What Fresh Hell
Directed by Adam Davidson
Written by Judy Mc Creary & Andrew Wilder
Written by Judy Mc Creary & Andrew Wilder
Gideon: The poet W.H. Auden wrote, "Evil is always unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed, and eats at our table."
A girl goes missing in a park. The BAU profile the UnSub as a local who may actually have had the dog he pretended to be looking for. The girl's cancer-sick father gets ahold of a list of local sex-offenders and immediately knows in his heart that the first name he recognizes belongs to he kidnapper and beats the crap out of the guy, whose offense was soliciting an adult sex worker. A dead girl is found, but is not the girl in question. When they locate the UnSub he doesn't seem to have the kidnapping victim, but Gideon figures out that she's in a hidden room in the attic, only to be accessed through the ventilation system.
This episode provides examples of:
- Continuity Nod: Gideon hangs pictures of people he's saved, including the Davenport twins and the young train hostage.
- Invasion of the Baby Snatchers: A given, considering it's an episode dealing with a child abduction.
- Too Smart for Strangers: The pitfalls of the "stranger danger" campaign is discussed by the team, as it misled a generation to believe that kidnapping and sexual abuse of children was mostly the work of strangers, when in reality it is overwhelmingly by people related, or long acquainted with the victims. While accurate, it sticks out fairly badly as an Author Filibuster considering that in this case it was in fact a stranger that abducted the victim.
- The Topic of Cancer: Mr. Copeland is in the middle of a cancer relapse, and the reason he and his wife divorced was because he didn't want the two to see him die.
- Unwanted Assistance: An unnamed mother appears twice ranting about sex offenders in the neighborhood; the second time she shows up with a stack of those on the list that lives in the area. The father, Mr. Davenport, takes one of the fliers and takes off not realizing the person he's after was put on the list for solicitation of a prostitute. Luckily the agents stop him before he does anything too hasty.
- Write What You Know: The episode is based partially on a real case that James T. Clemente, then the show's main consultant and a member of the real BAU, worked on during his career.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Like most people, Mr. Copeland and the unnamed mother assumed that anyone on the sex offenders registry must be pedophile not realizing that there are a number of crimes that can get a person on the list. This misconception is the reason only law enforcement are supposed to have this information.
- Gideon: "Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor done." - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
