In the darkest woods some teen girls
are going ghost hunting! Is this a halloween episode? They're looking
for Slenderman out in the woods! Or 'Tall Man' as they call him, but
we know what they mean. One of the girls goes on ahead, and the other
two conspire about something they have planned. Are they going to
stab the third girl, like the Slenderman crime, or is the show
planning to use our knowledge of that crime against us?
It would be weird if there was a
teenaged killer in two episodes in a row, though.
The next day, some campers in the woods
are packing up, and the lead girl stumbles out of the woods,
scratches all over her face, yelling that 'the tall man' has taken
her friends!
It's breakfast time at the JJ
household! These two boys are so incredibly blonde. They have to be
JJ's real-life sons, right? And hey, Jr. is there, because of course
he is! That guy's the best. Then JJ gets a call - the two girls are
missing in a place called 'Dead Man's Conservatory Park'. They have
to get there immediately!
JJ's upset, because that's in her home
town, where her sister committed suicide! She doesn't want to go
back, but then she sees the place they went missing, and remembers
the stories about Slenderman from her own childhood!
We get a breakdown of the case -
Slenderman's deal is that he grabs you and cuts you until you reveal
all of your secrets! Oh, could the other two girls have been planning
to torture the lead girl in some way, and it all went horribly awry?
I'm sure we'll find out when they get to the park in question!
JJ flashes back to her childhood, when
her sister scolded her for stealing a necklace from her room! But
then the sister gives her the necklace, as part of the 'giving your
stuff away before you kill yourself' thing.
In the hospital, a nurse comes to
scrape under the lead girl (Ally)'s nails, and she has a traumatic
memory of being attacked by Slenderman! Or is it just a delusion?
Presumably we'll find out after the credits!
Garcia calls them on the plane with
some news - Ally wasn't scratched at all, and it wasn't her blood on
her! Also, she finds a text message between the other two girls
planning to do -something- to ally that night in the woods. But what?
The team decides to get to the bottom of the case, any way they can!
In an amazing coincidence, the father of one of the missing girls
dated JJ's sister in high school, so she'll be the one to go talk to
him, because it's guaranteed that won't cause any awkwardness for
anyone!
Eric and Aisha go to talk to Ally, and
ask her what happened in the woods. Apparently the other two girls
confronted her about something, but all she remembers after that is
fainting and being attacked by Slenderman. Could she have had a
psychotic break and attacked her friends? It would be weird if she
didn't at this point.
She remembers the friends being tied to
a chair, and Slenderman asking them 'where is it' before slashing
them with a razor! What was he talking about? Ally explains that he
wanted 'secrets', but that would be a 'what is it' question, rather
than 'where'. Your story's not adding up, girl who is still in shock.
Also, she says that they look like Slenderman, because they don't
have faces! So she's just super-crazy, then.
Hey, what did the dogs find when they
took them out to the campsite and gave them some of Ally's clothes so
they could follow the scent into the woods. Do you think we'll ever
find out?
Back at the base, we learn that Ally
has early onset schizophrenia, and her parents decided not to
medicate her, because they don't care about the life of their
daughter or anyone else? They wonder if she could have attacked her
friends, and decide they need to figure out what they were going to
confront her about. Weirdly, we discover that the friends knew she
was mentally ill, so why would you think confronting her with
something in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night would
be a good idea? Unless they really are villains?
JJ goes to talk to the father of one of
the girls, and - who could have predicted this - it's more awkward
and slower because she has a personal history with him! How has this
team forgotten literally everything they're supposed to know about
how to run an interview? The father explains that the girls were
planning to confront Ally about her worsening mental condition, and
how she should get better psychiatric help, possibly including drugs.
JJ asks the obvious question - why would you confront a girl about
being psychotic in the woods during a midnight ghost hunt?
The father claims to have no idea why
they would have done that. Is he covering for his daughter in some
way? Also, he finds it weird that JJ is in town working on this case
- wouldn't she want to stay as far away from this awfulness as
possible? It's this exact kind of distraction that's avoided by not
sending people involved with case participants to interview them in
an official capacity. If JJ wants to reach out to the guy when the
case is over, that's fine, but come on, team, this is ridiculous.
Then we cut over to the teen girls, who
are, in fact, tied to a chair in a hovel somewhere. Is Slenderman
real, or is this just a crazy man who likes cutting girls with a
razor? Opinions differ amongst the girls on that subject. We then get
a look at the guy, and it's a person wearing a Slenderman mask, so I
guess he's obsessed with the urban legend and is trying to make it
real? He does, in fact, say 'Where is it', as Ally said, which again
suggests that he's looking for a thing, and not a secret, as they'd
guessed.
Garcia phones them up with a strange
reveal - all of the girls were knocked out because someone had spread
a drug over their phone screens. Of course, if that's the case, it
had to be one of the three girls in the woods who was responsible,
because if you didn't wait until they were in the woods to drug the
phones, then you'd have no idea when the girls were going to get
knocked out. Also, the team assumes that if one or two of the girls
was involved, they'd have to have a partner to move all three
unconscious people. Then again, if one of the teens was responsible
for the drugging, she'd know not to touch her phone, so there's that.
Hey, how and where did the police find
the phone? This seems pretty important, since they'd be able to use
that to narrow their search. Not that they'd have to narrow the
search that much - I looked up the size of Dead Man's Hollow
conservation area, and it's like 4 square kilometers. So unless the
Slenderman has taken them out of the forest, which seems like it
would be hard to do, since you'd have to move them to a vehicle, they
probably should have been found by searchers already.
Eventually they notice that 'where is
it' isn't a question you'd ask about secrets, and assuming that
Ally's memories were accurate, they go digging into the missing
girls' backstory at their high school!
JJ learns from one student that one of
the missing girls has a secret boyfriend! Is it someone older, and he
wants to track down evidence of the affair to keep from being
exposed? This also triggers JJ's memories of her older sister's own
secret boyfriend - could drama about that have triggered her suicide?
We basically get confirmation that my
theory from last paragraph is happening, as the girl says that
Bethany got jewelry from her secret boyfriend, and Chelsea stole it
and tried to use it to figure out who the boyfriend was. So... is
this whole Slenderman thing a way for Bethany and the boyfriend to
cover up their affair?
Emily recaps the jewelry theory - hey,
is the secret boyfriend the guidance counselor at the school,
literally the only local character we've met other than Chelsea's
father? - and then she notices that JJ is too distracted by her own
drama to focus on the case. Emily thinks they should talk about it,
rather than saying 'yeah, of course you are, that's why you shouldn't
have come along on this case'. Wait, was the guidance counselor also
her sister's secret boyfriend, 30 years ago, and he's kind of
responsible for the sister's suicide?
Aisha and Eric go to interview Ally,
hoping to find out more details! They bring a metronome to help
distract her for easier hypnosis, like in Hannibal! She remembers
that the place she was held had weird tinsel stars all over the
walls, and pink stars on the ceiling. JJ recognizes it as the place
where high school kids used to get drunk when she was a teen.
Apparently it hasn't changed at all in over twenty years! It's weird,
when JJ talked about being from a small, dead-end town, I didn't
realize that she was talking about a suburb of Pittsburgh. I really
imagined someplace small and out of the way. But she grew up really
close to a major city. Huh.
As the team and associated cops rush
towards the rail car, we check in on the teens. Chelsea admits that
she knows what Slenderman wants - the necklace she stole from her!
This confession makes Bethany figure it's time to stop pretending
she's tied up, and stab her friend! Wait... what was the plan,
exactly? Why go through all of this to find out where the necklace
is, if you're just going to stab her before she tells you where the
necklace is?
Luckily, the team arrives in time to
save Chelsea, and then Eric wins a Prentiss Award for this line:
I know they want to have the team
figure out that Bethany was in on it, but by definition, after you've
untied a rope, it's impossible to tell what kind of knot it used to
be. Since Bethany's gone, there's no way you'd be able to tell how
she was tied up.
On the way into the hospital, JJ stops
Chelsea to ask who the boyfriend was - risking her life by delaying
her trip to surgey, BTW - and Chelsea responds by pointing to JJ's
necklace. So I guess the sister's necklace was given to her by her
secret boyfriend, and he's continued giving the exact same one to
high school girls all this time! Wow. That's convenient!
The team tries to figure out who could
be the older man giving out these necklaces. Their first guess?
Chelsea's father! Of course, this is nonsense, but let's skim the
interrogation scene anyway! He denies knowing anything, so JJ angrily
confronts him with the necklace, and he still doesn't know anything!
So it must be someone else!
We then cut to Bethany, who's at the
school, looking for the necklace - apparently Chelsea told her where
the necklace was off-camera, and the show didn't make that clear at
all! Thanks, show! She goes into a locker room to find it, then hears
someone coming! Is it Slenderman, coming to fake a suicide with her
in order to cover up his involvement in the attempted murder? Almost
certainly!
Back at the office, Joe checks in on
JJ, and asks who she remembers that paid extra attention to her older
sister. Joe thinks that if Slenderman was in the sister's life, he
was in JJ's as well, but that's by no means a given. The sister was
like 8 years older than JJ, and JJ would have had only a tangential
awareness of her sister's friends, and zero awareness of any adults
in her life.
JJ then remembers that when her sister
gave her the necklace, she said it would keep bad men away from her!
Joe assumes this means that the counselor would see JJ wearing the
necklace and know not to mess with her! Hey, JJ's sister? Here's a
better plan - you're going to kill yourself anyway, why not leave a
note mentioning that you were molested by a teacher at your school,
and that's why you killed yourself! Isn't that a way better method
for protecting your sister than giving her the necklace that the
molester gave you?
Anyhoo, JJ remembers the guidance
counselor being freaked out by the necklace at the sister's wake, so
he must be the killer! They bring him in, and JJ wants to be the one
to interview him, assuming that she'll be able to get the truth out
of the guy! She says that they've already looked at his computer, and
have evidence of his molesting her sister! Since he's been caught, he
admits that Bethany is at the school! Instead of just asking him
where she is, specifically, they just run over there and search the
crawlspaces at random!
He'd already confessed, just ask where
she is, dummies.
They find her stuffed into a service
panel, suffering from a fentanyl patch overdose. Even though they
knew that Slenderman used Fentanyl in his crimes, they didn't bring
any of the antidote with them, so JJ just tries CPR on the girl! And
it works!
THE END
We then see Ally and Chelsea in the
hospital, and everyone's happy! Then it's back to Virginia, where JJ
checks on her family! And since Jr. heard about her beloved necklace
being a paedophile's trophy, he's got a new necklace waiting for her,
a locket with the kids' photos in it!
I'm just going to say it - Jr. is a
better husband and partner than JJ deserves, as proven by the fact
that neither of their sons are named William Lamontagne III.
1 - Was profiling in any way helpful in
solving the crime?
No. They solved the crime because a
member of their team knew everyone involved.
2 - Could the crime have been solved
just as easily using conventional police methods given the known
facts of the case?
Yes - dogs would have easily led them
back to where the girls were being held. Also, they had a witness
tell them that the girls were held indoors - since there's
practically zero structures inside the park, it would have taken
almost no time to find the girls before any stabbing happened.
So, on a scale of 1 (Dirty Harry) to 10
(Tony Hill), How Useful Was Profiling in Solving the Crime?
1/10 - Kind of weird that this week the
real villain was JJ's sister, who could have prevented all of this
heartache years ago. I'm not saying 'she should have been stronger
and be able to keep herself from committing suicide', I'm just
saying, had she planned on committing suicide anyway, there's
literally no reason to dime her molester out. Especially since she
was specifically thinking of ways to protect her sister from that
selfsame molester.
Turns out that this was a Matt Gubler
episode! There's absolutely no sign of that other than the way he
shot the scenes of Slenderman, and the use of some dramatic
high-angle photography. Have we reached the point in the show's
history where even Gubler isn't putting in the necessary effort?
FACTCHECK: Just watch the documentary
'Beware the Slenderman'. It's pretty good!
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