Recap / Criminal Minds S 4 E 6 The Instincts

The Instincts

Directed by Rob Spera
Written by Chris Mundy

Hotchner: Amos Bronson Alcott said, "Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind, and finds the readiest response."

Reid has nightmares where he tries and fails to save a small boy and there's a baby at the crime scene. An UnSub in Las Vegas kidnaps young boys, one of whom turns up dead with an empty stomach, but not malnourished, apparently smothered with a pillow. The team profiles her as a psychotic woman who lost her baby. When they find her, she is babbling that her baby is dead and throwing baby things into a fire.

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Tropes present in this episode:

• Bait-and-Switch: The team initially believes the UnSub has the boy wrapped up in a blanket and is prepared to throw him into a fire. When she throws the blanket into the fire, it’s revealed it’s just a teddy bear.
• Hypocritical Humor: Prentiss and Rossi talk about how crappy crime scene investigation people are, because they "want to play cop instead of doing science". Shortly after, Rossi visibly messes with some tire tracks they've found for no real reason other than that he seems to feel like it.
• Invasion of the Baby Snatchers: Five-year-old boys are being abducted, and one ends up dead. The boys’ parents have no idea why their sons are being taken or if the parents will see their kids alive again.
• Nightmare Sequence: Reid has a recurring one about finding a dead boy in a basement.
• No Longer with Us: Played for drama. The UnSub tells the mother of the second kidnapping victim that her child is in a better place when the mother asks for proof of life, leaving it up to interpretation whether he's dead or the UnSub just considers her house a better place than theirs.
• Not-So-Imaginary Friend: Riley Jenkins, Reid's childhood imaginary friend, has a case file that says he was murdered.
• Obfuscating Insanity: Diana is in an asylum because she is a paranoid schizophrenic, but she'll play it up if she thinks the staff is trying to imprison her son.
• Parental Substitute: The UnSub sees herself as this, thinking she can take care of the children she abducts better than their actual parents.
• Recurring Dreams: Reid reveals that he has had some version of the dead boy nightmare since he can remember.
• Samus Is a Girl: For a while, the BAU believes the UnSub is a man. After a call from the kidnapper talking about how the current victim’s mother saw them at the other boy’s funeral, the team reevaluates their profile and deduces the kidnapper is a woman.
• Shout-Out:
  • When Reid was a child, Diana used to tell him that W.S. Merwin and Bob Dylan was watching them and writing songs about their lives.
  • The UnSub's name is Claire Bates.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: The first suspect, with some help from Prentiss, claims he would "never have molested the boy at the funeral", implying there are others he would have molested.
• Take That!:
  • Prentiss and Rossi arrive at a crime scene and deride its preservation and how crappy crime scene investigation people are, because they "want to play cop instead of doing science".
  • Reid doesn't trust Freud, who's been discredited.

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Reid: Bob Dylan once said, "I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay."