Memoriam
Directed by Guy Norman Bee
Written by Dan Dworkin & Jay Beattie
Morgan and Rossi stay behind in Vegas to help Reid solve the Riley Jenkins murder from 25 years ago. Reid thinks the UnSub might be his own father. He finds his father, still working at the same location in Vegas. At his hotel room, Reid finds an envelope with information about a man in the park who used to play chess with Reid when he was little. He seeks out a hypnotherapist to help him recover early childhood memories.Written by Dan Dworkin & Jay Beattie
Reid: "What was silent in the father speaks in the son, and often I found in the son the unveiled secrets of the father." Friedrich Nietzsche.
They discover that the UnSub's name is Gary Michaels, and Reid's father becomes a suspect in his murder instead. Diana shows up and confesses to helping killing Michaels when he came after her son.
Tropes present in this episode:
- Asshole Victim: Gary Michael was a pedophile and child murderer, who met his end (brutally) at the hands of his victim's father who beat him to death with a baseball bat.
- Clueless Chick-Magnet: A prostitute flirts with Reid at a casino. He treats it as a regular conversation, and her questions as requests for information. He also makes an honest effort to convince her to quit smoking.
- Disappeared Dad: Reid’s father left his family when Reid was four, out of the stress of knowing his wife had been an accessory in the murder of a child molester (who'd planned to target their son) and having to keep this secret and cover it up. This caused a lot of friction between them as Reid—who doesn't know the reason his father left—holds a lot of resentment for being abandoned. Regardless, his father has been keeping up with his cases, indicating that he does care about Reid.
- Foreshadowing: Reid allows himself to be hypnotized to recover suppressed memories, a technique later employed by the BAU as an interrogation tool.
- Freud Was Right: Morgan and Rossi suggest that Reid's dream about finding a dead child and his father standing over the body signify that he feels his father killed his childhood, as per Freud.
- Mama Bear: Diana could tell by the way Gary Michaels looked at her four-year-old son that he was a pedophile. After Michaels killed Spencer's friend Riley, she told Riley's father Lou who was responsible, and accompanied Lou when he confronted Michaels over it, witnessing the former kill the latter. For a long time, she claimed Riley was Reid’s imaginary friend to protect him from the truth.
- No Medication for Me: Diana briefly declines medication so that she can properly remember the Riley Jenkins incident.
- Papa Wolf:
- Reid learns that Lou Jenkins killed Gary Michaels for what he did to his son Riley.
- Rossi gets shades of this towards Reid when the latter is undergoing hypnosis to unlock childhood memories. As Reid grows increasingly agitated and restless, Rossi demands that the hypnotist wake him up, and soothes Reid when he does awaken.
- Pose of Silence: Reid relives some pressure off Henry, whose mother is hung up on him attending Yale, by whispering to him that he (Reid) can get him (Henry) into Caltech with a call. Henry's mother JJ remains none the wiser.
- Red Herring: Reid spends most of the episode thinking his father was involved with Riley Jenkins’ murder. Reid finds out later his father had nothing at all to do with the murder and only burned Diane’s clothes covered in the blood of Riley’s real killer.
- Shout-Out:
- Reid thinks it looks like Morgan and Rossi broke into his room to watch Days of Our Lives, but it's The Young and the Restless.
- Reid's father is a fan of Céline Dion and Isaac Asimov.
- Reid: "There is no refuge from memory and remorse in this world. The spirits of our foolish deeds haunt us, with or without repentance." Gilbert Parker.
