Criminal Minds 114: Riding the Lightning

It had to happen eventually. An episode of Criminal Minds so dull, so unrelated to psychology and so without interest that I can’t bring myself to go into it in-depth. Why not? Because it’s not about solving a murder. Yup, it’s a Criminal Minds episode about the team going to interview a husband-and-wife team of serial killers just before they’re executed.

In an interesting note, the husband part of the team is played by Michael Massee, the man who killed Brandon Lee.

The main mystery of the episode is just how many young women Michael killed, and just how involved his wife was in the deaths. In point of fact, the only death that the wife was convicted of was the death of their 2-year-old son, whose body has never been found – she confessed to the crime.

I’m guessing we all see the twist coming – yup, the son isn’t dead, she just hid him away so that he’d never know who his real parents were. In fact, she dies rather than letting anyone reveal the truth about their son.

The big problem with the episode is that the main dramatic tension of the episode is the possibility that they’re going to be executing an innocent woman – but they’re really, really stretching the definition of the word ‘innocent’ here. The theory of the crime is that the wife would lure young women into a van where Michael would waylay them – even if she didn’t take part in the actual torture, murder, and dismemberment, she’s still just as guilty of the crimes.

Even under the most generous version of the events, with Michael abducting the women on his own, she still knew enough about the crimes to be able to turn Michael in to the police anonymously, which makes her enough of an accessory that I’m not exactly concerned about her ultimate fate.

The one thing that the episode succeeded in doing was expressing just how frustrating it must be to try and weasel a little more information about unknown victims from a serial killer about to be executed – the old standby that you’re dealing with a person who is obsessed with control, now they’ve had all of their power taken away from them, except for the ongoing pain they can cause by withholding the identities of their final victims. I’m sure it must be horrible, and it’s certainly something that actual profilers have had to deal with, but because the stakes in this episode don’t really matter (we never meet anyone with a missing daughter who suspects Michael of her murder, or anything), it’s hard to care what happens to any of the characters this time around.

Sadly I’m not able to do any scoring this week, since no crimes were solved. But, on a totally non-judgmental, non-scoring basis, they really didn't use much psychology in what should have been an entirely psychology-themed episode. In their interviews with Michael they don't get any useful information at all, in fact, he takes the identities of four other victims with him to his grave. Similarly only a bare minimum of psychology makes an appearance in the 'secret son' half of the story - after Mandy makes the random guess that wife isn't the type of person to kill her own child, they never manage to talk any information out of her - the son is found entirely through simple deductive reasoning.

Very weak episode, Criminal Minds.