The Fox
Directed by Guy Norman Bee
Written by Andrew Wilder & Simon Mirren
Written by Andrew Wilder & Simon Mirren
Gideon: Dr. Thomas Fuller wrote, "With foxes, we must play the fox."
At least two families with children are murdered. Suspects include the surviving husband in one family, and the developmentally disabled and unwelcome brother-in-law of the father in the other. After ruling those two out, the BAU is left with the witness testimony that the UnSub has red hair, and the profile that he's intelligent, competent and organized, and uses the families as surrogates for the family he lost for a couple of days before he kills them.
This episode provides examples of:
- Bait-and-Switch: The opening shot is of a little boy running through a hallway screaming for his mother's help. Turns out, it's just his father having fun, apparently utilizing the Claw.
- Disproportionate Retribution: It's one thing when the killer murders fathers for not running a tight ship (which is unto itself a poor excuse). It's just downright mean-spirited that he also kills their innocent wife, children and babies who did nothing to warrant their fate, out of simple envy of the family he lost. (One could interpret that he possibly kills them to vicariously retaliate his own wife and kids for leaving him.)
- Dramatically Missing the Point: The killer claims that the reason he holds families hostage and kills the father last is to teach them what happens when a father "isn't strong". The problem is, the killer had the advantage of holding the family hostage. He could've done the same to the patriarch of a functional family, and the result would've still been the same! In fact, his would-be victims' survival had less to do with the father being "strong" and more to do with the BAU being on the killer's trail. Tragically, the killer stole these families' lives for nothing.
- Driven by Envy: The killer targets families who are dysfunctional because he can't stand that the men who can't keep a tight ship still have their wives and children, while he (who ran his household with an iron fist) is deprived of his own familly. To drive home how badly he wants a perfect family, he forces these families to have the perfect family dinner (before killing them) in order to vicariously have the perfect family.
- Dysfunction Junction: The killer specifically targets families who have these, as part of his M.O. of spiting fathers he feels don't run a family they way he thinks they should. For instance, one family has a little girl whose older brother picks on her while her lax father permits it, all the while her parents have a generally rocky relationship.
- Family Annihilator: The killer wipes out entire families after holding them hostage.
- Hell Is That Noise: At one point during the investigation, someone theorizes that maybe the wife did scream and nobody heard. To counter this argument, Gideon starts screaming for help at the top of his lungs (reminding the audience that Mandy Patinkin is a classically trained tenor). All the while, the ghost of the wife's panicked, deafening screams echo simultaneously, giving the audience a chilling sense that nobody could possibly ignore those screams unless the UnSub kept them silent...
- I Never Said It Was Poison: The team puts (non-specific) pictures of the victims under the wrong family's name. Arnold's OCD forces him to scream at them to correct it...but he couldn't have known the mistake unless he was the killer.
- If I Can't Have You…: The killer stalks and kills dysfunctional families because his own family left him, due to his Control Freak tendencies. If he can't have a happy family, then according to him, why should lesser men who can't keep their families together?
- Shout-Out: Gideon quotes Sherlock Holmes's line about eliminating what's impossible.
- Sudden Downer Ending: The episode initially seems to be going for a happy ending - Arnold has been arrested and the most recent family was saved - but then Hotch finds Arnold's trophies: there are eight of them, meaning he eliminated six other families that they don't know about.note This is a sobering reminder to the audience that victory or no victory, there were casualties...
- Symbolism: Emily's painting is a vibrant, colorful watercolor of her home, while the drawing she was coerced to make is precise with no colors. This drives home how, Control Freak he is, the Killer is a joyless man who obsesses over perfection, at the expense of sapping away other people's happiness.
- The BAU don't spare the killer any harsh words about how, unlike the other dysfunctional families' happy family photos, his family photo shows his family (despite their painted-on smiles) solemnly keeping arms' length away from him. As opposed to the dysfunctional families who some semblance of being tightly knit, this indicates how much the killer's wife and kids fear him and his abusive, controlling nature.
- This Is Reality: Gideon says "when you eliminate the impossible, whatever is left, however unlikely, must be the truth". Hotch points out that Sherlock is fiction, and as real FBI agents they can't take their cues from him.
- Would Hurt a Child: The killer wipes out entire families including the kids. He even throws a baby at Gideon and Morgan.
