Image via Wikipedia“The Longest Night”
When last we saw our heroes at the BAU, Agent Morgan was handcuffed and beaten by the Prince of Darkness (Tim Curry) and left with the body of Detective Spicer and his sister (nearly dead). The killer took Spicer’s daughter with him, saying, “...this one is special.”
Morgan kept his head and questioned Detective Spicer’s sister as they lay waiting for the team to find them. He kept her calm, but forced her to remember as much information as she could. She died later at the hospital from her wounds.
Derek Morgan had promised her aunt that he would not let anything happen to Ellie. He began snapping at everything and everyone including Garcia (normally his ‘baby girl’). The entire BAU was watching him closely for a breakdown. It never came.
Meanwhile, the Billy Flynn aka the Prince of Darkness (named by the press for his hunting during blackouts in LA) was busy with his own agenda. First he let Ellie, Spicer’s daughter, get away so she would run to a neighbors house. The perfect set up for him to unleash his ugliness and death. He immediately shot the father that opened the door, then the mom. Ellie figured him out pretty fast. She never showed fear, instead she stayed calm.
It seems the Flynn, thought he’d found himself a new teammate in Ellie. Wrong. She calmly explained to him that she was not on his team. He, just as calmly, explained to her when she asked why he hurts people that, “The question isn’t why I kill people. The question is, why don’t I kill everybody.”
We saw the memories forming in the killer’s mind, through a cloud of meth (or whatever he was smoking to stay up). His mother and he dancing in a field. As the memories formed more completely we see mom is actually a prostitute that would put him in the closet to watch her and her ‘dates’. After the johns were through with mum, they would turn to Billy. She allowed them to molest him repeatedly as he screamed for her. His first kills were her and her last john.
Tonight the game came down to the Prince of Darkness and Allie. Taking the girl with him for a set up the next night, Billy used a bike in a driveway to lure himself into another home. He seemed to be trying to train Allie to be his partner. Told her to get the boy that lived in the home and bring him to the parents’ bedroom, his normal MO. She did, but there was another brother in the house, she sent him out to the neighbors to tell... and told him to go to every house on the block. The boy did just that and the next thing we see is an angry mob coming to the rescue. Not in time, Flynn took his hostage and the family car and high tailed it out of there.
The BAU had its own trouble trying to get the Emergency Alert System up to speak directly to him. They knew he listened to talk radio constantly and was obsessed with hearing about himself. JJ, the press liaison, was put in charge of hostage negotiation on live radio. Since this was not her job, she was learning on the fly. Though Agent Hotchner told her to empathize and sympathize with him, JJ found herself talking to him strictly as a mom. It was a very moving speech. A one way hostage negotiation that worked.
Billy Flynn let Ellie go without harm and headed to a new house for more terrorism. The BAU team caught up with him at the new house, where he was waiting for them. He called the lead Detective’s cell phone (not sure how he got that direct line...) and asked for Morgan. As the two faced off, it became apparent that he wanted to die... suicide by cop. Morgan obliged, unloading his gun and killing the Prince of Darkness.
Tonight Criminal Minds took us straight into the dark mind of another epic monster. The writers manage to tell us just how the monster came to be without making a point to the left or right. They do it so well, it’s almost fun. Almost. In that ‘ball up on the couch and hug yourself because you’re so damn scared’ kind of way. This is the best written drama on prime time right now. Catch Criminal Minds on Wednesday nights on CBS, if you dare.
Copyright @ 2008 TV Review
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