Strange Fruit
Directed by Constantine Makris
Written by Janine Sherman Barrois
A ruptured pipe causes workers to discover several dead bodies buried in an African-American family's backyard, buried there for several years. The BAU must find out who they were and killed them. The answers however prove to awaken racial tensions and a sordid family history.Written by Janine Sherman Barrois
Rossi: "The Universe doesn't like secrets. It conspires to reveal the truth, to lead you to it." Lisa Unger.
Tropes in this episode:
- Asshole Victim: The male victims are all local KKK members who lynched the UnSub for a crime he never committed.
- Crippling Castration: Because of the KKK lynching attack and castration, The UnSub has to take testosterone pills to perform sexually for his wife and he is unable to sire children, leading his wife to conceive their son Lyle with sperm from a sperm bank.
- False Rape Accusation: A white girl named Audrey accused the UnSub of raping her to get out of trouble when they both were in high school in The '60s. A local chapter of the Klan lynched and castrated him for it.
- Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Lyle isn't his father's son - as his father was castrated by KKK members before he was born. Lyle doesn't know this and Rossi uses this to get the UnSub to confess.
- Misplaced Retribution:The female victims were beaten to death in retaliation for the crimes of their families. Crimes which took place before their births, and which had nothing to do with them.
- My Greatest Failure: Rossi admits to bullying a black fellow student when he was a teenager, something he's clearly ashamed of. He tries to pass off the story as something he made up to unsettle the UnSub to Morgan, but the finale shows it wasn't a fictitious story.
- N-Word Privileges: Invoked. The UnSub assumes Rossi thinks he has them because he has a black army buddy and a black ex-wife.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The UnSub wanted revenge for being attacked by the Ku Klux Klan when he was younger.
- Rule of Symbolism: The song "Strange Fruit," written by Lewis Allan (as Abel Meeropol) and sung by Billie Holiday is played instead of an end quote. Holiday refused to sing in spaces where she was not allowed to perform the song. Abel Meeropol, and his wife, adopted and raised the sons of Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed for treason on June 19, 1953.
- Secret Relationship: Subverted, it becomes very clear that JJ and Cruz are not in any sort of relationship. JJ wants to tell everyone about how they know each other, which is through an assignment when JJ was with the State Department, but Cruz tells her they can't since it's still ongoing.
- Shout-Out:
- The title refers to the 1930s song "Strange Fruit" by Lewis Allan, which is about racist lynchings.
- Rossi mentions the Central Park Jogger case, which was a case based on the assault and rape of a woman and eight other attacks on other people on the night of April 19, 1989.
- The UnSub's castration appears to be derived from the lynching of Emmett Till, which resulted from false reports of him sexually harassing a white woman and involved two men in her family torturing him to death
- Somber Backstory Revelation: A rather awkward execution of the trope. While trying to convince the UnSub to start talking about his past, Rossi attempts to bond with the guy by sharing a shameful moment from his own school years. When he joined a group of bullies in order to avoid being bullied by them. Rossi tells it in a somber mood, but the UnSub uses it to shame him and mock him. The only thing the revelation accomplished is to have Rossi feeling guilty.
- Very Special Episode: Has some shades of it, with racial relations at the center of the episode.
