Entropy
Reid goes on a date with an assassin, undercover as a client. She is a member of the hitman network that is after Garcia. She sees through the ruse and forces Reid to tell her how he found her.
Provides examples of
- Bait-and-Switch: It looks like Reid is on a date at the start of the episode. It’s revealed quite fast that this isn’t a date, but a mission to arrest the woman he’s meeting with who turns out to be a hitwoman.
- Bat Deduction: Mocked by Cat Adams when Reid explains how the BAU figured out who she and her colleagues were.
- Batman Gambit: The winning strategy of the episode. Reid sets it up by telling Cat he found the father she hates, and Morgan gets her to surrender by saying they have him.
- Black Widow: Reid goes in pretending to have the goal of becoming a male version.
- Cyanide Pill: A variation. When Rossi, JJ, and the SWAT team invade the safehouse where the Snowman (the tech support guy) is being held prisoner and kill the Sniper, the Chemist promptly kills himself with one of his poisons to avoid arrest.
- Daddy Issues: Boy, does Cat have these.
- Description Cut: Throughout the episode, as Reid answers Cat's questions, the scene moves to the flashbacks to show how the events played out.
- Disappeared Dad: Cat's father.
- Double Standard: According to Cat, all men have this, even someone as intelligent as Reid.
- Failed a Spot Check: The BAU forgot to come up with a way to explain why Reid's wedding ring looks new and not like he's worn it for four years.
- Foe Romance Subtext: The whole episode is Reid and Cat on a “date” in a fancy restaurant. Even after Cat reveals that she's onto Reid's real goal, she milks this for all it's worth, flirting with him practically every chance she gets and appearing to be genuinely fascinated by him. It's definitely one-sided on her part, though.
- Foreshadowing: As Garcia runs through the list of hitmen for the team, the Sniper and the Chemist are seen onscreen performing hits, and are shown to be men. However, when she gets to the Bomber, the audience doesn't actually see a person, just footage of their handiwork that Garcia shows. This sets up the twist for later that the Bomber is a woman.
- Hates Being Touched: Reid refuses a hug from Cat citing germophobia. In a flashback, Savannah doesn't care, and considering Spencer so far hasn't shown to be too bothered by touches aside from often not shaking hands, it may have more to do with him not wanting to hug a hitwoman.
- Hypocrite: Cat's view of men, being a woman who kills men for the simple reason that her father, who murdered her mother, was a man.Cat: Maybe if you hadn't fallen victim to your own gender bias – and yes, all men have gender bias, even you, Dr. Reid...
- Insult Backfire: Cat mocks the team to Reid by asking how good of "profilers" they are when they had the info about the hitmen "handed to them on a silver platter" by Garcia and others, then tries to show how she's better than them by profiling Reid on the spot to figure out why he took time off a while ago. Except, she gets it wrong twice: she first figures it was to get over a girl who broke his heart, and then guesses that it had to do with the death of a parent (though she does at least pick up on the fact that her second guess was closer).
- I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure: Cat only deduces that Reid taking personal time off from work had something to do with his mom, and tries to force him to tell her more details as part of their "game". He initially refuses, even when she threatens him with a gun, but when she instead threatens the nearby Rossi (whom she has figured out is another one of his teammates) unless he leaves and Spencer gives her the information, he caves and tells her what she wants to know.
- Lampshade Hanging: Reid gets a couple:Reid: You'd be surprised at how many killers do what they do because of their parents.Reid: You're not the first person to point a gun at me. You're not even the first woman to point a gun at me. Sorry.
- Living Lie Detector: Cat is confident she is one, and does a pretty good job throughout the episode, but ultimately, she fails to see through Reid's and Morgan's lie that they found her father and took him into custody. It's possible that she wanted this to be true badly enough that it threw off her otherwise-excellent lie detection.
- Men Are the Expendable Gender: A villainous version. By the end of the episode, the three (willing) male members of the darknet hitmen group (i.e. not counting the Snowman/Barry, who was kidnapped and forced to participate)—Giuseppe Montolo, the Sniper, and the Chemist—are all dead, while the two female members—the Bomber and Ms. 45/Cat Adams—have been apprehended alive.
- More Deadly Than the Male: The two women in the circle of hitmen are also the two members with the highest kill counts; Cat's is said to be the highest of all of them, and considering how many casualties the various bombings have had, there's little doubt the Bomber is the runner-up.
- Overt Operative: JJ and Rossi admittedly don't do a stellar job of hiding their presence in the restaurant surveilling Reid and Cat, since they're both sitting alone repeatedly glancing over at the two of them from angles where Cat can pretty easily see them. She susses JJ out almost immediately, before even starting the timer on her "game" with Reid, and only a few minutes later, outright threatens Reid that she'll kill Rossi unless the former answers her personal questions and the latter leaves. By contrast, Morgan and Lewis, who are there pretending to be a couple, do a much better job; they don't glance over at Cat and Reid at all until quite late into the episode, and she doesn't figure them out.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Cat makes a joke about feeling like a Kardashian since she's overdressed. Reid comments that she looks nothing like the daughter of lawyer Robert Kardashian.
- Reveal Shot: Cat thinks that she drove off Reid’s team in the restaurant. The camera pans back to reveal Morgan and Lewis sitting at a table near Reid and Cat’s.
- Saying Too Much: Cat's comments to Reid about him falling victim to gender biases and all men having them is what allows the team to figure out that her accomplice, the Bomber, is also a woman, and apprehend her soon after.
- Sherlock Scan: Cat figures out Reid isn't married based on how new his wedding band looks. At least, that's what she says.
- The Television Talks Back: A blend of this and Inner Monologue Conversation occurs when Garcia communicates with the captive computer nerd through webcam.
- Tempting Fate: Cat, about midway through the episode:Cat: And keep in mind that the only reason you're not dead right now is because I did learn something important.
Reid: Oh really, what's that?
Cat: Your backup. I flushed them out. Just you and me now.
(Pan to Lewis and Morgan sharing a table partway across the room, clinking glasses)
Lewis: Guess again, bitch. - Title Drop: Early in the episode, Cat asks Reid what he's thinking about, and he replies that he was thinking about entropy, and gives the definition of it. The ending quote also references it:Reid: "Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to struggle against entropy." -Vaclav Havel.
- Trauma Swing: Reid sits on one in the final scene.
- We Win, Because You Didn't: A subversion. It is very important to Cat to win all the games she plays, and in the end she is so desperate she tries to claim a victory because Reid will probably get Alzheimer's before she gets out of prison.
