photo: cbs
The Bond
Original Air Date: Jan 27, 2016
Caitlin- Senior Staff Writer
caitlin@thetwocentscorp.com
There are very few happy families amongst the guests on Criminal Minds. After 11 seasons, this is surprising to absolutely no one, but I haven’t mentioned yet in a dozen recaps, so I might as well. Let’s just say this is not an episode to air near Mother’s Day. The dead of winter was a much better choice.
Our unsub is a man named Randy, meeting his mother, Flo, at what appears to be a hospital or nursing home. He tells her of nightmares he’s having. Nightmares of killing people, which, as I’m sure you already know, are not fantasies in the slightest. The first victim we see is a homeless man.
The man is actually Randy’s second victim. He killed a woman first, leaving both of them tied to urinals with their left ears cut off. (Leave your Van Gogh jokes at the door.) Revisiting the crimes causes him extreme emotional distress, which Flo attributes to plain old stress. The BAU heads out to investigate the case. Lewis talks to the first victim’s husband. After learning she was loved by everyone, we turn the focus to where both the victims were left- restrooms at random truck stops.
The first thought is that the unsub is a calculated murderer who has killed before, but this doesn’t line up with the nervous image we see of Randy as he tells his mother that he proposed to his fiancé, Chloe, and she said yes. Flo seems happy for him at first, but when he asks whether he can invite his biological father to the wedding, she viciously strikes down the idea. Soon, the team is noting that the unsub actually appears inexperienced- and yet, still calculated.
Randy calls Chloe as he sits in his car outside a home for sale. After reassuring her he’ll meet her for dinner (and skip out on Flo in the process), he approaches the house and kills the realtor, leaving her in a bathroom with no ear, same as both the others. At this point, we realize he’s working off a list- all people connected to the court system, and all of whom he sees as having played some part in separating him from his mother when he was a child.
When Randy goes to visit Flo the next day, all her affection has gone. She is upset he didn’t come to see her last night and says that Chloe is trying to move the two of them apart. I’m actually impressed it took her that long into the episode to snap, and boy does her word work fast. Randy attacks and chokes Chloe when she tries to confront him about having stopped taking his meds- at his mother’s word, and when he’s only known her again for a couple months. Holy codependence, Batman.
Oh, but it gets creepier. Randy next shows Flo pictures of his murder of the realtor, to which she says “Honey, it’s perfect.”. Once the team tracks down who he is, they discover that he is the product of his mother’s rape at the hands of a truck driver. Flo then began killing men herself- the hospital she’s at is a psychiatric one at a prison. That was why Randy was taken away, but she’s managed to convince him the rest of the world tore apart their family.
Chloe tries to make a break for it, but Randy, desperate to do his mother’s bidding, catches her. Lewis interrogates a completely remorseless Flo to figure out where they’ve gone, and they catch them just in time. Flo killed men at truck stops in an attempt to catch her rapist, and finally did so, making her son participate in the murder. Confronted with these facts and Flo’s true nature, Randy breaks down, lets Chloe go, and is taken in. I think it’s fair to say the wedding is off.
An extraordinarily creepy lullaby plays over the final scenes, in which Randy is locked up separate from his mother. In the very last scene, he chops off his own ear and holds it in his hand to emulate his mother, who had her own ear cut off by her rapist. Just when you thought it was safe to eat during this show. It’s two weeks until the next episode, and can I just say again: can we please< see more of our actual main characters ion our show when it comes back? And less chopping off of body parts? Please?