Recap / Criminal Minds S 7 E 4 Painless

Painless

Directed by Larry Teng
Written by Breen Frazier

Reid: "You may leave school, but it never leaves you." Andy Partridge.

A man whose inability to feel pain once made him unafraid to stare down a school shooter is still bitter that after he lost consciousness, one of his school mates took credit for staring the shooter down. To remedy this, he is determined to kill everyone involved.

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This episode provides examples of:

• Alpha Bitch:
  • Reid incorrectly assumes JJ was mean in high school considering her background, which she quickly corrects by remarking she was nice to everyone.
    Jennifer: (to Reid) Even guys like you.
  • One of the survivors chooses not to include Adams in the survivor reunion dinner simply because it was for the “top ten”. This served to remind Adams that even as adults, his peers refuse to include him in anything.
• Axes at School: The Columbine-style mass shooting (and bombing) caused by Randal Slade several years ago is an important plot point.
• The Bully: Jack Hotchner has one in his school, whom he plans to invite over and make friends with.
  Prentiss: That is... the sweetest... and saddest thing I've heard.
• Feel No Pain: The explosion during the school shooting resulted in Adams permanently being given pain asymbolia. This is also Discussed by the BAU. It's far from being a superpower. For one, it only increased his feelings of alienation (on top of how he got that damage and how it brought him no respect). For another, even the smallest injuries are mentioned to have a chance of developing complications because the subject does not knows how bad they are becoming (the UnSub does some Self-Surgery after smashing his hand through a plate of glass and it's visibly a butcher job). Finally, even as he gloats he did not felt being shot^note even after that single shot nearly dropped him, it does not make him any more bulletproof than the average person.
• Karma Houdini: The eight surviving members of the Top 10. While none of them were the UnSub, they were little of any help towards the BAU's investigation and act like a posse of Alpha Bitches and Jerk Jocks because of the media coverage they received as the survivors, and they couldn't be bothered to even remember the name of who actually looked Randy in the eye and saved them.
• Precision F-Strike: After receiving so many calls due to Morgan giving out Reid’s number, Reid lets out a frustrated “son of a bitch” as he angrily answers his cellphone.
• Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up: Although they don't actively bully Robert Adams (the UnSub), it's made pretty obvious the "Top 10" survivors of the Randy Slade rampage allowed the fame of surviving the rampage (and being the "top ten" because they were the prettiest, most media-attractive students to survive it) to get to their heads and mould them even many years later. This is explicitly compared by the BAU as no different from any "cool kids" clique, and equally damaging to those left out.
• Shout-Out:
  • Both The Catcher in the Rye and Atlas Shrugged get a mention.
  • Also, Heathers - the eponymous Girl Posse outright mentioned by Garcia when referring to a high school clique.
  • Plus, Randy reads like a Jason Dean Expy, from the wishes to bomb the school, to playing God, to even, to an extent, his appearance. Not to mention the final scene of the episode takes place in a boiler room...
• Stealing the Credit: Jerry stole Adams' story of being the one who looked Slade in the eye during the shooting. Because of him, no one knew who Adams was, even if he was the one who ultimately saved the rest of the survivors.
• Sympathetic Murderer: Adams was forgotten as one of the survivors of the school shooting, and he just wanted his due credit for it. None of the other survivors even remember his name and he had no one to support. On top of that, considering the state of all the other survivors compared to him, he was the only one to have been permanently affected by the tragedy (pain asymbolia) as well as the one that had to remain in the hospital the longest, yet he was the only one who wasn't recognized for being a survivor.
  JJ: He was an outcast who wanted to fit in. Being a survivor should've been his golden ticket.
  Hotch: But he was excluded again, and that's why he's killing them.
  JJ: Yeah. The rules of high school never changed, not even after a tragedy.

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Hotchner: "Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding." Khalil Gibran.