Hopeless
Directed by Felix Enriquez Alcala
Written by Chris Mundy
A group of home invaders murder people in a newly gentrified neighborhood. The police chief who invites the BAU gets fed up with profiling and wishes to take matters into his own hands, but they stay and figure out that the UnSubs are likely contractors or construction workers, and that they must have killed someone before the ones the police became aware of.Written by Chris Mundy
Morgan: Kingman Brewster, Jr. said, "There is no lasting hope in violence, only temporary relief from hopelessness."
Tropes in this episode:
- Constructive Body Disposal: One of the many people the contractors murdered was buried in the wall of a room they were remodeling for a family (to make it more horrible, it was being used as a nursery).
- Disappointed by the Motive: The BAU spent the whole episode believing that the suspects were a bunch of disenfranchised men who, unable to find jobs, decided to take out their frustrations on any rich person they could get their hands on. They end up being extremely disgusted that the suspects are actually a bunch of well-off contractors who kill purely for fun.
- Evil Feels Good:
- The only motive the UnSub actually had for their murders and assaults. "It was fun, boss."
- Also the unrelated rioters.
- For the Evulz: The one suspect the BAU manages to interrogate explains his group's reasons as "it was fun, boss". It is foreshadowed by a prior scene in which the criminals watch a video they recorded of one of the murders in a very fancy living room that turns out to belong to one of them in a fashion not unlike a Super Bowl kegger.
- Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: The BAU successfully tracks and profiles the UnSub, but are wrong about and unable to comprehend the motive.
- Foreshadowing: Morgan tells Tamara Barnes that this type of UnSubs tend to commit suicide by cop.Ms. Barnes: Good.
- Suicide by Cop: How two of the UnSubs go out.
- Unflinching Walk: Hotch, Rossi, and Prentiss walk off as the (very pissed off) cops indulge the Suicide by Cop desire.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: It then cuts back to the Bureau, where the three all share a drink.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Morgan and Rossi take turns with this at the end of the episode. Morgan calls out that Hotch walking away from the scene is wrong, and he should either participate in trying to take the UnSub down or try to talk the police into handling it differently. Rossi replies that Morgan is getting caught up in the hate spiral and his presence there will do nothing but possibly add another bullet hole to the bodies.
- Morgan: William Shakespeare wrote, "These violent delights have violent ends."
