Some fishermen are working away on a boat, beheading fish, as you do. The female one of the pair makes the mistake of letting the male one go home early, so when she's left alone on the dock a murderer is able to rush up and kill her! And when I say 'rush up', I mean teleport in front of, like he's Jason or something. She actually gets to say 'oh, it's you' and be relieved before the stabbing. So we're well into slasher-movie territory this week.
Then it's over to Washington, where JJ and Emily are on a coffee run, debating whether the latter should go out with Mick, who apparently was flirting with her a couple of weeks back. Since that show went nowhere, I'm guessing their relationship didn't either. Garcia then shows up with shopping bags, leading to some comedy about her spoiling JJ's son! Hilarious.
Everyone is gathers in the office to hear about the case - and when we discover the details, it turns out that the opening scare could never have happened. Why? Because the woman who was murdered turned down the opportunity to have her shipmate wait around and escort her to her car. She scoffed at the idea, in fact. Why is this unbelievable? Because she was the third victim in five days. In a town of 1500 people. You're only allowed to laugh off the idea of being stabbed to death by a stranger on your way home from work if that exact thing hasn't happened to two people you know in the last four days.
If ever there was a situation where you'd start using the buddy system and being careful after dark, it's this one.
It's weird how the writers don't seem to understand how the murders that get committed would effect the larger world. It's most notable in small-town cases, where people are never as alarmed and hyper-vigilant as they would be afterwards, but also the subway shooter was completely mishandled.
Okay, the point is that they're flying to Alaska and Garcia's coming with them. There's some nonsense about wanting to make sure she keeps them hooked up to a satellite that Greg has tasked to handle their computer traffic while they're in the field. Really? That's the kind of thing they can do to hunt a serial killer? Seems like a stretch. Especially when you only need to handle a lot of computer traffic because you're bringing Garcia with you. Wouldn't it make more sense to just call her on your satellite phones when you need something, and have her tap into the mainframe right there in the FBI building?
As they fly in there's a little conversation about the varied races and genders of the victims, which leads to Joe saying something that's both horrible and completely inaccurate. Since the killer went from shooting with a rifle to stabbing with an arrow he announces that the killer probably didn't 'get what he wanted' from the long-distance kills. Nothing wrong there, but then he goes on to explain that because the last victim was an attractive woman, that means the stabbing was a substitute rape. Which creates an unpleasant and dangerous associate between someone's attractiveness and their likelihood of being a victim of sexual violence. Wow, should Joe know better than that.
Some nonsense ensues when they they reach the docks. Here is the plane they were traveling in from Anchorage to Franklin:
Now check out how many people supposedly get out:
All seven team members, a pilot, co-pilot, and their luggage. That's not a tiny plane, but it doesn't have room for nine people and a bunch of computer equipment either. how difficult would it be to announce that the rest of the team was going to be on the next plane in? That would go a long way toward explaining why it's Derek who introduces himself and the team to the local deputy. Actually, that's really odd... was this script originally written to take place during the brief window when Derek was in charge?
