Criminal Minds - Surface Tension - Review: “Miracle Worker”

Hope you guys enjoyed the last few weeks of relative quiet with the show, because as this episode so clearly proved, the back half of season twelve is starting off on one heck of a wild note.

This week’s episode furthered a storyline involving Reid and his mom that originated back in last season’s “Entropy”, but which officially kicked into high gear this season. To briefly recap: Reid’s mom was struggling with her recent Alzheimer’s diagnoses, which added to the issues she was already having with her schizophrenia. In the episode “Keeper”, there was a moment of hope with the news that she was a candidate for a clinical trial that could allow her to take a medicine that could help allay her illnesses.

Unfortunately, she wound up being cut from the trial. Reid then moved her to Houston, Texas, and managed to place her in a clinical trial there. But that trial wasn’t turning out the way he’d hoped, either, and at the end of “Scarecrow”, he took some time off to visit her and see what was going on. Now, after a couple episodes’ absence, he’s back, but if fans were hoping he’d have things with his mom sorted out and life would return to normal, this episode managed to destroy every last one of those hopes in a truly spectacular fashion.

Alongside the drama with Reid and his mom, this episode also featured an odd case that involved a tattoo under victims’ armpits (as the weirdly specific press release informed us), Satan worship, and the use of sinkholes.

Confused? Yeah, I don’t blame you. Let’s delve into this wild mess, though, and see if we can’t try and make things a little less confusing.

The Case:

Over the years, we’ve seen some of the scariest opening scenes on this show come from the most innocent of situations. Surely this episode’s opening scene, with a young woman prepping for her workday at a morgue, of all places, is ripe for a terrifying start to this week’s case, right?

At first, things certainly seem to be heading that way. As the woman scrubs up, the body lying on the slab behind her starts to move, proceeding to bring one of my “worst nightmare” scenarios to life. Is this an example of somebody being presumed dead when they’re actually not? Is there some creepy unsub lurking about, trying to use the bodies to scare coroners?

Nah. Turns out it’s just the woman’s co-worker, Kevin, playing a dumb joke on her. She rightly chastises him for his behavior, but he’s all, “lighten up” about it. That’s all the farther the twisted fun goes, however, because shortly afterward, the workers’ instructor, a woman known as Grayson, comes in. The girl, Jill, expresses some nervousness about working on the body, indicating she’s a newbie who’s learning the ropes. After a bit of reassurance from Grayson, the three of them get to work. That’s when Kevin notices a strange drawing on the inside of the corpse’s upper arm. This drawing catches Grayson’s attention, and next thing we know, she’s immediately calling local law enforcement with her discovery. She seems very familiar with this drawing, but the question is, how?

As the team (minus Reid, who’s dealing with family drama – more on that later) learns upon getting the case, Grayson also happens to be the county coroner, and she remembered seeing a similar drawing on another recent victim named Helen. She was found dead ten days ago, her body full of sleeping pills, and the death was ruled a suicide, because the ME didn’t feel there was enough evidence to call it a homicide. The person the students had been working on, meanwhile, was a man by the name of George Finnley. He was a homeless veteran, and had had issues with drug addiction in the past. He was found with heroin in his system when he died.

Luke takes note of the fact that there’s an extra line in the drawing on his body that isn’t there on Helen’s – a work in progress of some kind. Stephen feels the drawing is their attempt to brand the bodies somehow and send a message. With that, the BAU takes off to what looks to be yet another one of the many bizarre Florida cases.

On the plane, Reid is able to take a moment’s break from his aforementioned family situation to join Garcia in a video conference call with the team. He’s still going to work the case, even if he can’t physically be there, and he and the rest of the team further discuss the unusual aspects of the case. The other victim, Helen, couldn’t be any more opposite of George if she tried. She was an upper middle class suburban mom, president of her PTA, involved in charity work, churchgoing. had a steady job and was married. So what is it about these two vastly different people that would’ve drawn them to the unsub?

Reid, meanwhile, is mulling over the potential meaning of the drawing. He traces the history of the design back to Pagan rituals, and wonders if maybe this is the unsub’s way of trying to send some sort of spiritual/religious message.

Once the team arrives in Tampa, JJ immediately gets in touch with Helen’s clearly devastated husband. He recounts her last day, and all seemed pretty ordinary, according to him. She’d left for a Pilates class that morning, and had planned to meet up with her husband later that night so they could attend a recital their daughter was in. He remains adamant that his wife did not take her sleeping pills with her that day, nor does she have any tattoos anywhere on her body.

There is one curious detail that he mentions, however. He remembers that a couple days before his wife’s disappearance, his daughter’s babysitter told him and his wife that she’d heard some strange noises in the house. The husband inspected the entire home from top to bottom, but he found absolutely nothing to indicate a break-in, nor was anything of note missing. It’s soon revealed that the unsub did actually break into their home to steal Helen’s sleeping pills. They’d also stolen a stuffed animal, most likely as a means to threaten Helen to do what they ordered them to do in order to keep her family safe. Chilling.

Grayson, meanwhile, meets with Tara and Rossi to discuss why she labeled Helen’s death a suicide initially. She acknowledges there were things about her death that struck her suspicious, including foreign DNA inside her vehicle, but there just wasn’t enough official evidence to label the death a proper homicide, so she went with what seemed the next logical option. She also believes a felt tip pen was used to draw this picture...but she also states that those kinds of pens are pretty common and easy to find anywhere. Narrowing down the type of pen used is going to be a pretty hard task.

Elsewhere, we get our first glimpse of the unsub, and he’s already shaping up to be a strange sort. He’s got lit candles everywhere in a small room, and he spends a couple moments standing in front of some weird glowing red heating fan. Afterward, he walks over to a table, setting two guns side by side, facing opposite directions. Well. That looks ominous.

The more the team learns about George, the stranger his death becomes as well. Despite his down-on-his-luck life, he’d been doing a lot to help other homeless vets and druggies, and was very well-respected in the circles he traveled. So there’s one area in which he was similar to Helen. His body was also found ten miles away from any of his usual haunts, he had burn marks on his body, and his prints were found on the heroin vial that killed him. If Helen was ordered to swallow sleeping pills under duress, then evidently the unsub must’ve ordered George to do the same with heroin. This unsub’s keeping his hands clean by forcing his victims to kill themselves. But why?

We get a front row seat to the unsub’s evil plans shortly afterward. A couple is standing facing each other, sobbing uncontrollably. The wife is pleading with her husband to stop whatever he’s doing. After the husband shares a tearful “I love you” with his wife, he puts one of the guns we saw on the unsub’s table earlier to his head...and pulls the trigger. The wife screams in horror and continues to cry over her husband’s body, and then we see the unsub put the other gun to the back of her head. At least we’re spared having to actually see her die, so...small blessings.

Later, Tara and Luke head out to the dump site where the husband’s body was discovered. They learn that his name is Owen, and that the body of his wife, Beth, is still back at the house. To add to the brutally cold nature of her murder, a photo of their children is lying next to her body, which, dang. Like Helen, Owen was a typical upstanding, well-respected member of society. School superintendent, ran a food drive and donated food to people who needed it. Beth, however, was more like George – struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, and had even been in jail for a DUI hit and run related to it at one point. So clearly there’s some sort of dichotomy that the unsub’s exploiting with these different types of victims that needs to be part of his M.O.

A couple of oddities stick out this time, though. Owen has the infamous drawing on his arm, just like George and Helen did...but Beth doesn’t. Curious. Might he be the main target? Tara and Luke also make note of the fact that two different styles and sizes of guns were used to murder Owen and Beth. Using two different types of weapons isn’t entirely unusual for unsubs, but it still adds to the strange nature of this unsub’s killing style.

Garcia then tells the team that Helen worked at a homeless shelter that George frequented. Owen didn’t work there, but given his food drive, it’s a possible connection. Maybe the unsub works at that homeless shelter, too, or they could a resident. The fact that these victims are people of high moral character is also a notable connection, and could further explain the unsub’s motive for targeting them.

“I’d chime in with an opinion as well if I knew what the hell you two were talking about.”

As the investigation continues, Luke notices that the earth where the victims were dumped is messed up in some way. This leads the team to a few various theories. Is this some sort of twisted human sacrifice? Is he railing against people he feels are abusing the earth somehow? Is his ordering them to kill themselves part of that symbolic punishment? The pure are often offered up as sacrifices to help put the universe to rights, after all.

Luke then discovers that sinkholes were part of all the dump sites, and Florida is apparently chock full of them. Given many sinkholes are related to human activity, this could further prove the “angry at those who mishandle the earth” theory. Reid and Luke also discuss the fact that the sinkholes are cover-subsidence sinkholes, meaning the sinkholes are gradually formed over time (cover-collapse sinkholes, meanwhile, are much more rapid). If he wanted the bodies to be hidden, he would’ve picked the collapse sinkholes, but since he didn’t, he wants them to be found.

Reid decides to do some algorithms to see if they can figure out how the unsub chooses what sinkholes to use to dump his victims, and in the process, stumbles upon a possible motive for the use of sinkholes. Apparently, in some religious/spiritual beliefs, sinkholes are seen as a portal to hell. Reid believes the unsub is actually trying to send his victims to hell. For real. Apparently he picks virtuous people and makes them commit the sin of suicide to make them candidates for hell. So it is actually a twisted human sacrifice sort of deal. As for the drawing? Reid comes to the conclusion that it’s meant to symbolize Ophiuchus, which is a constellation representing Satan. The sinkholes are also supposed to correspond with the dots on the constellation drawing, as a reminder/clue of where he dumped his victims. O-kay, then.

And why is he doing this? Well, we’ll turn to Garcia for that explanation. She reveals the unsub’s name is Bryce Jarvis, and he, like so many unsubs before, had a rough childhood. He grew up with parents who were religious fanatics, to the point where they actually created their own extreme religious movement. Bryce refused to get involved with their religious activities, adding to the already tense atmosphere of the home. There’d been claims of possible sexual abuse in the home over the years, and Social Services was called to the Jarvis home many times. Eventually, Bryce’s parents were arrested, but not on abuse charges. Rather, they were shown to be committing fraud, and spent time in jail. Bryce did not handle any of this even remotely well, suffering a nervous breakdown and winding up in an institution.

The team also learns that these victims are not Bryce’s first experience with murder. Turns out after he was discharged from the institution, he targeted local twentysomething women at random, raping them and strangling them to death. He killed six women over the course of three years this way, and there were no rituals to the killings.

Then, on the morning of April 17th, 2015, his parents died when a sinkhole swallowed up both them and their home. Now completely homeless, this led Bryce to have another psychotic episode, and in the process, he changed his M.O., targeting other homeless people he encountered. His belief was that Satan murdered his parents, and these latest victims were his way of thanking Satan for taking his parents away. He also used the heating fan and the candles to burn himself as a further means of paying his respects to Satan. So…yeah. Talk about your bizarre backstory.

The fact Bryce leaves DNA at the scenes of his crimes is a troubling aspect as well. Either it’s because he’s sloppy and disorganized, which can cause trouble the more unhinged he becomes, or he simply doesn’t care about getting caught, which is equally as concerning, since it means he’s not afraid to take violent risks. It also means he has an endgame in mind, and it won’t be pretty for his final victim(s).

Sure enough, Bryce soon finds another victim, a woman named Eleanor Parsons who volunteered at the homeless shelter he frequented. She looks to be dead when we first see her in Bryce’s place, but turns out she was just knocked unconscious. Bryce eventually leads her to a sinkhole, and tries to order her to commit suicide by jumping into it. Eleanor stands her ground, however, refusing his commands. This upsets Bryce even further, and he’s just about to shoot her himself when the BAU arrives on the scene. Luke wastes no time in wounding Bryce so he can be more easily apprehended, saving him from throwing himself into the sinkhole. JJ, meanwhile, rescues Eleanor, and another tragic death is thankfully averted.

As noted at the start, this case was really, really weird. The show’s featured plenty of strange cases and unsubs before, of course – the unsub from last year who used animal DNA to try and help keep people young forever, the unsub who used insect larvae as part of some warped attempt at reincarnation during his murder spree, cannibalistic killers, voodoo-inspired murders. Serial killing can be quite the twisted rabbit hole, both in fiction and in the real world.

Having said that, however, I felt the weirdness of this case seemed less creepy and more fantastical. Satan and sinkholes? It’s such a bizarre combination of ideas. It could’ve worked, sure – I could see a real life killer combining the two for some creepy ritual killing of some kind. In this case, however, I felt using both ideas made things way more complicated than they really needed to be, and think that using one or the other might’ve made more sense. Maybe the sinkholes weren’t a portal to hell, but something as simple as a creative type of burial ground, a means for a killer to keep a dark secret, keeping with the theme of troubled pasts of victims like Beth and George.

Or maybe they could’ve expanded more on Bryce’s parents’ twisted religious beliefs, and Bryce’s push and pull between following his parents’ orders and wanting to rebel. Heck, maybe they believed in Satan, and that inspired his devotion. Or, given this episode’s theme was about people going to extreme lengths to help others, Bryce’s devotion to Satan could’ve been his way of trying to help somebody he felt needed to be saved, or brought to Satan, or whatever. Something to that effect.

There’s also the fact that the motive itself was flimsy and confusing. If Bryce believed that Satan was punishing his parents by sending them to hell for their mistreatment of him, why didn’t he just pick victims who were equally as evil from the get-go? Why go to the trouble of picking well-respected people and sending them to hell via suicide? I’m presuming part of his reason could’ve been rooted in the idea that he was angry that these people were getting respect and redemption despite their troubled histories, but even then, that still doesn’t explain his targeting people like Owen or Helen, who had no troubled histories, and there was no indication that his parents were well-respected despite their troubled pasts, which could’ve been a logical explanation to kickstart his motive for killing.

Even the idea that Satan was present when Bryce committed these murders, thus making that enough reason to turn people to the dark side, didn’t seem to show up anywhere in his killing style. And if Bryce wanted to send his victims to hell, why did he dump them in sinkholes that would take a while to form, instead of pick out the ones that would swallow them up sooner? Yeah, he wanted the bodies found, but that kind of negates the “send them to hell” plan, doesn’t it? The whole motivation just felt like an aspect of the case that wasn’t fully fleshed out.

There’s also the fact that the team essentially handled this entire case alone, to the point where giving the profile to local officials seemed pretty pointless. Sure, for the purposes of this show, the team’s going to be much more involved in takedowns and investigations, but it still would’ve been nice to see a little more interaction between them and the local team. Especially given they were one person down with Reid back in Quantico. Yes, he was there via conference call, but still, any extra help they could get would’ve been good, obviously.

Frankly, though, given all Reid was dealing with this episode, it’s a miracle he was able to take the time to focus on the case at all. I’m glad he was able to be involved, of course – the whole thing reminded me a bit of the way he helped the team via phone calls in “Magnum Opus”, despite mourning the loss of Maeve. Work is how Reid distracts himself from personal stress, and lord knows he had plenty of it this episode. Still, that’s a lot for one person to juggle at once. But his scientific and religious know-how proved helpful, so yay for that.

In the end, I think the fact that the episode focused so heavily on Reid’s personal drama explains a lot f why the case was all wonky and weird. They had to clearly know that part of the episode wasn’t going to be most viewers’ main focus, so they threw together something weird and random to fill the time. They would’ve been right in their assumptions, too, because Reid’s storyline this episode was THE definition of intense, and it further set the stage for what looks to be a pretty big storyline coming up for him as the season continues.

Meanwhile, back at Quantico:

Settle in, people, because there is a LOT to unpack with this part of the episode and I have many thoughts and questions regarding it all.

Things start off pretty normal for Reid when the episode starts. He’s settling in at work, and he and JJ share a big ol’ “welcome back” hug. Reid also gets the opportunity to meet Stephen, and the two make a bit of friendly small talk. JJ then asks him how his mom’s doing, and he’s about to launch into an explanation, when the phone rings. Next thing we know, he’s going on about some plumbing problems in his apartment and dashes out of the office with barely a goodbye.

As Reid later tells JJ by phone, it turns out that Diana’s time in Houston wasn’t working out the way Reid had hoped it would, so he decided to pull her out of the clinical study and bring her home to come live with him, instead of put her in yet another institution or clinical trial. He’s decided to try hiring an in-home caretaker to look after his mom, somebody to help her with her medicine and keep an eye on her while Reid’s at work, and who can regularly keep Reid in the loop on her progress.

Just one not-so-little problem with that, though, and it comes in the form of Diana herself. Shortly after arriving home, Reid’s surprised to see the caretaker storming out of the house, yelling at the top of her lungs. Turns out when she tried to introduce herself, Diana flipped out and started threatening her! Diana then turned on the water in the kitchen sink, letting it flood everywhere, and that was more than enough for the caretaker to be all, “I’m out” and flee the apartment.

Reid tries to explain to his mom who the woman was and what she was doing there, but Diana will have none of it. She turns her anger on Reid himself, going on about how she’d warned him to never let strangers in his home, and how only they can trust each other. She’s in the throes of a full on paranoid delusion, even locking the doors in the process, and it’s frankly scary to watch her breaking down like this. Needless to say, Reid’s incredibly frustrated by his mom’s behavior, but he decides to back off for the time being so she can calm down.

“Destroying a book is like destroying a whole world.”

Things become relatively peaceful again as Reid starts to clean up the mess his mom had made of his apartment. Some of his books were ruined in the mini-flood, and Diana feels guilty for messing up his things. She offers to help, but Reid tells her to go in his room and take a nap, which she does. It seems to help, too, as she comes out later significantly calmer than she was earlier. Reid then pulls out a present that an uncle of his had sent over from Vegas – his mom’s scrapbook that she’s had since her high school days. He tries to show her some of the photos in order to help her remember happier times, but it’s not working. Reid then decides some medicine might help do the trick, but today is clearly a “walking into a minefield” sort of day for Reid, because Diana reacts badly to that suggestion, too. He will not be deterred, however, and finally convinces her to take her meds.

This is where things start getting odd, though. Reid goes into his room to grab the medicine, but in the process, we see him pulling hidden vials out of one of his socks and putting them in a little drawer on his dresser. Hmm. Eventually, though, he finally finds what he’s looking for and adds the medicine to some orange juice, in order to help it go down easier. Diana remains wary, but she gulps it all down anyway. For the time being, things remain calm, and Diana sits down and relaxes while Reid continues to work at his desk.

Some time later, the doorbell buzzes, and Diana’s facial expressions make it clear she is NOT thrilled about that sound. She’s even less excited when Reid tells her who’s at the door. It’s another caretaker come to try and help her. When Reid tries to get her to come meet the woman, she refuses to budge from the couch. Reid’s patience is literally hanging by a thread at this point, so he gives up and lets the caretaker, Miss Campbell, into his place. She tries to introduce herself to Diana, but Diana simply storms off into Reid’s room.

“Personally, I believe that great breakthroughs, especially in medicine, often come from thinking outside the box.”

Luckily, Miss Campbell is much more understanding about Diana’s reaction. She turns her focus to Reid instead, letting him fill her in on his mom’s medical history and the struggles they’ve been dealing with. They start getting into a discussion about what the proper kind of solutions for people in Diana’s situation are, and I could practically hear Gideon’s voice as Reid strongly advocated “thinking outside the box”. Miss Campbell disagrees, however, believing in following the typical methods of healthcare.

Reid’s intense belief in going outside the bounds of typical care also heighten my worries about those vials he was trying to be so secretive about earlier, and his next actions don’t help matters. He’s adamant that he’s not going to put her in another facility, so after Miss Campbell agrees to take on the role of providing home care (much to his immense relief), she asks to see the kinds of drugs Diana’s taking. He shows her most of them, all of which look to be typical...but he very purposefully doesn’t bring out the one he’s got stashed away in his room. Obviously, this begs the question: just why is he being all shifty with that particular drug? It’s a very unsettling moment, and a precursor to the most startling, terrifying scene of the entire episode.

After Miss Campbell leaves, Reid goes to check on his mom, but when he knocks at the door, he gets no answer. Concerned, he enters his room...and finds she isn’t there. A little more searching eventually leads him to notice that that little drawer on his dresser where he’d hidden the medicine is open and empty. Uh-oh. He immediately runs to the bathroom, and to his horror, Diana’s pouring the very drug he had hidden away down the toilet!

Reid freaks the hell out at this, and tries to stop her, leading to the two of them winding up in a desperate wrestling match over the vial. Seriously, they’re actually rolling on the floor and grabbing and tugging at each other. It’s a pretty jaw-dropping moment. Eventually, Diana manages to worm away from Reid and runs out into the living room. He follows her, shouting at her that he “had to go to great lengths” to get that medicine, as it’s apparently a very tough drug to replace. What those “great lengths” are, though, he doesn’t say. Uneasiness growing….

Diana’s angry, too. She’s tired of taking medicine, she’s tired of sitting around scared out of her mind, she doesn’t think she can even trust her own son anymore, going so far as to say she hates him (yikes) and wants to go back home to Bennington. When Reid tries to calm her down and get her to listen to him, Diana hauls off and slaps him across the face. Hard. Whoa. Reid’s stunned by her actions, looking for all the world like a puppy that's been kicked, and for the nth time that day, Diana shuts herself in his room. And I’m left feeling a strong urge to jump through the screen and hug the crap out of Reid, because he is on the verge of tears and everything hurts now, thank you, show.

Later, Diana comes back out yet again, and this time, she’s actually lucid. Her speech is clear and focused, she’s calm and cheerful and talking to Reid as though none of the nastiness of earlier happened. It’s a truly startling, but pleasant, change. It also means that she doesn’t remember hitting Reid, which, for her sake, is good, but clearly Reid’s bothered by the fact she can’t remember that, and that he therefore can’t talk to her about it. Diana then goes on to talk about how clumsy Reid was as a child, thus leading me to sit here wondering just how often she might’ve been the reason for his “clumsiness”. This episode, I swear, it’s giving me way too many disturbing thoughts.

He does his best to shrug off her lack of reaction to the events of earlier, though, and soon after, the two of them are bonding and laughing over the items and photos in her scrapbook. Reid reminds Diana of what ticket stubs are, and who Elvis Presley is (apparently she went to see him back in the ‘70s!), and then they come across a photo that allows Diana to recall a special family memory. It’s a picture of a tightrope walker, with a cutout of a young Reid’s face glued over that of the tightrope walker’s. Apparently, when Reid was little, Diana took him to the circus once, and afterward, Reid got it into his head that he wanted to be a tightrope walker, too! Awww.

Diana then starts talking fondly about all the times she’d watch Reid in the backyard as he tried to measure out and build a thing to practice walking on, and how often he struggled to get it right. He never did master the art of tightrope walking, but as Diana notes, his efforts were just a reminder of how smart he was, and an early indicator of how far he’d go to try and solve any problem that stood in his way. Hm. Gee. I wonder what the show could possibly be implying with that sentiment? That obvious parallel aside, though, this is a sorely needed sweet and tender moment between these two, and I will happily cling to it, because at this rate, I think it’s safe to say this could be among the last of any happy moments these two will ever get to have together.

My fears are further confirmed later on in the episode when Reid comes in to check on his mom as she’s getting ready for bed, and she utters the three most tragic words imaginable: “Who are you?” The look on her face further confirms that she honestly does not recognize him at all, even when Reid tries to remind her that he’s her son. The devastation on his face here says it all. There are truly no words for how heartbreaking this moment is.

After what had to have been one of the longest days of his entire life, we end this incredibly upsetting storyline with Reid coming into his room again and tying the other end of a tie that’s connected to his own wrist around that of his now sleeping mom’s. For a moment, I was terrified that we were about to watch Reid put his mom out of her misery once and for all, but thankfully, that is not the case. Instead, Reid’s simply making sure his mom is secure and unable to hurt herself, or him, or wander off to God knows where. Afterward, he settles into a chair by the bed, scrapbook in his lap, and takes a moment to look at happier photos of himself and his mom. He’s understandably exhausted, though, and finally, at long last, he tries to get some sleep of his own.

If there is anything that could bring Reid a bit of comfort, it’s the fact that his teammates are concerned for and thinking of him. Rossi and JJ in particular spend much of the episode discussing everything with Reid, and it appears that JJ is taking this whole thing especially hard. On the trip home, she confesses to Rossi that she’s getting a “bad feeling” about this whole situation with Reid. While I share in JJ’s concerns, at the same time, hearing her voice them aloud had me going, “Not exactly helping my nerves here, JJ, thanks!” So there’s that ominous note to end on.

WHEW. So. Yeah. That is...a lot to take in, to say the very least. And I have a lot of deeply mixed feelings about all of it. On the one hand, in case I haven’t made it clear enough by now, my heart goes out so hard to both Reid and his mom. Anyone who’s had to watch a parent suffer and struggle can relate way too well to what Reid went through this episode. Watching him trying to do everything possible to help his mom, only to see all his efforts blow up in his face, was gut-wrenching. Especially when you think about the fact that this was also a glimpse into what his childhood must’ve been like, trying to handle these sorts of situations at the tender age of ten with little to no help from any other adults.

And Diana...her fear was palpable, and her frustration at her entire situation came through loud and clear. I can’t even begin to imagine how terrifying all of this has been for her over the years, and it was impossible not to sympathize with her anger at the unfairness of it all. Comparing her behavior in this episode to the way she acted in episodes like “Memoriam” or “The Fisher King” just makes her decline that much tougher to watch.

A large part of the reason these moments between Reid and his mom were so powerful was thanks to the excellent performances of Matthew Gray Gubler and Jane Lynch. Their reactions and emotions were so believable that there were times I forgot I was watching actors on a show, and felt more like I was intruding on a deeply uncomfortable real life family drama. Major kudos to Lynch and Gubler for making their scenes together come alive and reminding me of why I always love watching them together on this show, regardless of the type of storyline involving them.

On the other hand...okay, so this whole “Reid being all sneaky and shady with medicine for his mom” thing? I’m honestly really feeling kinda uncomfortable about that. Obviously I completely understand and sympathize with Reid’s desperation to do whatever he can to help his mom, but the thought of him bending the rules, even potentially flat out breaking them, to get this mysterious drug? And hiding them, not just from a caretaker, but his mom as well? It’s rather troubling. The drug aspect in and of itself isn’t TOO surprising, given his particular history with Dilaudid...but it’s one thing for him to take those kinds of risks for himself. It’s quite another to do it for someone else. By trying to give her drugs that might not necessarily be cleared for proper use, that could negatively impact her health, which is clearly the opposite of what Reid wants.

His sneakiness with his mom is even more disturbing since he knows full well just how paranoid she can be. Yes, he might have to trick her a little to give her some medicine, but there’s a vast difference between tricking someone the way, say, a parent tricks their kid into eating vegetables by slipping them into their food, and flat out lying to them, like Reid’s doing here. Surely he had to know his mom would catch on eventually? And the longer he lies to this caretaker about such things, the worse that could be for him if she finds out. That could be a reportable offense, and then Reid would have no way to help his mom at all.

It just seems strange to me that someone as smart as Reid, who knows firsthand all the issues that are involved with questionable drug use and drug smuggling, would take such extreme and dangerous risks again, to the point of impacting his own mom’s health and life, even if his intentions are good. There’s something about his behavior in this episode that seems to indicate a darker side of him that I honestly don’t know if I’m ready to see.

I’ve also wondered in past reviews how this storyline with his mom will tie into everything with Mr. Scratch, if it will, and this just further adds to my curiosity. If Mr. Scratch does target Reid and his mom, is he going to exploit Reid’s drug past for his own personal gain, and put Reid’s professional and personal lives in jeopardy? Will he kidnap Reid’s mom or otherwise put her life in danger somehow in order to see just how far Reid will risk going to save her? We know from upcoming synopsis that Reid will find himself in significant trouble in the near future, and if anyone can manipulate that to his advantage, it’d be Mr. Scratch. It’ll also be interesting to see how the team’s reaction to everything with Reid impacts them on a personal and professional level. What risks will they take to help him, and how will they react to whatever shady things he’s doing? A few things to mull over going forward.

And what will become of Diana herself through all of this? Will she survive everything she’s going through? Will Reid eventually concede to putting her back in an institution, or will he make the painful decision to end her suffering for good? I don’t want Diana to keep suffering, obviously, but I also don’t want Reid to lose her, especially since there are plenty of (legal) means nowadays to help treat Diana’s illnesses. I’d love to hear that she did finally wind up in a trial that proved helpful, or was returned to Bennington, where people who are used to taking care of her can continue to do so. It’d just be so nice to have a story related to Reid and his mom have a happy ending for a change. Time will tell, though, obviously, if we get that.

In the meantime, however, we and the team have a bumpy road ahead. If this is how the beginning of this storyline kicks off, I can’t even begin to imagine what’s next.

What did you think of the episode? Did the case make sense to you? How much did the storyline with Reid and his mom tug at your heartstrings? What do you think Reid’s doing with that mystery drug? What are your theories regarding what this means for the two of them, as well as the rest of the team, going forward? Do you think we’ll get a happy ending to this story? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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