action, however, I can confirm that I definitely think he’ll be a good addition to the team. He’s got the gravitas for the serious nature of the job, a quiet demeanor that makes for a good balance to some of the more outgoing personalities of some of the other team members, and I already like the rapport he’s developed with Rossi. I also appreciate that we got some interesting details and backstory from him right off the bat. I assume there’ll be plenty more to learn about him as the season goes on, of course, but it’s nice to have something to work with.
As noted in my last review, however, this now means we’ll have eight people on the team when Reid returns from his trip to Houston. That’s an unprecedented amount of members, and understandably, this has some fans wondering what that’ll mean for the future of the team. Will they be a team of eight from here on out, or will we be losing somebody to bring it back down to the usual seven? Eight people would be a lot for the show to juggle, for sure, but I’m willing to work with that if the show decides to go that route, It’d be better than the alternative.
What did you think of the episode? Did you enjoy the similarities between this episode and “Profiling 101”? Did you find yourself preferring one episode over the other? What did you think of Stephen, and how do you think his presence will affect the team going forward? Did the Yates storyline end on a satisfying note for you? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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