In this week’s season premiere of Criminal Minds heads turned as spectators peer into the mind of a mass hunter, stalker, and obsessed admirer of the preying mantis.
The season opened with an apprehensive car chase involving agents Jennifer Jareau and Derek Morgan through the thronged streets of Glendale, Arizona. As the chase comes to its end, it takes a twisted turn as a red truck speeds towards their car leaving the question of what happened to J.J. and Morgan. Flashback to just days before and the agents of the BAU are rushed into the briefing room. The investigation goes as follows:
Loud bangs are heard coming from one of the top floors of the apartment building. As an angry young blonde female argues with her boyfriend about confronting the noisy upstairs neighbors, she gives up and goes herself. The young couple believe that the banging coming from upstairs is an obnoxious couple who can’t control their urges. They couldn’t be more wrong as it is soon revealed to be a woman tied up and banging on the floor for her life. A baffled man emerges from the corner of the hallway as the young girl knocks on the door, but is convinced by the man that they will eventually quiet down. This man is revealed to be Wallace Hines. As he approaches the bound woman, the last we see is a butcher knife approaching the victim.
Back at the BAU, Agents Reid, J.J., Morgan, and Garcia discuss possibilities of the alleged case, while Rossi badgers Hotch about his possible promotion of taking Chief Strauss’s place. Unwilling to give an answer, Hotch turns the attention back to the case. The victims seem to be blondes in their late 20’s abducted from various areas where they most dwell. The victims are found in what seems to be a position of prayer or contrition with evidence that each had expelled vile substances and continuously vomited.
The list of victims grow as Wallace chooses a fellow co-worker to latch upon. When she reveals that she has a date with another man, Wallace grows angry and plans his next attack. Another victim is then found in the same manner as the others but has light brown hair instead of blonde and seems to have been married. We then find out that she has separated from her husband and was planning on returning until her untimely death. Wallace then breaks into the house of his fellow co-worker and brutally attacks her, tying her down to a chair in the dining room. A dismantled head is then exposed as Wallace induces the victim into projected cannibalism. This, in turn, is what causes his victims to choke and expel the remains of the pieces of human head they consumed before he fatally shoots them in the heart.
Agents Reid and J.J are discussing Hotch’s possible promotion yet again when an interaction with a small child and his mother sparks a theoretical resolution into the mind of the human hunter. Reid explains that the unsub is showing signs that relate to the mating methods of a praying mantis. These methods would reveal the reasoning behind his motives of rape, force-feeding parts of the body (specifically the head), and shooting the hearts of his victims to mimic that of the creature in which Wallace is overly obsessed. After Garcia searches through the database, the team then discovers that Wallace has acute delusional disorder and as a result, had been hospitalized repeatedly within the last decade. The various pieces from the head prove to be from that of Wallace’s ex-girlfriend, Heather, who had been missing for two weeks.
Afraid that he has been tormented by illusions of Heather, Wallace arrives at work late and is confronted by his boss who asks if he forgot they had a bridal shower that day. He is then confronted by angry co-workers who point out that he has ruined multiple orders and forgotten the main ingredients. As a substitution, he witlessly cut chunks from Heather’s decapitated head and served them back to the customers at the restaurant. As if that was not disturbing enough, when the patrons started to find pieces of human remains Wallace began forcing each woman, to eat it. It seemed as if all control was about to be lost until the police finally arrived and lodged Wallace out of the restaurant. The proceeding scene resumes the car chase at the opening of the episode.
As Wallace is taken into custody, his sense of serenity and calmness confuses the agents on the team. Hotch still keeps the question of promotion as a possibility, stating that this would be his last case if he did decide to take the promotion. His phone rings and he is informed that fingerprints did not match, confirming that the man taken into custody was not who they had thought. In their infamous narration of brilliant quotes, the voice of Hotch reveals that the criminal they arrested was not the killer, and was the result of twins.
The rest is to be continued.
Photo: Cliff Lipson/CBS ©2013 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved