Recap / Criminal Minds S 3 E 8 Lucky

Lucky

Directed by Steve Boyum
Written by Andrew Wilder

Morgan: "Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters." Francis Goya.

Sometime in The '80s, a psychotic teenager with cannibalistic urges and Satanic delusions is released from a mental facility, despite the protests of his psychiatrist. In present day, the mutilated body of a woman is found, with the autopsy revealing that she had been forced to eat her own fingers. Garcia meets a man at a café and goes on a date with him.

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Provides examples of:

• Born Lucky: Feylinn, as pointed out by the team.
• Cannibal Larder: Floyd Feylinn's house has a hidden freezer in the basement where he keeps the corpses of his victims for future meals. Beyond that is a prison room where he keeps live victims.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Garcia has a subplot involving her finally getting a date with a handsome man. Said man unexpectedly shoots her out of nowhere at the end of this episode, and becomes the Big Bad of the next one.
• Cigar Chomper: The lead detective frequently has a cigar on his mouth.
• Cliffhanger: The episode ends with Garcia's date, suddenly and without warning, shooting her right in the chest.
• Creepy Monotone: Feylinn speaks in this manner.
• Devil, but No God: Discussed, as well as the inverse. Several characters assert that you can't believe in one without also acknowledging and resolving your belief in the other.
• Evil Laugh: Feylinn gives a nasty one after his reveal near the end.
• Fingore: While alive, Abby was forced to eat her own fingers. Forensic testing later reveals that the fingers aren't actually hers, and Feylinn has been killing women for much longer than anyone knew.
• Formerly Fat: As shown in the opening, Feylinn used to be massively overweight, one of the side-effects of the anti-psychotic medication he was on. Dr. Lorenz correctly guesses that it's a large reason for why Feylinn will stop taking the medication as soon as he's on his own.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Feylinn wears a large pair of glasses that cover a good fifth of his face.
• Half the Woman She Used to Be: Abby's corpse is missing the lower half of her body.
• Heroic Sacrifice: A fire at the mental hospital destroyed Feylinn's records in 1998, but Dr. Lorenz managed to save his personal journal on his former patient by throwing it from his office window before dying in the fire. If he hadn't done so, it's unlikely Feylinn would ever have been caught.
• I Ate WHAT?!: So uh, about that chili Floyd was serving to search volunteers...
• I'm a Humanitarian: The Unsub in this episode is a cannibalistic psychopath who not only eats human flesh, but likes to use it as an actual ingredient for cooking, complete with a homemade cook books!
• Ignored Expert: "Lucky" begins with Dr. Jim Lorenz urging his superiors at a psychiatric hospital not to release a young Floyd Feylinn Ferrell. Lorenz says that Floyd is a psychopath even while taking the medication that keeps his delusions under control and convincingly argues that Floyd will stop taking his medication once he's released. Floyd is released anyway (as Fenyll is now legally an adult and can't be held any longer without reason) and goes on to be involved in the deaths of 15 women.
• Kids Are Cruel: Floyd was originally seven years old when he was remanded to state custody, after viciously biting his toddler sibling. Psychiatric evaluation revealed that this wasn't an extreme version of oral fixation, which sometimes appear in young children, but something far more sinister.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Pondered by Morgan, who notes Feylinn's unnatural good luck. Rossi tells him not to think about it.
• Memorial Photo: As a direct result of the missing bottom half, not to mention the pentagram carved into her chest, Abby's parents are told by both the sheriff and the coroner that they don't want to see the remains of their daughter. Rossi points to the memorial photos chosen for the funeral, and tells them those are the memories they should focus on.
• Not the First Victim: The police find the top half of a woman who is missing all of her fingers, and then discover the fingers are in her stomach. Then it turns out that none of those fingers are from her, and six of them are index fingers. Hotch concludes this was the UnSub sending a message, as he was annoyed that no one had noticed him yet.
• Number of the Beast: Floyd Feylinn Ferell's initials are the sixth letter of the alphabet repeated thrice.
• Only in Florida: When JJ says they have a bad case, Morgan asks how bad. She tells him it's Florida. And as we learn, it's about a cannibalistic Satanic serial killer.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Morgan notices that something is up with Garcia when he says "good morning" to her and she doesn't reply "I'll show you a 'good morning', hot stuff".
• Picky People Eater: Feylinn only feeds on women, preferably athletic ones, but not skinny ones, since many uses drugs for weight loss, which apparently makes them "taste funny". It's the same reason he stopped going after prostitutes and homeless women, even though they were far easier prey.
• Religion of Evil: Feylinn claims to be a literal Satanist, owns many books on demons and the occult, carves pentagrams into his victims, and even has a satanic shrine in his basement. However, Rossi deconstructs this, pointing out that Floyd's "faith" is nothing but an excuse he uses to justify his monstrous appetites.
• Ripped from the Headlines: Floyd Feylinn appears to be based on Nathaniel Bar-Jonah, a real-life serial killer and cannibal who allegedly served the flesh of his victims to his neighbors at cookouts and barbecues. Just like Feylinn, Jonah had cannibalistic fantasies since childhood, and wrote down his depraved recipes in coded books.
• The Secret of Long Pork Pies: The result of a cannibal running a barbecue grill - the members of the search party who were looking for the missing Tracy Lambert were literally fed pieces of her, as Fenyll was serving chili to the volunteers.
• Shout-Out:
  • Rossi quotes Dante Alighieri in Italian. Reid translates the line for the rest of the team.
    Abandon hope, ye who enter here.
  • JJ has seen The Exorcist.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Feylinn says skinny prostitutes taste weird because of drugs.
• Wham Line: Two.
  • During Feylinn's interrogation.
    Father Marks: You are not alone, my son. God is in all of us.
    Feylinn: *Slasher Smile* ...So is Tracey Lambert.
  • During the Cliffhanger.
    Colby: I've been thinking about doing this all night... (shoots Garcia)
• Teens Are Monsters: Fenyll spent his teenaged years in a mental institution because of his psychosis.

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Morgan: Sixteenth century English novelist Thomas Delaney wrote, "God sends meat, and the Devil sends cooks."