Masterpiece
Directed by Paul Michael Glaser
Written by Edward Allen Bernero
An UnSub kill first one beautiful woman, then another, then two more, then three; when it gets too hard to find enough gorgeous women to fit his pattern, he abducts a woman and four children attending her daycare center. He locks them in a room with oxygen masks and automated acid drips, and approaches Reid and Rossi and tells them what he has done. Reid figures out that he dumped his victims in a spiral and is obsessed with a pattern known as the Golden Ratio, while Rossi figures out that the UnSub's intellectual "rivalry" with Reid is a distraction from his true goal of putting Rossi himself in his place, as his real beef is that Rossi once caught his serial killer brother, leading to the UnSub's life being ruined.Written by Edward Allen Bernero
Rossi: "Let us consider that we are all insane. It will explain us to each other. It will unriddle many riddles." Mark Twain.
Tropes
- Arc Number: Phi. Approximately 1.618. The related Fibonacci sequence also plays an important role.
- Batman Gambit: How Professor Rothschild/Henry Grace sets up his death trap for the BAU. He leaves clues just subtle enough for the team to figure out how to find the house where he's trapped his victims without making it too obvious that he's doing so in order to lure them there and get caught in his trap. He also plays up his admiration of Reid's intelligence while acting dismissive towards Rossi to ensure that, when the rest of the BAU team heads off to the booby-trapped house, Rossi will want to stay behind to interrogate Henry and "beat" him, and thus have to experience the death of his whole team. Unfortunately for him, Rossi out-gambits him hard.
- Buffy Speak: In trying to cover for Garcia and him flirting in her office when Hotch walks in, Kevin says he needed help with a stuff thing.
- Dehumanization: Zigzagged. Rothschild says that he considers beautiful people whose faces correspond to the Golden Ratio more human than others, and these are also the people he kills. Turns out it's because his ex who broke off their engagement was beautiful and he is really angry at her.
- Dirty Coward: As Rossi points out, Henry is only willing to attack people smaller and weaker than him. The one time he does try to attack Rossi, it's when his back is turned.
- Double-Meaning Title: The title of the episode, "Masterpiece," obviously can refer to Rothschild's elaborate scheme, but by the episode's end it can also be said to refer to Rossi's gambit to foil said elaborate scheme.
- Engineered Public Confession: Rossi tricks Rothschild into thinking his plan has succeeded, then records his subsequent Evil Gloating.
- Exact Words: Henry pulls this off twice with the same statement. Having abducted 4 children and their teacher, he tells Rossi "In 9 hours, 5 people will be dead". One hour later, he heavily implies one person is already dead and one more will die each hour, pointing out that he didn't say they'd all die at once at the ninth-hour mark. Later on, as the BAU raids the house, he tells Rossi he never said the abducted would be the 5 who died: he meant Rossi's team.
- Extra Y, Extra Violent: Played with. Henry claims his extra Y chromosome is why he kills. However, Rossi replies that the study linking that condition to criminal behaviour was debunked years ago.
- Freudian Excuse: Henry's brother, William, was a horrific Serial Killer whom David Rossi captured. Though Henry seemingly had no knowledge of what his brother had been doing, he was ostracized due to being so closely related to such a monster, and his fiancée broke off their engagement. All of this eventually led to Henry deciding "Then Let Me Be Evil" and becoming a serial killer himself, targeting beautiful brunette women because his fiancée was also a beautiful brunette.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: No one's impressed or sympathetic.
- Give My Regards in the Next World: Done by Rossi to Henry.David Rossi: I'm gonna be there when they strap you down for that lethal injection, and just before they hit the plunger, I'm gonna lean in real close, and tell you to say hi to your scumbag brother!
- Hollywood Acid: Rothschild dissolves his victims in acid, leaving no trace of physical evidence.
- Irony: Rothschild comments that a philosophy degree doesn't fit with Reid's other degrees in engineering and mathematics. Reid tells him he likes the subject because it has no right or wrong answers. Rothschild, a serial killer who just turned himself in, comments that without right or wrong, we can't recognize perfection.
- It's Personal: Rothschild's (or rather, Henry Grace's) real reason for committing his murders and targeting the BAU is because he wants vengeance against Rossi, whom he blames for ruining his life, particularly when his fiancée left him after Rossi caught his brother.
- "Knock Knock" Joke: Invoked. Rossi claims Reid has a nuclear physics-based one.
- Lightbulb Joke: Reid tells potential FBI recruits one about existentialists.Reid: How many existentialists does it take to change a lightbulb? [Beat] Two, one to screw in the lightbulb and one to observe how the lightbulb symbolizes an incandescent beacon of subjectivity in a world of Cosmic Nothingness.Professor Rothschild Wouldn't they just sit in the dark and hope the bulb decided to light again? An existentialist would never change the bulb, he would allow the darkness to exist.
- Lying to the Perp: After figuring out Grace's plans for the BAU, Rossi and Garcia do this to him, with the former pretending to only realize too late that it's a trap while the latter pretends to not be able to contact the other team members. They are convincing enough that Henry is easily tricked into thinking he's succeeded, and they record his resulting Motive Rant as evidence against him.
- Misplaced Retribution: Henry Grace's life was ruined when his brother William was exposed as a serial killer. Rather than get angry at his brother for committing the murders, Henry blames Rossi for exposing William's crimes, leading him to seek revenge by targeting Rossi's teammates.
- Motive Rant: Henry gives one when revealing why he wanted revenge on Rossi.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: If attention is paid to Rothschild's statements, he never actually blames Rossi for catching William... rather, he blames Rossi for writing about catching William in his book and calling him "the closest thing to pure evil I have ever seen", further exposing the man's family to hatred and fear by the public. It's why Rothschild uses Rossi's books to pick his victims: he sees himself as a victim of Rossi's arrogance and desire for glory and wealth. He's not entirely wrong when he calls out Rossi's ego and lack of remorse for the collateral damage he's caused over the course of his career, though of course, Rothschild himself has become someone not even remotely deserving of sympathy.
- Out-Gambitted: Rossi sees through Rothschild/Grace's Batman Gambit and figures out that his real targets are the members of the BAU. He then allows Grace to think the team has played right into his hands and been killed, and this is enough to get Grace to gloat about his plans (including his seven previous murders), which Rossi and Garcia record on tape.
- Revenge by Proxy: Henry blames Rossi for ruining his life by catching his serial killer brother and getting him executed, and Henry's fiancée dumping him in response. As a result, he wants to kill Rossi's BAU teammates to get back at him.Henry Grace: You took my family. I take yours.
- Serial Killer: Henry's brother William was an especially horrifying one. By the present day, Henry himself has become one as well, primarily targeting beautiful brunette women.
- Then Let Me Be Evil: After Henry's brother was caught, his fiancée dumped him, and everyone he knew avoided him out of fear, Henry realized that William "wasn't alone in the darkness" and decided to become a serial killer himself and get revenge on Rossi.
- Villainous Breakdown:
- After Henry realizes that Rossi has Out-Gambitted him, he starts yelling in anger and tries to attack him, only for Rossi to easily pin him against the wall.
- He has a smaller, quieter one earlier as well. After Rossi and the team realize that all of Henry's victims are brunette women, they get the also-brunette Prentiss to enter the interrogation room to throw him off his game. Sure enough, Henry instantly goes from smug and arrogant to cowed and uncomfortable for the whole time that Prentiss is in the room.
- Villainous Lineage: Henry has come to fully believe this about himself and his brother, a particularly horrific serial killer, and uses it as an excuse for doing evil.
- Visible Victimology: Although he abducts several children too, Rothschild/Grace is explicitly stated to only kill "beautiful" brunette women who resemble his ex-fiancee, who broke up with him when his brother was revealed to be a Serial Killer.
- Wham Line: "You get all that, Garcia?"
- Rossi: "Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love." Martin Luther King, Jr.
