We open- at a mall in Potomac Mills, VA. A blonde woman runs frantically around the mall as an announcement blares over the loudspeaker: “Paging Katie Jacobs. Please report to security immediately.” We then hear a 911 call from a woman named Susan Jacobs: “My niece, she’s gone. She’s—she’s missing. Her mom and dad are still looking. Oh my god! She’s only 6, her mom and her dad can’t find her.”

Hold on to your cabooses y’all because we’re about to meet a lot of Jacobses. There’s Katie Jacobs, a 6 year-old girl who is currently missing. Richard and Beth Jacobs, her parents. Beth was the blonde lady we saw frantically running around earlier. Susan Jacobs, Katie’s aunt, the woman who made the 911 call. Susan’s husband Paul Jacobs, who is Richard’s brother in the show and also in real life!! And their son Jeremy Jacobs. All of the actors/actresses have been in so much shit let’s jut get through it really fast. Beth Jacobs is played by Paula Malcomson from Deadwood, Sons of Anarchy, ER, and Katnis’ mother from Hunger Games. Susan Jacobs is played by Suzann Cryer from fucking Silicone Valley (among other things, but mostly Silcone Valley)!! Katie Jacobs is played by Ariel Winter from Modern Family. And Jeremy is played by Alexander Gould who was literally Nemo from Finding Nemo. So to say this episode has star power is… an understatement!

That said, this episode has a VERY confusing plot and way too many characters, so I’m going to take some time to preface what happened before we get into the details. Essentially, the extended Powers family was out for a day trip at the mall. Richard and Beth Jacobs left their daughter Katie with her aunt and uncle, Susan and Paul Jacobs. Susan and Paul then left Katie with her cousin Jeremy at an arcade, and Jeremy lost track of her, and no one has seen her since. Last week, another little girl named Jessica Dais was kidnapped from a mall, and later killed, so the cops and FBI are kicking this into high gear. The police arrive with their Rapid Deployment Team shortly after the 911 call, headed by Detective James Franklin, who is the lead investigator of Jessica Davis’ case. They shut the mall down, so there’s no way the unsub could have left the mall with Katie. The thought is that the unsub has Katie incapacitated somewhere, and they hope they can find her before she’s killed.

So… the BAU has been called in to help Katie before it is too late! The BAU shows up twenty minutes after the mall goes into lockdown. Detective Franklin advises the BAU that they have security footage showing Katie Jacobs entering the mall with her family, but not leaving it. Reid and Morgan meet with the mall’s head of security, Marie Samuels. Who is… hot! They determine that it will take three hours to search the entirety of the mall. As we learned earlier, Katie doesn’t have that much time. As we know from previous episodes, the statistics on stranger child abductions are, unsettling to say the least.

This is from Season 1, Episode 12 “What Fresh Hell”:

Stranger abductions are usually fatal.
40% of children that are abducted and murdered die within the first hour
75% die after three hours
And virtually all of them are dead after 24 hours (Reid says 99% in this episode).

Reid basically reiterates these statistic, then adds that when Jessica Davis died, she joined the 44% of children who are killed within the first hour of their abduction. So if it’s the same abductor, Katie’s chances are not good.

Meanwhile Hotch and Detective Franklin discuss the case from last week- Jessica Davis. We learn that Detective Franklin was first on the scene. Franklin says: “Twenty years and I’ve never seen anything like it. I can’t get the image out of my head. I joined the bureau to rescue people, not to stand over another dead kid today.” Hotch says: “Hopefully you won’t have to.” Franklin says: “It’s all chance you know. Wrong place at the wrong time, no logic, no sense. How does a parent ever reconcile that?” And Hotch says: “They never do.”

As the SWAT team searches the mall- the BAU interviews Katie’s family. We learn from Katie’s parents that she has asthma and does not have her inhaler. JJ and Hotch interview Katie’s parents separately. When a child goes missing, the first suspect is usually someone she knows, like a family member. Unfortunately both of Katie’s parents are pretty antagonistic and abrasive to the BAU as they’re being questioned. They don’t understand why the BAU is taking time to question them, instead of in the mall searching for the unsub. It takes them a while to cooperate, which is understandable. They finally give JJ Katie’s sweater so that the search dogs can be brought in to look for her. Katie’s mother asks JJ if she has kids and she says: “No, not yet (ahem BILL) but everyone that needs us, we think of as our own.”

Prentis speaks to Katie’s extended family. Susan admits that she left Katie with Jeremy because she went shopping for her husband, Paul’s, birthday. Katie makes a joke about how she used to work in retail and should hate the mall, but now wishes they had never gone to the mall. She says she feels responsible for leaving Katie under the care of her son Jeremy, who is also a young child. Apparently Jeremy got so engrossed in the game that he just… didn’t pay any attention to Katie? I guess he’s supposed to be 10? Paul, Katie’s uncle, suggests that maybe Katie got lost reading books or playing dress up? Which is, an odd statement.

Garcia gets to work examining all of the mall’s security footage. She finds Katie Jacobs on the security footage, but can’t make out who she is with because the footage is so grainy. But from what they can make out, it looks like she is going somewhere with someone willingly. Garcia is able to further clarify seven seconds of the footage- ohhh y’all that’s the name of the episode! The footage shows Katie exiting the arcade and heading north through the crowd. Hotch says, dramatically: “Seven seconds. That’s all it takes for a child to disappear.” Garcia points out that if Katie was alone, the only stores north of the arcade are furniture, stationary or bedding. Not kids stores that would catch her eyes! Unless, it wasn’t a store that caught her eye- but a person. Garcia says: “I once followed Todd Cortel the entire length of Silver Beach because he had a kite.” And… Hotch completely ignores this and leaves.

Enter search dogos! But apparently the central air system in the mall filtered in the smell of food from the food courts, and the dogos got a bit distracted. As one does.

The BAU suspects that Katie’s cousin Jeremy knows more than what he is sharing. Morgan and Reid question him separately, and he has a panic attack. Morgan realizes that Jeremy is so consumed by guilt and stress, that he must know something that could potentially help the case. Hotch gives Morgan permission to do a cognitive interview with Jeremy.

Susan Jacobs, Katie’s aunt, is very upset that her son is being questioned without her present. He is underage, and as we all know from the whole Brendan Dassey debacle, youth being questioned without lawyers or their parents present is almost always a disaster! But Prentis refuses to let Susan be with her son during the interview. Susan is struggling with the whole situation. She says: “One minute you’re having a lighter engraved for your husband, and the next minute Katie’s name is being paged. I never thought something like this could happen to our family.”

This isn’t our first time seeing Morgan do a cognitive interview, we did see it in Season 1, episode 4 “Plain Sight”, but not to the extent that it’s shown in this episode. Which is pretty cool. Jeremy says his favorite game is “DOA – dead or alive”. He likes violent videogames because of course he does. Morgan asks Jeremy to close his eyes and goes through each of his senses. What did he smell? What did he hear? We see a flashback of Jeremy yelling in the arcade: “DIE DIE DIE!” Katie starts crying and asking Jeremy to leave because she’s scare, and Jeremy, who again, is a youth, a young child, refuses to leave. Also apparently there was some girls watching Jeremy who started laughing because Katie was causing a scene. This, we learn, is why Jeremy feels guilty.

Meanwhile- a search doggo finds a necklace of Katie’s in a trash can. So the dogos were not distracted by the smell of food! They were doing their doggo duty. Hotch and JJ question Katie’s parents further, because the necklace is 24 carat code. Apparently Katie told her parents that she found it in the school yard, but the BAU are like, absolutely not, 6 year olds don’t have the money to buy 24 carat gold necklaces! Hotch also notices that the clasp of the necklace is damaged, like someone ripped it off her neck. Meaning that her kidnapping is motivated by anger/revenge, and it is likely nothing to do with Jessica Davis’ death.

Reid and Morgan search Katie’s house for clues. It looks like the Jacobi are a happy family who eat meals together and watch movies together by firelight. However, Katie has been wetting her bed and destroying her dolls. Morgan believes Katie’s being molested, possibly by her father. He calls Hotch to tell him. Hotch then says it’s not Katie’s father abusing her, it’s either her uncle Paul or her cousin Jeremy? Something about the necklace? Idk fam. Reid questions Jeremy and Prentis and Hotch question Uncle Paul. Reid tells Jeremy that he’s noticed Jeremy’s nervous tick of biting his inner cheek when he’s nervous.

Hotch and Prentis ask Uncle Paul questions about Jeremy. Like, who are Jeremy’s friends? And Uncle Paul, Jeremy’s father is like idk, fam. Also apparently Jeremy has a record for stealing jewelry for a girl he liked. And they’re like, yo Uncle Paul, what was the girl’s name? And Uncle Paul is like idk. Idk who the girl was. Prentis is like- “How do you know that your neice Katie likes reading books and dress up, but you don’t know anything about your son?” Scumbag Uncle Paul has been molesting Katie! He bought and gave her the necklace. Paul says: “I may have done some things that you can’t possibly understand, but I would never hurt Katie.” And I guess they believe him? So not only has Katie been abused this whole time by her uncle, but she was also hurt by someone else!

Prentis then remembers how Katie’s Aunt Susan said the whole reason she left Katie alone with Jeremy is because she was getting Paul a light engraved for his birthday. And we haven’t seen Paul smoke at all. Not a single, solitary cigarette. Prentis says: “For probably the most stressful day of your life, I haven’t seen you light one cigarette.” And Paul says that he quit over a month ago. Then Prentis thinks about how Susan also said that she used to work in retail, and the BAU realizes that Susan previously worked at this mall!! Susan!! Susan is the unsub!

Susan kidnapped her own niece! She did it because she realized that her husband Paul was abusing her niece Katie, and she and Paul separated, and she got jealous of Katie, so she kidnapped Katie!!!

Susan tells the BAU where to find Katie, and they find her just in time. Susan is arrested. Paul is arrested. Imogen Heap’s song “The Moment I Said It” is playing and it’s way too dramatic for this and the lyrics are: “Just put back the car keys or someone’s gonna get hurt”.

Jeremy tells Reid and Morgan that he heard Katie call his mother’s name as she left the arcade. And Morgan is like “I get it kid, it’s your mom.” Then Jeremy is like: “What’s going to happen to me?” And Reid is like “I don’t know, Jeremy, but uh, we’re gonna make sure you’re alright, okay?” That’s comforting… Imogen Heap’s lyrics are: “You’re scaring me, you’re scaring me, you’re scaring me… to death” Okay Dr. Stan Howard! As we come up on the credits the lyrics are: “Don’t ohhh (SMASH)” but the smash is a whisper. “Don’t ohhh (SMASH)”

The last scene is Hotch visiting Hailey at her sister’s house, asking to see Jack. (SMASH)

Rating Criteria

Criminal/Serial Killer: 14/20

Character development/ character arcs: 15/20
Forensics/Context: 10/20
Script writing: 18/20
Background characters: 18/20

Overall: 75/100

S3E5 - “Seven Seconds”

S3E6 - “About Face”

S3E4 - “Children of The Dark”