The Fisher King part 2
Written by Edward Allen Bernero, Andrew Wilder, & Edward Napier
The team learns that the UnSub is a man who lost most of his family in a fire and got disfigured by burns in the process. He spent time in the same mental facility as Reid's mother, a professor of Medieval literature whose schizophrenia led her to assume that the way he talked about his surviving daughter meant she was a metaphor, ultimately convincing the father too. She was adopted by another family, but her father's psychotic conviction that she's dead has him abduct her and keep her locked up in a basement while he sets up an elaborate trap for Diana's son and his team, whom he believes to be Sir Percival and the Knights of the Round Table respectively. Believing himself to be the mythic Fisher King, he is certain that if Sir Percival asks him the right question, his burns will be healed, and his daughter who is chained up in his basement will come back to life.
This episode provides examples of:
- Artistic License – Physics: If Reid was really that close to the blast he would have been in much worse shape then his pants being on fire.
- Ax-Crazy: Randall Gardner. See Serious Business.
- Driven to Suicide: Randall Gardner, "The Fisher King" commits suicide at the end of the episode.
- Dying Dream: While in a coma after being shot by Gardner, Elle dreams of being on the team jet and seeing her late father.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Hotch and Gideon are both disturbed that them giving JJ the order to do a press conference regarding Gardner (an explicit violation of the one rule in his Criminal Mind Games) ended with Elle getting shot in revenge. Gideon is almost apoplectic.
- Outrun the Fireball: Spencer runs out of Gardner's house just in time to survive its explosion.
- Parting-Words Regret: While in a coma and talking to her late father, Elle clearly regrets that her last words to her father before he was presumably killed on duty were "I hate you" in a petty argument.
- Riddle Me This: A meta example. The UnSub wants Reid to tell him what the question was that healed the Fisher King in the story, but even Reid's brilliant mind can't figure it out since the story never said.
- Serious Business: Gardner's entire motivation rests on making the team (and eventually Spencer) ask him a question that will cure him forever. Yep, it's as crazy as it sounds.
- Shout-Out: Diana is convinced she'll give a lecture on Tristan and Iseult.
- Taking You with Me: Gardner tries to kill Spencer by detonating a bomb vest.
- Timeshifted Actor: A different actor plays Gardner in a flashback before his disfigurement.
- Reid: "It has been said time heals all wounds. I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue, and the pain lessens. But it is never gone." Rose Kennedy.
