A Thin Line
Directed by Michael Watkins
Written by Virgil Williams
A family annihilator in California turns out to be a brainwashed kid trying to start a race war on behalf of a politician who actually just wants housing prices down so he can buy prime real estate for cheap.Written by Virgil Williams
Morgan: "Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact." Honore de Balzac.
Tropes
- Acquired Poison Immunity: One of the UnSub's would-be victims is able to escape due to him being a recovering addict, which meant that the drugs used on him wore off quicker.
- Condescending Compassion: Preston's attempted Pet the Dog moment with Morgan when he points out he worked hard to get into the FBI comes across as this.
- Dramatic Irony: The UnSub is devoted to Preston, the very man who caused the death of his father and sister and the vegetative state of his mother.
- Every One Has Standards: Preston may see African Americans and Latinos as criminals and those who should be removed to decrease crime rates, but he does acknowledge not all of them are the same, and tells Derek he wishes there are more hard-working people like him. It's too You Are a Credit to Your Race to appease Morgan.
- False Flag Operation: The UnSub's Modus Operandi is to kill whole families, leave a Black or Latino he had drugged and killed earlier at the scene, and stage everything to look like a break-in Gone Horribly Wrong.
- Just a Flesh Wound: Emily gets shot, but assures everyone that she's fine. Justified in that she was wearing a bulletproof vest and appears to have been shot in the arm, and presumably had medical attention only minutes afterwards.
- Mistaken for Racist:
- It at first looks like the UnSub is motivated by racism, which is only half true.
- Subverted with Preston, who is racist, but his agenda is only superficially related to that. He convinces the UnSub to murder families to support his race war, but in the end he is less interested in starting a race war and more interested in promoting his mayoral campaign.
- Non-Action Big Bad: Preston commits mass murder by proxy by having the UnSub follow his orders.
- Prentiss: "I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against." Malcolm X.
