S6E21 - “The Stranger”

We open at the cinema. We’re at the movie theater with the BAU family. Well – Reid, Morgan, Garcia, and Seaver. The movie they saw was “Slice 6”, apparently it’s a slasher movie. Garcia found it to be gratuitous. Reid is like, “Garcia, it’s a slasher film. How do you do a slasher film without violence?” And Garcia goes, “You imply it!” Morgan is like, “The movie was called Slice 6, what were you expecting?” There’s good banter. Morgan screamed like a prepubescent school girl, Garcia compares Seaver to Sigorune Weaver, Reid reminds them all that in movies, we call bad guys “villains,” not “unsubs.”

We cut away, and we hear a voice over from Reid. He says: “You want to know why horror movies are so successful? They prey on our instinctual need to survive. In tribal days, a woman’s scream would signal danger, and the men would return from hunting to protect their pack. That’s why it’s always the women and not the men who fall victim to the Boogeyman.” Then Seaver says: “My favorite thing about horror movies is the suspense factor. The helpless victim walks through the dark, shadows reaching out to get her.” And as Seaver’s saying this, we see a young woman walking home alone at night. She’s spooked by sounds in the alleyway, the footage of her seeming to follow along with the BAU’s horror movie monologue.

Now we’re with the young woman named Amber Lasko getting into her apartment. She still seems spooked, and she drops her keys, she gets inside, and locks the door. My girl has had a stressful day. It’s bath time. Amber goes into her bathroom and starts a bath. Just as she does, we pull back to see an intruder breaking into her apartment from the kitchen window. We watch her get undressed, and we can see that the intruder is now in her apartment. Amber gets into a bathrobe and lights a candle, noticing the kitchen window open. She closes it and is about to get into her bath when someone turns the stereo on in her apartment. She thinks it’s her roommate, Michelle, but it’s the masked intruder. Amber tries to run away and to barricade herself in her bathroom, but he breaks in and stabs her to death in the shower.

Back with the BAU- it’s the next morning. Section Chief Erin Strauss is back from vacay and is pestering Hotch about the grief evaluations we saw him conducting last episode. He tells her that he’s almost done with them, and then Strauss tells him that she wants to conduct a whole nother evaluation- this time in the field.

Hotch heads to the round table room, and Garcia presents the team’s latest case. Monica Shanley, Natalie Wallace, and Amber Lasko- three college students killed in their off-campus apartments in the last five days in San Diego. The three girls have very similar features- they all are white, have long brown hair, early twenties, and are majoring in teaching or child development. The unsub has A TYPE. The unsub is organized and sophisticated, entering through a back door or window and wearing gloves. However, the scenes indicate signs of a struggle, and Seaver theorizes that the unsub wishes to “cause a scene.” The BAU thinks the unsub is likely hunting for his next victim now.

On the BAU private jet (hey girl), Rossi says, “Our unsub has a type and a temper.” We learn that although the women were all stabbed and attacked brutally, none were sexually assaulted. Morgan suggests that the unsub is impotent and is substituting extreme violence for penetration. The BAU discusses the fact that the unsub is likely stalking each victim before killing them. When the team arrives in San Diego, they split up.

Morgan and Reid head to the latest victim, Amber’s apartment. They meet Detective Bryce Harding. Reid notices that the unsub smeared Amber’s blood on the walls of the shower after he killed her. Hotch and Rossi head to the medical examiner, where we learn that the number of stab wounds increases with each victim, meaning that the unsub is growing in confidence.

Cut to- the unsub. He’s stalking a woman named Laurie Burgin. He’s at a food court where Laurie is working. He’s messaging her on an instant messaging app called “Online Chat”. Laurie clearly has no idea who the unsub is or that he is only feet away from her. Ah, the dangers of online chatting. The unsub is wearing a dark blue baseball cap with two dice that are on fire on it. Laurie asks the unsub whether he prefers chocolate or vanilla, and he messages her and tells her chocolate. She types “my type of guy *wink*,” and he writes “my type of girl. When can I sample? Wink?” Also, their chat icons- Laurie’s is a butterfly, and the unsub’s is an airplane. The two genders. Butterflies and airplanes.  

At San Diego PD headquarters- Seaver interviews Michelle, Amber’s roommate. Michelle is FUCKED UP about Amber’s dead. Seaver is really good at directing the conversation and making Michelle feel comfortable. Michelle tells Seaver that Amber kept busy and took on odd jobs, more into making money than partying. Garcia is going to look into Amber’s employment history to see if she can find any links to the other victims. The BAU discusses how the unsub waits for the victims to be alone in their homes with the doors locked before striking- instilling psychological fear.

Now we see Laurie. She’s babysitting and messaging the unsub. She tells him she’s bored, and he’s all “bummer”. He asks for a picture of her, so she posses to take a pic. Then she hears the baby she’s supposed to be sitting crying over the baby monitor. She hurries off to comfort the baby. When she leaves the room, the unsub steps in and turns off the baby monitor. Laurie checks on the baby, who is UPSET. She asks the baby if he wants to pose for the camera and opens her phone. As she opens her phone, she sees the picture she just took for the unsub. In that picture, she’s standing in front of a glass door, and in the picture, you can very clearly make out the unsub in the background. Laurie is horrified, turns around, and the unsub is there, stabbing her to death while the baby she was babysitting watches on in horror. Hopefully, those memories aren’t developed yet!

Cut to the next day- the BAU shows up at the recent crime scene. We learn that the baby was unhurt, but Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins, Laurie’s employers, came home to find her deceased right in front of the crib. They are FREAKED out. Rossi asks the Jenkins how they found Laurie, and they tell Rossi that they found her on Craigslist. Mrs. Jenkins is life “I told him not to do it,” and the husband is like “We had no choice”. The Jenkins tells Rossi that Laurie was a hard worker and lil baby Julian loved her. Reid and Morgan investigate the crime scene, and Reid notes that the baby’s supplies were put in a specific order. Morgan theorizes that the unsub may have fed the child after murdering Laurie, although they’re not sure why. They also find Laurie’s phone, which has several missed calls and voicemails asking about a photo she posted. Reid says: “Laurie was writing something on the internet last night, can you figure out what it was?”

Garcia finds the post- it’s the picture that Laurie inadvertently took with the unsub. The unsub posted it and continued to use Laurie’s profile to post status updates after she died. Statuses like “Feeling faint at heart”, “all alone and scared to cry”, “about to take a slice out of life,” and “no one understands.” So the unsub is MOCKING the victims now. Morgan says that the unsub was “tweeting”, so I guess the website Laurie and the unsub were using is canonically Twitter?

Profile

• We’re looking for a white male in his early 20s

• Because he’s stalking his victims, the BAU believes that he either works out of his house or a part-time job

• This unsub strikes in the home rather than outside, where he could more easily abduct his victims.

  • This tells us that his social skills are most likely lacking, and he may not have the confidence to talk to women.

• His confidence with killing, however, is growing.

• He’s gone from hesitant strikes in the victim’s home to painting the walls with blood. Our unsubs is developing a taste for the kill.

• His victims share similar features and backgrounds. The BAU believes that they represent someone whom the unsubs think has wronged him, and he’s taking his rage out on them.

• Because the unsub shows signs of “one neat aspect” and started killing suddenly and effectively with no break, we believe he was recently incarcerated or institutionalized.

  • Look at men who got out a month or so ago.

  • Their records will show a history of violence, anger toward women, and/or symbols of authority.

• We need to warn all young women to be hypervigilant, especially in their online acquaintances. But also with service workers, maintenance staff, and deliverymen.  

• Double-check IDs and call dispatch before they let people inside

• The unsub may be finding victims online using online profiles, job postings, or anything that gives a little too much information that the unsub could use to hunt his victims.

• Time is not on the BAU’s side- they think the unsub has already got his next victim in his sites.

We cut to the unsub- and see that he is looking at the student ID for a Lily Droubay on his computer. So she must be the next victim.

Garcia is trying to track the unsub down using his screen names and account info, but everything is pretty generic. Again we hear about how the unsub was “tweeting” with Laurie before he killed her. Garcia also looks at the victims’ employment records, and Seaver is going to dig further into those. Strauss calls Hotch and tells him that his grief assessment is missing. Like… did you really expect him to do his own? Idk I think this moment is kinda dumb. Like, if you want him to do an assessment, tell him you want him to do an assessment. Don’t be all “The grief assessments are incomplete… yours’s is missing.”

Cut to- Lily Droubay. She is babysitting. She’s talking on the phone with her boyfriend. He goes: “All those dead girls look just like you, sweetheart.” You know. How you talk to your girlfriend about how she looks like all the dead girls? Lily hears a sound outside and freaks out, and her boyfriend goes “kill, kill, kill,” trying to spook her. He then asks her if she’s set the alarm, and she did. She begs her boyfriend to come over. He tells her he has a paper to write, and she offers to write it for him, but he declines. The alarm goes off, but it’s the parents of the child she was babysitting arriving home, Mr. and Mrs. Ellison. This whole thing reads like the opening scene from Scream 1.

The parents walk her to the door and open it- only to be surprised by the unsub. Now it’s the next day, and the BAU is arriving at the crime scene with San Diego PD. The unsub killed not only Lily but also Mr. Ellison. However, Mrs. Ellison and the baby survived. The unsub locked them in the nursery. Apparently, he broke the handle on the door so she couldn’t open it. Morgan speaks to Mrs. Ellison, whose name is Amy. Amy tells Morgan that the unsub was wearing a mask and immediately attacked and killed her husband. The unsub then grabbed Lily. Lily was stabbed and sexually assaulted with a knife. The unsub also posed Mr. Ellison and Lily’s bodies so that they were looking at one another while they died. Inside the house, Rossi and Reid, and Detective San Diego talk about how the unsub is clearly obsessed with babysitters.

Cut to the unsub stalking another woman, staring at her in her bathroom window. We see a brief flashback of the unsub when he was a young boy, staring through another window, watching a woman in a sexy outfit preparing to have sex with a man. It feels very sex worker coded.

Back at San Diego headquarters, Seaver once again points out that the unsub is focused on “protecting the children”. He fed the Jenkins baby, and he spared the Ellison baby. So the BAU fully focuses on the surrogate angle, trying to recreate the unsub’s trauma based on this last crime scene. Hotch asks Garcia to search for local women who died in their early thirties who were survived by a husband and at least one son. Garcia then looks into husbands on this list with marriage licenses and children that were youthful offenders who fit into the sociopathic triad. Bestie- Garcia finds thirty matches. THIRTY! That’s so many. Seaver then tells Garcia to cross that list with her list of newly released inmates, and she finds our guy. Greg Finney. He’s……… pretty hot.

Apparently, he went to juvie at thirteen for threatening his stepmom with a knife. The stepmother, Kate Jones, looks the same as the victims Greg was targeting. Apparently, Kate was Greg’s babysitter when she was a college student. Garcia finds lots of reports showing Greg’s aggressive behavior, he was finally institutionalized when he was seventeen. Greg’s father died a few weeks ago.

We cut to- Kate Jones’s house. She comes home with groceries, opens the kitchen cupboard, and everything is organized. And she PANICS. If I came home and my shelves looked this good- I would be THRILLED. Everything looks so clean and organized. Kate then opens her fridge and panics as everything in there is also organized. Also, my girl has three jars of better-than-bullion- surely one is sufficient. She closes the fridge door, and Greg jump-scares her. He’s wearing his stupid flaming dice hat, and yes, I do find this many semi-attractive.

The BAU and San Diego PD break into Greg’s apartment. Spotless. Minimalist. My kind of home. Greg isn’t home (obviously- he’s at Kate’s house organizing things). But they do find his laptop. I feel like Greg could be the new Marie Kondo. Like, let a psychopath organize your home. What they decide you don’t need, you don’t need. Anyways, the laptop the team finds at Greg’s home has an employee login screen. Garcia discovers that Greg has been working as a data entry clerk at the San Diego register as part of his work release program. I guess that’s a newspaper? So that’s how Greg got all the victim info. We do see that Greg has hung one thing on his wall – a pic of Kate Finney with some Xs and stab marks on it.

Back with Kate- Greg is torturing his stepmom. He’s got her tied up in a chair, and he slicing her. He’s wearing his stupid fucking hat. She asks him: “What? Am I one of your animals now?” Greg is like, “No, I didn’t want them to suffer.” Iconic. The BAU hurries to Kate’s house, sirens blaring. Greg is feeling cocky. He has a gun on top of the knife! He tells Kate: “They’re coming for you, but they’re gonna be too late.” Hotch again is like I’m going in alone. Didn’t he just do this last episode??

Meanwhile, Kate and Greg have a fight about who loved Daddy Greg more. Greg blames Kate for locking him up, and Kate denies it. Hotch calls the house phone and asks Greg to talk about his demands. Greg’s like, “Naw, I don’t have any demands. I just want Kate to pay for what she’s done.” Hotch is like: “Bestie, what did she do?” And he’s like: “She’s a whore, and she took my dad.” Hotch is like: “Bestie, I think this is more about your dad than it is about Kate.” Hotch then becomes Daddy Hotch. He tells Greg to let him in the house, and Greg is like, “Gulp, you can come to the door.”

Hotch and Seaver go to the door. Seaver is going to be Good Cop, and Hotch is going to be Bad Cop. Greg opens the door, sees Seaver, and panics. Greg is all: “Hotch! I told you not to bring anyone with you,” and Seaver goes: “I just thought we could work this out ourselves.” Greg is like: “Are you some kind of… negotiator????” Then Greg makes them promise no guns and lets them into the house. Meanwhile, Rossi and San Diego PD sneak around the back of the house to box Greg in. Inside, Daddy Hotch tells Greg to put the gun down. Seaver’s all: “Tell me what you want, Greggly.” Greg is like: “I would really not like to be locked up again.” Seaver is all: “Don’t you really want to get back at Kate for making your dad forget your mom?” Kate is like: “WTF, hello? No, I didn’t do that.” Seaver snaps at her: “Unless the next words out of your mouth are ‘I’m sorry’, I don’t want to hear anything else from you.” Greg is so turned on by Seaver. Seaver empathizes with Greg. Meanwhile, Rossi breaks into the house through a bathroom window.

Hotch then tells Greggly to ask Kate “The Question.” I swear to god the question is Mommy Issues. Greg asks Kate: “Why not me?” And Hotch goes: “Answer him, Kate.” And Kate’s like: “Because you were just a boy.” Rossi then sneaks up behind Greg and guns him down. Kate is fine, although she’s been verbally attacked by the BAU. I guess they weren’t going to try to disarm Greg. They just wanted to take him down? RIP Future Netflix Organizer King.

Outside, Kate is cared for by EMTs. She asks Seaver if what Seaver said in there was true. Seaver tells her that it wasn’t true, that she had to be aggressive toward Kate to gain Greg’s trust. She assures Kate that Greg was unstable and that Kate and Greg’s father did everything they could to help Greg. She says: “Sometimes we do everything right, and we still lose. Greg was a sociopath, and there’s nothing you could have done to change that.” Hotch then congratulates Seaver on her hard work. She did kill it during this episode.

Back on the BAU jet (hey girl), we fly back to Quantico. Hotch meets with Strauss. Strauss tells him that the team is functioning well, despite having a challenging year. Strauss tells Hotch that, HOWEVER, the FBI director has some “concerns.” She won’t clarify what exactly is wrong, but she tells him that she may have to be away for a few months, but she might need Hotch to step in a supervise a few departments. Hotch asks if Strauss wants to talk about it, and Strauss sort of laughs and goes: “What? So you can assess me? I don’t do that either.”

Rating Criteria:

• Criminal/Serial Killer: 14/20

• Character development/ character arcs: 12/20

• Forensics/Context: 12/20

• Script writing: 20/20

• Background characters: 17/20

Overall: 75/100