photo: cbs
The Night Watch
Original Air Date: Oct 28, 2015
Caitlin- Senior Staff Writer
caitlin@thetwocentscorp.com
This episode, directed by Thomas Gibson, is an appropriately creepy entry for Halloween week. It’s no “Mr. Scratch”, but it does open on a masked man stringing a guy up a building and killing him with a giant mouse trap while opera music plays in the background. So that’s something.
These are, in fact, some very busy pre-credit scenes. We also see Lewis interviewing a man in prison and staying there so late she misses a dinner with her fiancé. He says he’s fed up with her putting her job above him and leaves her. Poor actor only got like a minute of screen time, too.
The next morning, Lewis seems pretty okay with everything that happened. She walks in on Rossi attempting to tell Reid a joke without him breaking it down to science (good luck with that) and casually tosses out a line about being free of her former beau. The mood quickly dims when Garcia shows the team the crime scene. The victim was a man who had once opposed some rich developers in Detroit, but then took bribes from them. Just in case you thought a giant mouse trap might not be symbolic.
The scene is painted with the signature of a street artist named Morpheus, who has previously created pieces that cried out against injustice- like one on a burned out car where a homeless woman and child died. If Morpheus was going to turn to murder, this crime might fit the bill. Unfortunately, out unsub isn’t just cleaning up the streets. He also takes a baby girl from her cradle while both her parents go about their business downstairs.
Garcia informs the team of this development, and Rossi and Lewis head off to talk to the mother and father, who are both devastated. For what it’s worth, the guy really is gentle with the child. But he’s being gentle with her while he dips roses in human blood in the background. Those things tend to go against each other. Meanwhile, Morgan speaks with a man named Marcus, who has some clues- but no real information- about Morpheus’s identity.
It should surprise absolutely nobody that Marcus turns up dead soon after, hanging from a giant mobile above a cradle with the baby girl’s toys nestled inside. If that weren’t worrying enough, we also see our unsub building a tiny coffin. The team notes the differences between the two crime scenes, but they also note the supposed signature of Morpheus varies in each one from the artist’s original work. This is a setup, and we’re looking for an associate.
Garcia finds the perfect candidate in Corey Marlin. At the same time, Reid finds two pieces of a baby blanket. One is from the real Morpheus, having been left at the art piece mentioned earlier. The other is from a crime scene. As investigations continue, Morpheus reaches out to the team herself to help. Yes, herself. Morpheus is a woman (and an attractive one at that). She doesn’t think Marlin would be capable of such crimes. But he certainly does look good for them- right until he’s killed, too.
After the team uses the baby blanket to figure out the Morpheus is a young artist who lost a child, Garcia tracks down Ellen Clarke, who lost her three year old son in a drowning accident. The boy’s father, William Cochrin, completely fell apart after the incident, only recently making any attempts to get his life together. Considering he’s the killer and is now building another, much larger coffin, I’m going to say those attempts aren’t going well.
Apparently, William is doing all this because he was so upset about how Ellen used her half of the blanket. He wants to kill her, but first he wants to use murder to ruin her reputation. He tortured Marlin for her whereabouts. Just as the team sets out to look for him, he tracks Ellen down and drags her off. He takes her to a studio where he has the baby. There, we learn he’s not only angry about the accident. Ellen was painting when their son drowned and never saw him run off.
He now demands that Ellen choose whether he kills her or the baby. She refuses, but when he makes a move toward the little girl, she tells him to kill her. So he drags her onto the roof. She tries to reason with him, saying she left the blanket as a tribute and that she knows he wouldn’t hurt that baby. But it’s not enough. When the team arrives, William throws both of them over the edge of the building. It’s incredibly depressing, but at least the team gets the baby back to her parents.
On the plane ride home, Lewis still seems pretty well adjusted to everything, joking about “losing 185 pounds” with Rossi. I agree she’s better off, but can’t help feeling this is going to come back. For now, she just heads off to another interview. And, on a final geeky note, I’m peeved that the writers never had Reid point out that the artist Morpheus’s blanket and the unsub Morpheus’s creepy imagery could have a strong connection to the original Morpheus- the Greek god of dreams. Holy ball drop, Batman.
Next Week: Pariahville