Amplification
Directed by John Gallagher
Written by Oanh Ly
A microbiology student feels that the country is unprepared for large bioterrorist attacks. His solution is to develop an extremely deadly strain of anthrax and releases it into the air.Written by Oanh Ly
Reid: "It will become fine dust over all the land of Egypt, and will become boils breaking out with sores on man and beast through all the land of Egypt." Exodus 9:9.
Provides examples of:
- Blunt "Yes": JJ asks Garcia if she would break protocol to protect her family. Garcia immediately says yes without having to think about it.
- Contamination Situation: Reid is exposed to anthrax.
- Decontamination Chamber: Reid has to go through one of these after being exposed to a broken vial of anthrax spores to prevent anyone else from being infected by coming into contact with him.
- Deteriorates Into Gibberish: One of the last stages of the poisoning causes the victims to babble absolute nonsense. The first time it appears it's almost comical, but because this sets the audience up for this actually being dramatic, the remaining times it's shown it's Played for Drama. In Reid's case, the babbling starts mid-sentence.
- Exact Words: Upon his arrest, Chad Brown was at least a bit happy the virus he created would be named after him, at least putting him down in the history books. Well, it's named after him, but it's been put away with all the other obscure viruses that will never see the light of day.
- Friend to All Children: When JJ learns that a baby caught the virus, she has to know it survived.
- Heroic Sacrifice: When Reid learns the anthrax strain is airborne in the house he is in, he instructs Morgan not to enter, willingly quarantining himself.
- Honor Before Reason: JJ wishes she could call her son's nanny and tell her not to take him to the park that day. Hotch reminds her that she can't since that would give him an advantage that the other people going to the park that day don't have.
- Irony: Chad Brown released the anthrax on the on-goers at the park to show how unprepared people were for a bio-attack, killing innocent people in the process. He became the very terrorist he was trying to warn his superiors about.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Brown's bio-terror attacks are because, as he boasts, they are to provide warning about the United States Government's laughable lack of preparedness for bioterrorism. However, once the BAU analyzes his reasons for his specific targets, it turns out that he chooses his attack locations as revenge for minor slights (the bookstore that he was fired from, the park where his girlfriend broke up with him, and the Army base that constantly refused to accept him because he never learned that he was not supposed to check "yes" in the test's question that The Needs of the Many requires the death of civilians).
- Red Herring: Doctor Lawrence Nichols, a disgraced biologist, was convinced America was underprepared for the events of another bioterrorism attack and fits the BAU's profile. It turns out Nichols taught the real UnSub, Chad Brown, how to weaponize anthrax and was at some point murdered by him; however, Morgan is pretty sure by the end of the episode that Nichols had no idea that Chad would use the knowledge to carry out bioterrorism.
- Secret Government Warehouse: The episode ends with Brown's pathogen getting locked in a U.S. military vault. Dozens of similar vaults are seen, each presumably housing samples of a different biological weapon that the public doesn't know about.
- Trapped in Containment: Reid is locked in a home biological laboratory when he notices a broken vial of weapons grade anthrax on the ground. However, he locks the doors himself as a way to save Morgan from the same fate. Luckily, they discover the antidote to the strain in time to save him.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: The general seems to be skeptical to profiling, but off-screen Hotch talks him into playing along with the UnSub to flatter him into surrendering his anthrax samples.
- Reid: "Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it." Helen Keller.
