S5E18 - “The Fight”
The episode opens with a helicopter helicoptering. Someone radios in and says a body has been found in Presidio Park – in San Francisco. The body we learn is a white man in his 30s who has been badly beaten and with a single gunshot wound to the head. The local PD arrives and says: “We gotta call the FBI. It’s starting again.”
Now we see a man and a teenage girl walking home in the dark – it is San Fran so there are a lot of hills. The man is Ben McBride and the girl is his 14 year old daughter named Jane. They are arguing about Jane wanting to date Bois. At the top of the hill is a silhouette of a man – looming. He sort of stands there, listening in on the McBrides’ conversation.
The man says: “I wonder what is going on with all of these helicopters?” Ben curtly dismisses him, and the man is all: “Well I wasn’t even talking to you, I was talking to Jane.” The McBrides are horrified. Daddy Ben is like “How do you know my daughters name?” And the stranger is like “You’re not in charge here!” and pulls out a gun. He then tells the McBrides: “Come quiet, or you both die.” Reader, it is so dramatic.
Next we cut to a gym of sorts? There are men fighting with one another – friendly sparring – while upbeat music plays. This is Washington DC baby, and Hotch walks in. He is so out of place. One of the men – Cooper – seems to know Hotch. He says he is allergic to bureaucracy.
Hotch and Cooper talk about the case; apparently Cooper is familiar with this case that the BAU is about to fly out to look into. He calls the victims “vics”. So apparently these exact same kind of murders happened exactly a year ago, for three days, but then went cold. So this means the BAU has approximately three more days to solve this case before they are out of time. Cooper thinks there are parallel cases running to these ones. The same time, a year ago, a day after the dead dudes stopped showing up, a father and his teenage daughter were found in their car. And Cooper thinks they are all connected somehow. Cooper proposes that the BAU work on the dead dudes, while Cooper and his guys work on the current father and daughter who are missing.
We now see Ben and Jane from before chained to pipes?? It looks like they are inside an abandoned building. The man from before comes over and caresses her face. He says: “It’s simple. Give Jane to met, and you both live.” Of course Ben is like, hell no.
On the BAU jet the team talks about victimology. Reid shares that in this distract there are a lot of homeless and transient individuals, so this unsub is choosing “easy” victims that “won’t be missed”. So he clearly isn’t concerned about “the hunt” – all of these victims are part of a bigger plan; that plan which we now know he executes on the same days every year. However, there isn’t anything that is historical or public knowledge about those specific dates, so they must be personal to the unsub.
We also learn that Cooper’s team has not been authorized to work on the team with them, so they are technically going against orders “helping” them.
Now we see Cooper – and we get this ridiculous sound going with the letters of “Sam Cooper, Supervisory Special Agent, BAU Team Leader” as they show up. And then “Jonathan ‘Prophet’ Simms – Supervisory Special Agent” who looks to be this teams’ Garcia. And then there is also “Mick Rawson, Supervisory Special Agent”. His main thing is that he’s British. But don’t worry guys, there is also a woman. “Gina LaSalle – Supervisory Special Agent”. This group starts getting to work by trying to find who this father and daughter could be – they are going to look into schools and see what girls have absences from class.
Now Prentiss and Rossi are at the Presidio Park. Apparently he dumps the bodies away from the paths, so he must be at least vaguely familiar with the area. He also is strong enough to carry the bodies. The local PD tells them that the victims were all homeless, so maybe he lured them in somehow.
At the morgue, Morgan and Hotch look at one of the park victims; it looks as if he was able to throw a few punches in before dying, however he did die execution style.
Now back with the Unsub and the McBrides, we see that Ben is in an abandoned pool, and chained up opposite him in the pool is another man. Oh my god is this going to be a gladiator situation. Ben is instructed to take the hand cuffs off the other guy. The unsub tells the two men the rules – they fight, and whoever wins, lives. So the Ben has to fight the other man, who we later learn is a homeless man. And Ben wins, and the Unsub shoots the transient man.
The other team continues to try to identify and locate the father daughter duo. The Prophet was able to find the identity of the father and daughter. They call Hotch and let him know.
Hotch and Cooper show up to the McBride’s residence. Ben and Leslie McBride are divorced, and Jane lives with her mother. Leslie freaks out when she sees the FBI. She says: “You just got my family murdered.”
She shows them footage the unsub sent to her, it’s of a previous victim being shot execution style. Apparently she received a call from the unsub claiming that he had abducted Ben and Jane, telling her that if she went to the police or reported them missing, that Ben and Jane would be killed. He sent her the footage of the previous victim as a warning, to show that he was SERIOUS. She is afraid that she is being constantly surveilled, so she did as the unsub requested. Hotch points out that the video she was sent was filmed on a tripod, so it may not actually be very likely that she can actually be surveilled if he doesn’t have a partner – which is does not seem that he does. Hotch gets a call, and they found another body!
Prentis and Mick Rawson meet; she kind of flirts with him, and he flirts back. They examine the body, and Mick notices that he has skin under his nails, and the first one had scratches on his chest, so perhaps – perhaps they are all fighting each other? Mick is able to somehow deduct really fast that they are all fighting each other – and the loser is executed.
We cut to San Quentin with Rossi and The Prophet. They meet with an inmate and give him the profile, because they’re fairly certain that the unsub was an inmate.
Profile
It is very likely he has a prison record
He is white, and it is very likely that because of the people he abducts, he may be in his 30s
Considering the terrain of where he is dumping the bodies, he is probably very fit
He also has access to a space that is large enough to house and control a number of prisoners without alerting neighbors
He keeps the same hunting ground and same dumpsite
He is a control freak and very organized
He would have been obsessed with the guards (while in prison), and their methods, and their controlling of the prisoners, especially in the yards
He kills people the same few days every year; there is no way he is that obsessed without talking about it
He probably has a daughter of his own, and probably a brunette just like Jane
The dates he chooses probably correspond and involve his own daughter
He likely lost his daughter in some way, and this event likely involves his own daughter
He probably lost his daughter in some way that is symbolic of him not fighting for her in the first place
A lot of times killers choose victims that are surrogates for someone, like a wife or mother; in this case, it is believed that it is his own guilt that is making him choose surrogates that represent himself
We see the unsub take a bunch of photos and selfies of himself with Jane.
Now Cooper and the team meet up; Cooper wants to take to the streets because he believes the unsub will be out an about. In the tenderloin district we see a bunch of shots of homeless transients around. The BAU and Cooper’s team take to the streets, except Mick Rawson takes to the rooftops because apparently that’s his thing. Prentis is on the ground and they have a bit of a flirty exchange. Mick sees a guy walking – Prentis approaches his direction, but he sees them watching him and takes off, Prentis runs after him. Prentis is able catch him, but its the wrong guy.
Ben McBride is fighting another transient man in the pool, and he’s getting pretty beat up. He knocks the transient man unconscious. The unsub starts taunting him, saying how the daughter is better off with him. He’s saying how Jane wouldn’t be walking home from school alone. So then the unsub starts saying that this fight is “to the death”, or Jane dies. Insinuating that Ben now has to kill the guy he was fighting. So he does.
The BAU and Cooper’s team are now focusing on the girls who were killed, because they believe the unsub is fixating on them, so he must have a daughter around their age. They’ve created different categories of what could have happened to the unsub’s daughter (she died, she was removed from his custody, etc.)
Cooper and his team investigate Jane McBride’s room, namely Gina LaSalle. Trying to figure out why she specifically was taken. Gina believes that Jane may be hiding something, because there is a diary just sitting out in the open. Gina’s like- a teenage girl wouldn’t just leave her diary laying around. It turns out that Jane started writing in it at the advice of a family therapist from the Tenderloin district. This place also contracts with Social Services, so this may have been where the unsub crossed paths with his victims.
The Prophet and Rossi go back to San Quentin at the request of one of Prophet’s informants. Apparently Prophet himself use to be a prisoner, so he has a rapport. We learn about a possible ex-convict who matches the profile: John Vincent Bell.
Garcia is able to send over a list of parents who lost custody, and they are able to narrow it down to a name. John Vincent Bell; and one of the girls who died was named Mandy Bell. Yep, divorced, wife died, Bell beat up the social service workers who tried to take the daughter away from him, and then they were in a car accident and she died after three days on life support. They get the address of the gym; which belonged to Bell’s family.
Cut back to (we now know it’s a gym) the Unsub and the McBrides. Jane starts saying how she’ll go with Bell because her father is a LOSER. She doesn’t want to be with such a LAME LOSER. Ben realizes very quickly that Jane is trying to save his life, because Bell had already promised to let them both live if Jane went with him. So Jane goes with Bell, and Ben is tied up and begging her not to, but the pair leave.
The BAU and cops head to the gym, and it is so dramatic. They see the selfies on the floor, and they find Ben chained up. He tells them that Bell just took Jane. Choppers come in, and everyone is out looking for them. Mick Rawson has decided to head to the roof! You know- because that’s his thing.
Bell and Jane see all the police on the street and he starts bringing her somewhere else, trying to avoid all of them. But the chopper with Cooper in it spots them. Cooper is convinced he’s gonna go to the top of a building, and he is right. The team corners Bell on a roof, and he puts a gun to Jane’s head. Prentis begs Bell to reconsider killing Jane, “think of your own daughter”, etc. Bell pushes Jane away and then jumps off the building to his death. Prentis rushes over to see if he is still alive after his fall, but it turns out he just fake fell onto a lower level and has a gun pointed at her and he’s about to shoot. But Mick comes to the rescue, shooting at her from across the street.
Rating Criteria:
Criminal/Serial Killer: 15/20
Character development/ character arcs: 5/20
Forensics/Context: 5/20
Script writing: 3/20
Background characters: 10/20
Overall: 38/100