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Awake
Original Air Date: Nov 18, 2015
Caitlin- Senior Staff Writer
caitlin@thetwocentscorp.com
The good news: Tara Lewis is back! The bad news: Spencer Reid is gone. He’s off visiting his mother, who’s doing better, so that’s a good thing, but it’s about the only one to be found in this overwhelmingly depressing episode- aside from a few more cute scenes before launching into the case.
Not included in those cute scenes is Hotch talking to Garcia about going into witness protection. Thankfully, this is the FBI and she’s able to stay over in her own office. Small tidbit: she apparently took over ownership of Sergio when Emily left for London. So why haven’t we gotten to see him, huh?
The case involves two men: one who went missing and was found later after having been brutally tortured and killed, and another, Lance, who has since been kidnapped and is generally having an extremely miserable time of it. Especially when he dreams of escape only to wind up back in his captor’s hands. The team flies out, discussing the differences between Lance and his previous victim. Our unsub, unlike many others, doesn’t seem to have a type.
Hotch, Rossi, and JJ go to talk to the local police, with JJ making a stop to talk to Lance’s devastated wife. The two of them were about to celebrate their twenty year anniversary. Garcia tries to help the others track him down via cell phone signals, but they’re bouncing about all over the place. The team discusses the timeline of events leading up to the kidnapping and wonders if it could have been a (really, really) extreme case of road rage. To illustrate how extreme, we gets lots of unnecessary torture scenes.
Lance dreams of escape again, but it’s the last happy thought- or thought of any kind- he’ll have. The team finds him shot to death the next morning while our unsub drives off and allows his own mind to drift. He remembers watching his young daughter dance at a ballet recital. The profile states that he’s just going to keep killing- is that ever not true?- and sure enough, he picks up a new man and starts electrocuting him with a car battery. I highly recommend both a blindfold and ear plugs when rewatching this episode.
Unfortunately for David, this latest victim, he’s well into this torture before he’s reported missing. The squad immediately starts looking more into Lance’s last days to try and figure out where he might be in time. An extremely sleep-deprived JJ (you try having two kids) figures out that the unsub is plugging his victims full of caffeine, both to keep them awake and ensure that they’ll feel the torture more. But why? It seems to involve the unsub’s desperate attempt to track down his child.
Sure enough, a little girl did go missing from her father’s car in the middle of the night- while he was pulled over to take a quick nap. More memories will forever maim any happy associations you might have with the song “You Are My Sunshine”. But that disappearance happened two months ago. It seems odd that the father would only snap now- until we realize that volunteers found his daughter’s body just recently. And by volunteers, I mean him. Just drive the knife in a little deeper, huh?
David manages to get free, but doesn’t to a very good job of escaping, first getting into a car (they’re in a junkyard) that he has no way of driving, and then running aimlessly, stopping for minutes at a time to look around. It’s no surprise that our unsub tracks him down and appears about to run him over with a truck when the BAU arrives. They pull David to safety and try to reason with the father, who has forgotten his daughter is dead. When he tries to back over them, they’re forced to shoot and kill him.
Things get marginally less morbid on the plane right home, where Morgan and Hotch mimic Reid and get JJ to finally fall into a much needed sleep. But Lewis can’t stop thinking about that little girl. The police assumed her father’s story about a man with a skull tattoo on his hand was just a dream, but she’s doubtful. And, sure enough, we end with the very same man approaching another car with a mother and daughter inside, stopped in the pouring rain. Did I mention we now have to wait until December for new episode? Don’t get your hopes up for a cheery holiday installment.