Following a re-run of Season 6 Episode 11 “25 to Life” – where Morgan vouches for a murderer at a parole hearing who then murders someone upon his release – I am glad we are back to new episodes.
We start out with a father and son fishing on a dock. They argue, and we see the father punch the son in the mouth, then whip him with a belt across an already scarred back. It’s hard to believe that someone would do this to their child but I guess it really does happen. Makes me shudder. The father proceeds to try drowning the child and then buries him alive.
Shift to present day. Morning. There is a kid – Nick – camping. His friend calls him on a walkie-talkie to tell him they are watching the police resurrect bodies out of the lake. The friend in the canoe watches as someone sneaks up on the camping kid and hits him over the head with a log.
Over at the BAU, JJ and Prentiss are watching Hotch read. Spencer tells us that Hotch has been reading the same page for 16 minutes – that means there is something wrong. Prentiss asks Rossi how things went with Caroline, and they discuss if he is OK. Hotch tells them they have to get started, and Garcia fills them in on their latest case, with three victims drowning in a lake. They proceed to discuss the case.
Now Nick is being forced underwater. We flash back to the kid and father on the dock. They are still arguing. Now the unsub is sitting by the lake with a dead Nick.
Rossi gives us the opening quote: “To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.” – Erich Fromm.
Garcia tells us that Nick has been found – in another lake, and not weighed down. The team arrives at the dump site and discusses why the unsub has changed his MO (modus operandi) and his place of disposal. Maybe he is too weak, and this is why he has chosen a smaller victim and didn’t weigh him down.
The action moves to some bikini clad girls tying up a boat and running to get life vests. The unsub siphons the gas from their boats. At this time, the team is speaking to Nick’s friend who witnessed Nick’s abduction, and find out the witness is Nick’s brother. Rossi assures him that it isn’t his fault. He cannot remember much except that the unsub is in his late 20s, methodical and social.
Bikini girls are now out on jet skis, and the unsub is watching as one of them runs out of gas. Her friends keep going and leave her behind. She jumps into the water.
In the morgue, Prentiss and Reid find out that all of the victims were drowned – except one who was asphyxiated before being submerged. He is the biggest. Maybe he had to be subdued before going into the water. Broken ribs on each victim show severe chest compression but no signs of external trauma … what? Prentiss asks if he performed CPR on the victims. The medical examiner tells her yes, and that he was successful. CRAZY dude we have here!
Bikini girl is back on shore with her out-of-gas jet ski. The unsub is there to help her and give her a lift. She wants to stay with the Jet Ski, but the unsub convinces her to come with him. Morgan thinks we have a sadist on our hands. Rossi’s phone rings.
Now, the unsub is performing CPR on bikini girl. He is screaming at her to wake up, and is flashing back to his father doing the same to him. Back at the unsub’ s home, we see him taking a pill bottle out of an extreme bunch of bottles and popping several pills. Ohhh! He is sick! The team was right – this explains the smaller than normal victim.
They have found bikini girl’s body and note that she lasted longer in the fight than Nick did. The unsub’s level of rage is showing that he is breaking. The medical examiner tells Prentiss and Reid that there was blood on the body that didn’t match the victim, and it shows a severely low white blood count. Hmmm, the unsub has leukemia. The only consistency to the unsub’s MO is the drowning and the resuscitation. “If that’s the case, I’d say he isn’t too happy right now,” the ME tells us. “Why?” Reid asks. Because he drowned her and tried to resuscitate her, but there is no evidence that he was successful in doing so.
Hotch gives us the profile: white male, mid to late 20’s (aren’t they all), local to the area. Rossi adds that the unsub is a sadist with a God complex who gets off on killing his victims only to save their lives. Morgan tells us that he went from strangling and killing fit men to drowning and dumping smaller victims, and is no longer moving his victims. JJ mentions that because of the changes in his behaviour, they believe he is most likely injured or sick.
We cut between two scenes – first, at the unsub’s home, and his phone rings, then to the team where Hotch tells us that the unsub is performing CPR so we should be looking at doctors, lifeguards, anyone who has this kind of training. Rossi requests that some younger cops be placed undercover on the lake to try and lure him out. The unsub has accelerated and won’t wait long to attack again. Back to the unsub, who shows us his caller ID. It’s a doctor. He answers the phone.
We see a woman and her son stranded on the road with a flat tire. She decides to walk back to town, leaving her son in the vehicle to wait for her.
Rossi is in his office looking at his phone and Prentiss comes in to talk. Rossi admits that Caroline has ALS and tells her that he’s not right with what Caroline is asking him to do for her. He admits that Caroline has asked him to help her die. Prentiss is shocked.
Flat tire mom comes upon the unsub and accepts a ride from him. The unsub then appears at her vehicle and tells the son that his mother is in town and has been asked to take him to her. The son gets into the truck and then we see that his mother is bound and gagged in the back. Uh oh! This can’t be good.
Reid tells us that the unsub has cancer of the blood and is dying. Morgan brings up that the first victim was out on the lake for a baptism and that water burials can be seen as a form of baptism, especially since the unsub has a God complex. Hotch calls Garcia and asks for a list of all cancer patients in the area (clients please, clients … get with the time) and she answers that she will make HIPPA her bitch. (Wish I could make FIPPA my bitch – it’s paining me in my butt at work!) She also finds that the first victim joined his church after a near death experience which changed his life.
Now we are putting two and two together. The unsub wants to know about death, and wants to ask someone who has died and been revived what it is like. We flash back to when the unsub was buried by his father and see that he also had a near death experience. Cut to the unsub performing CPR on flat tire mom. He asks her if she saw the light. She sees her son tied up on the dock beside her.
Garcia tells us that the first victim was a “big hoodlum” and all of that changed after his near death experience. Morgan is a skeptic – no one actually sees the afterlife. The light is the emergency room lights, and the angels are the doctors. Reid disagrees and tells everyone that he saw the afterlife. This is big coming from Reid – he’s a scientist, someone who doesn’t normally buy that new age stuff. For him to admit this, it has to be true!
They deduce that the unsub wants to know if the experience is the same each time you die. Prentiss shares that while Reid felt warm and saw a light in his near-death experience, when she coded in the ambulance, all she felt was cold and darkness. Reid asks, “You actually died?” She sighs. The best way for this unsub to make sure his victims have an experience is to keep them dead longer. We cut to the unsub reviving flat tire mom again. He tells her son that she needs a break, and pushes the son into the water. JJ tells everyone that there is an abandoned car near the lake belonging to Samantha Brown and her son Evan. We see the unsub, and he’s still pushing Evan under the water.
Morgan asks Garcia to pinpoint the colder parts of the lake. Garcia tells them about Daniel, who was murdered 15 years before. He was a park attendant and his dock was in the coldest part of the lake. Daniel’s son murdered him after he tried to drown his son and bury him alive. The son, Chase, was diagnosed with stage four lymphoma. The son could be the unsub. Chase is still drowning Evan, but is losing strength and coughing. He lets Evan go, who manages to get free of the rope, gets out of the water, and runs. The unsub chases him, leaving Samantha on the dock.
The team shows up and finds Samantha. Evan is still running and shouting for help. Prentiss and Hotch run toward the shouting. Evan stops and looks around, and the unsub grabs him and pushes him back in the water.
Hotch tells Chase to let Evan go, and Chase says he can’t because he needs answers. Hotch tells him that there are no answers – that is why people have faith. Chase tells Hotch that his life has been one nightmare after another. Chase lets go of Evan and falls back into the water, trying to kill himself. We see Chase walking toward a light and then pulled backward. He flashes back to seeing his father the night that he killed him. He opens his eyes … a wet Prentiss and Reid tell him it isn’t his time to go and that he is under arrest. Evan turns around and finds his mom! He runs to her and hugs her and all I can think is her ribs are broken from multiple attempts at CPR and she doesn’t even grimace!
Rossi gives us the closing quote: “The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a new meaning to what preceded it.” – Mary Catherine Bateson.
We return to Caroline’s hotel room. Rossi tells her that he cannot help her die, and she asks him to let her go. He tells her that he can’t and that life is worth fighting for. She reminds him that soon she will be unable to walk. She wants to die as she is now and how she has lived, not who she is going to become. He again tells her that he can’t help her and she says she knows. She tells him that he is the best man she has ever known, and that is why she wanted him with her tonight. He asks what she has done, and she asks him to sit with her. She has taken her life into her own hands. Rossi tries to call for help, and Caroline begs him not to. She doesn’t want to die in a hospital. He cries and holds her as she tells him it will be fast because she is already tired. She asks if “he” will be there. Rossi says he knows that “he” will. Next, Rossi is having a glass of wine at the graves of Caroline and a “James David Rossi”. The “he” was their son. Cut to some beautiful cherry blossoms.
It’s hard to understand that two people who obviously love each other that much would ever divorce. It’s hard to understand loving someone so much that you would do what he did for her. But it is the kind of love we all strive for. This was a very emotional episode from Rossi’s perspective, and I hope he finds some happiness in the future!
Next week, we go to Kansas to investigate the bodies of young boys that turn up in the aftermath of a series of tornadoes. Also, work pressures cause tension on JJ’s home front. Seems we get to see her husband, William. I love Josh Stewart as an actor; he comes from my other all-time favorite show, Third Watch. I actually miss that show. Oh well guess it’s time to pull out the DVDs!
Photo Courtesy of CBS
