Nelson's Sparrow
- Rossi: "The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone." Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Tropes
- As You Know: A young Gideon explains a case to young Rossi as though he isn't already familiar with it. For the sake of the viewers, of course.
- Audience Surrogate: A minor version considering that many viewers would already be familiar with Gideon and why he left, but for casual audience members who may not have seen the episodes where Gideon departed and/or may not remember the details:
- Callahan acts as one, since she's the only member of the team who never worked with Gideon at the BAU, and asks a few questions about their time with him to JJ.
- Rossi also serves the same purpose; though he knew Gideon longer than any of the others did, he also wasn't on the team when the rest of them worked with him, so he's one that some team members, like Hotch, Reid, and Morgan, talk to about their relationships with Gideon. Rossi was apparently Gideon's partner in the late 70s and presumably part of The '80s, but had not interacted with him since then. So he was unaware of any changes in Gideon's life.
- Bus Crash: Gideon. After having not been seen since early Season 3 when his actor, Mandy Patinkin, left the show, he was Killed Offscreen by the UnSub, and the episode begins with the whole team coming to his cabin after his body was discovered.note
- Cerebus Retcon: During his time on the show, Gideon was shown to be an avid bird watcher. The flashbacks in this episode reveal that his interest in birds came from an early case in which a serial killer was leaving a dead bird in the hands of his victims after he dumped them in the woods. In fact, at the beginning of the flashback story, Gideon barely knows anything about them, but is shown to gradually become more informed after reading up about them for the case.
- Continuity Cavalcade: There are quite a few Call Backs, Continuity Nods, and Call Forwards in this episode, in both the present day and the flashbacks.
- As mentioned above in Cerebus Retcon, Gideon's interest in birds. Also, his cabin in the woods reappears, as it's where he was temporarily staying when he was murdered.
- The beginning of the episode has Rossi lament to Hotch about losing several friends recently, naming "Erin, Harrison", and now Gideon.
- Forgotten Fallen Friend: Oddly enough, though, he doesn't mention Carolyn, his first ex-wife who died in "Epilogue". It's even more bizarre because his relationship with Carolyn is referenced in a couple of the flashback scenes. Though it could be that he considers her far more than just a good friend, or is still too distraught about the circumstances of her death to even mention her, or that it just wasn't as recent as the other people mentioned (being over a year and a half before Strauss died).
- Callahan mentions that she once took a class that Gideon was teaching, but he left after only two lectures. JJ recalls that this was because he caught the Footpath Killer and came back to the BAU, which happened in "Extreme Aggressor", the very first episode of the series.
- Morgan tells Rossi about how he and Gideon would visit crime scenes together all the time, and Gideon would say to him, "I'm the UnSub, how did I do it?"note
- The very first thing young Rossi says in the flashback scenes is that he's going to write a book someday about the cases they investigate and "make a million bucks". Of course, the audience knows that, in the present day, he has indeed achieved moderate fame from the books he's written and become quite wealthy from them.
- On a similar note, in the last scene of the flashback, Gideon jokes to Rossi that if he does get rich off his books, he should buy the BAU a jet plane so they can travel to investigate their cases more easily. The latter scoffs at the idea, which is Dramatic Irony considering that the BAU does indeed have its own plane in the present.
- At one point, Gideon figures out that Rossi and Carolyn—his first wife—are expecting a child, and Rossi states that his grandmother has predicted that it's going to be a boy. In "Epilogue", the Season 7 episode in which Carolyn died, it's revealed that she and Rossi did have a son together, who died the day he was born.
- Related to the above, the last flashback scene has Rossi likewise deduce that Gideon is going to be a father too (and the episode carefully avoids having him mention anything about who the mother is and whether or not Gideon is married to her, both of which were never revealed during his time on the show). Their last line of dialogue has Gideon ask Rossi what his middle name is, and the latter replies that it's "Stephen", which was shown in both this episode and previous ones to be the name of Gideon's son, implying that he's named after Rossi.
- Near the end of the flashback story, Gideon vents his frustration to Rossi that they're limited with how much they can do right now because "there's only three of us". He doesn't name the third person, but it's presumably Max Ryan, who was introduced in the Season 1 episode "Unfinished Business" as another founder of the BAU and Gideon's mentor.
- The episode starts with Reid driving up to Gideon's cabin, the same way he did in "In Name And Blood"
- Crime of Self-Defense: Rossi basically invokes this after cornering Mallick so he can kill him to avenge Gideon and get away with it. Mallick puts down his gun and gloats that he's fine with going to prison, since he still got what he wanted—he kidnapped several girls, even holding one of them for over 30 years, and he killed Gideon. Rossi replies that Mallick will indeed be "a big deal" in prison for killing one Fed, but he'd be "a legend" if he killed two. This provokes Mallick to pick his gun back up to attempt to kill Rossi, and Rossi shoots him dead.
- Flashback: We get several of them to when Rossi and Gideon first investigated this UnSub in the early days of the BAU/BSU. It's also notable for being the first time that the characters of Jason Gideon and David Rossi have appeared together onscreen, since, in the current timeline of the show, Gideon left before Rossi came back (and, in fact, Rossi rejoined the BAU to replace him).
- I Should Write a Book About This: The very first thing that young Rossi says to young Gideon in the flashbacks. As we all know, he does indeed do just that in the future.
- It's Personal: Gideon's murder is this for the whole team, naturally, considering that most of them (everyone except Callahan) worked with him for years at some point in the past. Each of them has at least one scene recalling their time with him, and even Callahan notes that she once attended a couple of lectures for a class he was teaching.
- Notably, even though we never actually saw Rossi interact with Gideon onscreen until this episode since their time on the show never overlapped—though Rossi has mentioned him a few times—he's one of the members of the team who takes the murder the hardest, which is understandable since Rossi knew him the longest. Gideon named his son after Rossi, and near the end, Rossi actually invokes Crime of Self-Defense to avenge Gideon's death and be able to get away with it.
- Reid probably takes Gideon's death the worst out of everyone. Again, makes sense, since Gideon hand-picked him to join the BAU and was a Parental Substitute for him. Reid's sadness over this loss and attempts to come to terms with it carries over into the next episode.
- Origins Episode: The flashbacks of young Gideon and Rossi take place in 1978 on one of their very first cases, when the BAU—or rather, BSU (Behavioral Science Unit), as it was known back then—was still very new and only had three people (the two of them and, most likely, Max Ryan). We even see them mentioning or coming up with several terms that are regularly used by the present-day BAU, such as "signature" from Rossi and "profiler" from Gideon.
- The Profiler: As always, natch, but also notable in this case for seeing the very early days of Rossi and Gideon doing this; apparently, in the universe of this show, Gideon was even the one who thought of the term "profiler". Both men are skilled at it even back then, with each successfully figuring out that the other is expecting a child.
- Replacement Goldfish: The motivation for the latest kinapping by the UnSub. He kinapped a young woman in 1978, and kept her captive for decades. During this period, he stopped killing or searching for victims. After the captive's death from cancer, the UnSub seeks out a replacement. The BAU figure that he dislikes being alone.
- Retcon: Possibly, in terms of what was previously established about the BAU's start:
- Rossi's unfamiliarity with the "team" structure when he rejoined the BAU indicated that agents used to work solo, unlike how he and Gideon pair up here, but it's also possible that it was a mixture of working solo and in pairs, especially since the BSU started out so small. It's more likely that the "large teams" structure of 5-7 field agents with additional tech support is what was new to Rossi.
- It was established that by the time of Rossi's return in season 3, almost all previous cases from the BAU's history had been digitized by Garcia, meaning there should've been no reason for Rossi to go back to their old office to retrieve the physical case files. Granted, it was "almost all", so this case could have been one of the exceptions, but considering how important it was to Gideon, you'd think he would've made sure this was one that was digitized so it was easier to potentially solve it one day.
- Small Role, Big Impact: The UnSub, Donnie Mallick, only appears in this one episode; however, he is one of the earliest criminals that Gideon and Rossi investigated (and one they never caught, to boot), inspired Gideon's avid interest in ornithology, and is the one who actually killed him.
- Teen Pregnancy: The UnSub was a result of this. His mother was just shy of fourteen.
- That One Case: One of the very earliest ones for Gideon. It was what got him interested in ornithology in the first place, and when the mother of the latest victim, Tara, gave them her picture, Gideon kept it and carried it in his wallet for the rest of his life.
- Time-Shifted Actor: Young Rossi and Gideon are played by Robert Dunne and Ben Savage, respectively.
- Title Drop: Nelson's Sparrow is the type of bird that the UnSub leaves (dead) in the hands of the victims when he dumps their bodies. Gideon notes that it's symbolic of the victims themselves; Nelson's Sparrow is a bird that doesn't have a proper fight-or-flight response to danger and tries to hop away on its legs rather than fly off. Similarly, Mallick targets the women he does because they all have such low self-esteem that they don't scream or make a scene to save themselves even when danger is staring them right in the face.
- Too Dumb to Live: According to a young Gideon, Nelson's sparrows try to run away from danger instead of taking flight.
- Wham Line: Heard at the beginning of the episode as the team is standing around a dead body:Garcia: Are you sure?Hotch: It's Gideon.
- Why Did You Make Me Hit You?: The UnSub breaks a little bird's neck in front of a victim and blames it on her.Donnie: What did that bird ever do to you?
- Hotch: "When a good man is hurt, all who would be called good must suffer with him." Euripedes.
