It may have been just me, but I found this episode to be one of the most disturbing episodes I think I’ve ever seen of this show. Maybe it was because it involved kids, but whatever the reason I’m still thinking about it.
The episode begins with a man named Darrin Call walking into a pharmacy to pick up refills of his prescription. When the lady behind the counter informs him that he has no more refills, he begins to make a scene. We see some sort of flashback he has involving a boy who is running and an older man covered in blood chasing after him. He begins to make a scene, and not knowing wat to do, the lady calls over the stock boy to try to calm the man down (at this point, I’m yelling at this woman because why on earth would she think that a young box boy would be even semi-qualified to handle a man who is obviously suffering from some sort of mental disorder?). The boy does come over, and as soon as Call notices the box cutter in his hand, he takes it and stabs the box boy. He then proceeds to stab numerous other people and when a cop comes in trying to help, he takes his gun and shoots the cop.
We go immediately to the BAU office, where Derek is expressing his concerns to Rossi about the fact that Hotch is coming back so soon after such a terrible ordeal. It’s only been a month, and Morgan is concerned that the only reason Hotch passed the mandatory psych eval is because he knew the right things to say. Rossi assures Morgan that Hotch knows what he’s doing, and that the Reaper case became personal to him as soon as he went after Haley and Jack; it’s only natural for Hotch to want to be involved as soon as possible. We find out that Reid will be on crutches for quite some time, but he’s still able to move around. Meanwhile, Prentiss is picking up Hotch from his apartment and the team heads to Louisville to try to figure out what trigger set Call off.
Prentiss and Rossi head to Darrin Call’s apartment, while Morgan and Hotch head to the crime scene at the pharmacy. They find out from the pharmacist that Call had been off an anti-psychotic medication for about a month. After learning this, Hotch overracts a little, blaming the pharmacist for letting this happen and saying that she should have informed them of this much earlier. It was now a much different case. Call heads to his therapist’s office and interrupts the session that he is currently in. When he begs the doctor for his medication, the doctor says something about Call wanting to remember, which is why they took him off his medication in the first place. We then see another flashback of whom we pressume is himself as a little kid washing blood off his hands.
While reviewing the crime scene tapes at the police station, JJ and Reid discover that Call only became violent after someone touched him, making the attacks almost defensive in Call’s mind. The client who Call’s therapist is in with becomes spooked and tries to leave the room, but pushes Call in the process – causing him to stab the man and eventually his therapist as well. When Morgan and Hotch arrive at the second crime scene, they notice that Call has stolen his patient file from the doctor’s office. Morgan calls Garcia and has her look up everything she can on Darrin Call, hoping to find the event that made him this manic. Unfortunately, Garcia is unable to find any record of a Darrin Call (birth ceritifcate or social security number), leading the team to believe he may have been adopted or in foster care.
Call then goes to Sterner Home Orphanage and sees some kid who he believes looks like a boy he knew named Tommy Phillips. Tommy was the only known survivor of the Hollow Creek killer; a brutal set of kidnappings and murders of young children who were locked in cages like chickens and killed. Thinking this boy is Tommy, Darrin grabs the kid and runs. When the director of the home tries to stop him by grabbing his arm, Call turns around and clices her wrist. After trying to figure out why Call took this kid, the team comes to the conclusion that Call’s dad was the Hollow Creek killer. We learn that Darrin narrowly escaped being killed when he sliced his father’s face and ran away. The team then figures out that Call is on the way to his father’s house to kill him. Hoping to get there before he does, they leave right away. Hotch, Prentiss, Rossi, and Morgan get there right as Call is taking the young boy into the house with him. Hotch decides to enter the house without any protective gear, leading Morgan to reitterate his feelings that Hotch’s judgement is still clouded.
Call shoots his father and when the team gets in there, Hotch angrily says, “I couldn’t stop him” and storms out of the house. My thinking? To Hotch, this was just another case. It was another case that he was unable to stope before people got killed – just like the Reaper. As the team arrives back home in Virginia, Prentiss takes Hotch home to his apartment. Hotch begins to talk about how Call is all alone and has lost everything that mattered to him; he doesn’t know how he can get over that. Hmmm…a reference to the way Hotch is actually feeling about not catching Foyet and having Haley a Jack, the two most important people in his life, taken away from him? I think so too.
Sorry if this review was a little confusing. The episode jumped all over the place between locations and flashbacks. I tried as best as I could to cohesively put it together so it would make sense to any of you who were unable to actually watch the episode, but if you have any questions feel free to email me. Talk to you guys next week when we see what it is about Rossi’s past that haunts him on a case as the team searches for a killer who is seeking revenge.
