Criminal Minds -- Can You See It?
Rossi makes his choice
Carrying over from the last new episode we saw, Rossi is pondering what he should do about his first ex-wife, Caroline's, request that he help her to die. The team notice something is off with Rossi, and Rossi finally confides the truth in Prentiss.
Through flashbacks, Chase Whittakers' story of how he became a serial killer with a very unusual M.O. unfolds. He was sitting on a dock with his father, when he got a little lippy, and his father demanded he remove his shirt. Chase's back is filled with scars from previous beatings. His father takes off his belt and beats him, again. While he's beating Chase, his father tells him that Chase is the reason his mother left them, because he's so useless. Afterwards, Chase tells his father he isn't the reason his mother left, but because his father had a bent rod. Chase says he thought his mother meant a fishing rod, but now he knows better. So infuriated, his father knocks him into the water.
After trying to resuscitate Chase and believing he was dead, his father buries him alive. During his near-death experience, Chase doesn't see the bright light everyone talks about. When he comes to he finds himself buried and has to claw himself out of his own grave. He then goes home and kills his father.
In the present day, Chase has blood cancer and he's fearing what he'll see when he dies. His first victim is a man who had a near-death experience and when he came back he told the media he saw a bright light and was told it wasn't his time. Chase strangles him hoping to make him have another near-death experience but just kills him. What follows is Chase abducting people and drowning them and bringing them back and asking them what they saw.
He originally picked victims that reminded him of his father, but as he's getting sicker he starts preying on weaker prey. He attacks a boy out camping from behind while he's talking to his brother whose on the lake.where all of Chase's dead bodies there have been found. Next he sabotages a jet ski to abduct a young woman. Finally, his last victims are a mother and son named Samantha and Evan. He kidnaps them both.
Chase starts with Samantha by drowning her and bringing her back and asking what she saw. When Samantha becomes so out of it she can't answer his question, he decides to start trying it on Evan. He dunks Evan's head under the water, but Evan is able to untie his hands and runs for his life.
This was the first real chase scene with an unsub and his victim that had me literally on the edge of my seat. I even yelled to Hotch and the team, "Hurry up, before it's too late!" Thankfully, they go to Evan in time.
Before Hotch can take Chase into custody, Chase tries to drown himself. There seems to initially be a bright light, but that could have been the sun he was look up at as he drowned himself. He returns to the same dark place, only this time his adult self is watching his younger self kill his father. He then hears a voice telling him it isn't his time, but the voice is actually Prentiss' who is resuscitating him. So it's all left very murky on what happens when you die.
It's a horrible thing to say, but since the guy is dying, anyway, maybe they should have let him go instead of bringing him back to go on trial and rot in jail before he finally dies from his disease.
Countering that was Rossi coming to tell his ex, Caroline, he couldn't do it. He couldn't help her to die. She said it's okay; she knew he wouldn't be able to. She then reveals she's already taken something and just wanted him there when she died. He wants to call someone to help her, but she says they won't get there in time and to just let her go. As she's dying she asks if she'll see him. The him is her and Rossi's child, that from the gravestone next to hers, seems to have died when he was an infant. Maybe that was what caused their marriage to end, since they both seemed to still be in love with each other.
The show took an interesting stance on what happens when you die and you're brought back. Reid said he saw a bright light and was told it wasn't his time when he almost died, while Prentiss said that all she saw was darkness.
It was a very interesting episode presenting the possibility that maybe when you die you won't see the white light; you might only see darkness.
The show took an interesting stance
