Hey guys! Sorry about this being posted late, but internet issues prevented me from getting this up any sooner. Let’s get on to this week’s episode though…
We begin by seeing a man in a baseball hat opening up a van, pouring ice into an ice chest, rinsing off some kind of spoon, and putting it into a bag of what appears to be surgical tools. We then see him spying on two young girls and I get the feeling something bad is about to happen. He then attacks these two girls in an abandoned parking lot and kills them by slicing their throats.
I thought Morgan had decided against a relationship with a Tamara Barnes (the sister of a victim in a previous episode), but apparently I was wrong. We see him having coffee with her and although it is supposedly because he agreed to come to the hearing against her brother’s killers, it becomes obvious that it’s more than that when she gives Morgan a necklace that belonged to her brother. She says it’s just a “thank you” gift for all he’s done but everyone can tell that she means it to mean more. Back at the BAU, Chief Strauss tells Morgan that she wants him to take Hotch’s office. She says that as unit chief he needs some privacy to go over cases and to write reports without interruption. He thanks her for the offer but politely refuses saying that as soon as they catch Foyet, Hotch will need it back.
The team heads to Oklahoma City to track down a killer who takes his victim’s eyes out after he kills them. He takes them back and puts them in a preserving liquid then puts them in a refrigerator. At the coroner’s office, Prentiss learns that that the first victim’s eyes were torn out of the socket, while the last two were precisely cut out – leaving almost no visible trauma. Rossi believes that the second killing was too methodical to not be planned and the lack of a cooling down period between kills is going to make it more difficult to catch him.
We then see three people running with a fourth lagging behind. Our mysterious killer trips the fourth runner and slices her throat, then drags her body off of the road. When the team finds her, her eyes are precisely cut like the last two victims. Because of the precision of the cutting of the eyes, they believe that the person responsible has some sort of medical background, or at least enough training to be able to cut that precisely. JJ and Reid have Garcia look into all the doctors int he area who are eye specialists and have had malpractice suits filed against them recently. JJ also asks Garcia if she can do something for Morgan. Of course she agrees.
After looking more closely into the way the victims were killer, Morgan makes the comment that the brutal slicing of the throat is very similar to the tactics of a game hunter. Reiterating that, we see our killer cutting and dissecting the eye of one of his victims. What he does with it, we do not know yet. Rossi begins to question how Morgan will react when the team catches Foyet and he is asked to step down as unit chief. He says that Morgan is such a natural born leader that when the time comes, he make not adjust to go back to taking directions very well.
A fourth and fifth victim are claimed by our killer. The couple is sitting on a park bench when our killer cuts all the power to the lights. When the couple runs, he begins to hunt them and we discover that he is wearing night-vision goggles that allow him to see in the dark. Goggles like these are often worn by hunters to prevent game from hearing that a hunter is coming. He kills the couple but only takes the eyes of the girl. Hotch suggests that maybe he needs a set and the injury to the man’s eye ruined that. Morgan thinks that our killer may be a taxidermist and our suspect is the son of a man who used to own a gaming shop that did taxidermy. His dad died and his mom had a disease that caused her to go blind, which could explain his obsession with eyes. He puts the human eyes into the animals that he stuffs.
The team discovers that he is killing in close proximity to his clients and where they live, so they head to the home of the last recorded delivery he made. A nurse is on her way home from work and is attacked by our killer. She fights back though by macing him and throwing something out into the street so that someone will hear her. This time, he doesn’t wait to kill her before trying to take her eyes out. Luckily, Hotch gets there in time to save her. Morgan shows a little frustration with Hotch for not waiting for the entire team to get there before he took down the suspect, but Hotch points out that Morgan wouldn’t have waited either (oooh touche!!). Meanwhile, Prentiss seems rather amused by the small amount of confrontation between the two.
Back at the BAU, Garcia asks Morgan to help her get something out of storage but instead takes him to an office that she had made for him. JJ had made some phone calls and another agent is going to be retiring soon but is completing his service from home so the bureau agreed to let Morgan have his office. As Morgan settles in to his new place, he calls Tamara Barnes ans asks if her offer to go out for a drink is still open. Shame shame Morgan!
