Recap / Criminal Minds S 10 E 23 The Hunt

The Hunt

Callahan: "The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything." Albert Einstein.

Kate's niece Meg and her friend are abducted by traffickers posing as college boys. Meg manages to send a distress signal before her phone is taken away. She is also savvy enough to help her friend escape.

Provides examples of

• Big Damn Heroes: Just as her buyer is about to start cutting Meg, the B.A.U. bust in and JJ empties her gun into him.
• Bookends: The season begins with Callahan arresting a child pornographer and ends with Callahan's niece being rescued from a sex trafficking ring.
• Child by Rape: Kyle Zorgen.
• Covert Distress Code: Kate and Meg have an agreed upon distress code, "pepper". All Meg gets out is "pep".
• Defiant Captive: Meg has no problem talking back to and fighting the psychopath who buys her from the ring. It buys the B.A.U. enough time to find her.
• Didn't Think This Through: The trafficking ring clearly thought abducting Meg would make the B.A.U. back off from investigating them further. What they really did was bring the full fury of the FBI down on their heads.
• The Dog Bites Back: The ringleader's female accomplice is another woman he's abducted and abused, who's only loyal to him out of fear and because her son is part of the operation. When JJ informs her the ringleader murdered her son, she quickly turns on him and gives the B.A.U. a list of the trafficking ring's clients for the FBI to arrest.
• Genre Savvy: Meg, once she figures out she's getting kidnapped.
• Mama Bear/Papa Wolf: The whole BAU team spends the whole episode rescuing Meg, who they consider to be part of their family, from a human trafficking ring. Not only do they find Kate’s niece, but they also arrest all of the website’s clients.
• No One Gets Left Behind: Invoked by Hotch during the search for Meg.
  Aaron Hotchner: Meg's a part of this family. We don't stop until we find her.
• Put on a Bus: Kate Callahan leaves the BAU for good to spend more time with her family after learning she's pregnant.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Callahan's actress, decided to leave the show after one season due to her pregnancy; thus, Callahan leaves the team for a nearly identical reason, pregnancy included.
• Revenge by Proxy: The human trafficking UnSub targets Meg and Markayla because Meg's aunt and foster mother was looking into missing persons reports.
• Smug Snake:
  • The B.A.U. arrest one of the trafficking ring's clients: he initially refuses to talk, until Rossi and Morgan calmly threaten to pin every murder (at least 50) the ring and their clients have committed across the USA on him, and he promptly gives them the info they want.
    Miles Hendrick: You can't do that!
    Derek Morgan: Watch us. The whole country is going to want to see someone pay for this, and right now, your sorry ass is fitting the bill perfectly!
  • The ringleader of the trafficking ring is initially this, taunting Kate, Rossi, and Hotch that they'll never find Meg. Hotch and Rossi quickly cure him of it by calling him out as a sick piece of shit who doesn't have the balls to kill the women he abducts, had his plans wrecked by a 13-year-old girl, and who was dumb enough to think starting a war with the FBI was going to end well for him.
• Stockholm Syndrome: The female UnSub was abducted and raped by the ringleader. She initially refuses to rat him out until she finds out he killed their son.
• Title Drop: Rossi and Hotch profile that the UnSub only cares about the hunt, hence why he sells his victims off to other criminals to do with as they please.
• You Have Failed Me: After Meg creates a diversion and Markayla manages to escape, the leader of the trafficking ring kills his subordinate (who also happens to be his son) for letting her get away.

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Callahan: "Life is about choices. Some we regret, some we're proud of. We are what we chose to be." Graham Brown.