Proof
Directed by Karen Gaviola
Written by Janine Sherman Barrois
A disabled serial killer takes advantage of abled people's prejudice against disabled people to kidnap and torture women he finds attractive, including his niece.Written by Janine Sherman Barrois
Reid: "If it is a miracle, any sort of evidence will answer, but if it is a fact, proof is necessary." Mark Twain.
Provides examples of:
- Abhorrent Admirer: Lyla viewed Cy as one. Due to him thinking she liked him the same way he did with her, he gets a little too touchy with her during a party in high school. She was repulsed by how he acted and didn’t feel comfortable with him touching her.
- And I Must Scream: The victim whose tongue was burned out with sulfuric acid.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Cy reveals that he sadistically beat the family dog to death when he was younger.
- Cain and Abel: He's apprehended before it could've been done, but Cy is the Cain to Matt's Abel. Cy always hated Matt for ending up with Lyla, and Cy decided he was going to hurt his brother by going after Tammy.
- Character Narrator: Cy does a voiceover at the start of the episode, when it's revealed the reason is because he records his crimes.
- Enfant Terrible: As it turns out, even as a child, Cy was highly sadistic, beating the family dog to death and enjoying every second of it.
- Evil Uncle: Cy is a sadistic serial killer whose final victim is his own niece.
- Eye Scream: The victims whose eyes were burned out with sulfuric acid.
- For the Evulz: Cy. As he puts it:"I see on the news, on the TV, that people question. They question why — why people do this. It's the same reason people do anything, 'cause, 'cause they feel like it, they like the way it feels. When I was a kid, my dog, Poppy, running across the grass. When I hit her, I liked that feeling. That has not changed."
- Forced to Watch: A variation. Matt forces himself to watch a video of Cy torturing his daughter, as a form of punishment for not realizing just how screwed up his brother is.
- Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: Discussed. Cy muses on how people ask why someone would torture and murder a person, unable to understand the motivation. He is in turn confused by their confusion, people do it for the same reason they do anything: they enjoy it.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Cy's brother's wife was the girl he had a crush on in childhood, and he's visibly upset when marriage counseling works for the two.
- Hidden Depths: Hotch shows some surprising knowledge of the finer details of cooking during Rossi's lesson.
- Honey Trap: The BAU uses Cy’s obsessive feelings for Lyla to get him arrested. She lies about Matt being arrested and says she needs him to comfort her.
- Invasion of the Baby Snatchers: Matt's daughter is kidnapped, and it turns out that his brother Cy is the one responsible because he wants Matt's wife, and Tammy looks like her. He makes a video where he burns her hands and gloats throughout it, and later tells Matt that he wanted to torture him by taking away all his senses except hearing before raping and murdering Tammy.
- Jerkass: Cy is utterly cruel, sadistic, and misogynistic. When Matt confronts him on his actions, Cy shows no remorse, just laughing in his brother's face and gloating about torturing his daughter.
- Just Like Making Love: Rossi says this about cooking, as if attempting to be a Spear Counterpart to Giada De Laurentiis.Rossi: Cooking is the most sensual art form, and these are my paints.
- Kick the Dog:
- Reid's passive-aggressiveness towards JJ because he's angry she knew that Prentiss' death was faked and never told him.
- A more literal case would be Cy abusing his family's childhood puppy when he was younger.
- Mental Handicap, Moral Deficiency: Cy apparently suffered brain damage at birth from being deprived of oxygen. Despite his disability, he's shown to be fully aware of the suffering he inflicts on others and also takes advantage of the public perception of people like him to avoid suspicion and get his victims to let their guard down.
- Mood Whiplash: We go from a father watching a video of his daughter's torture to the team getting a cooking lesson from Rossi. This is actually an in-universe case, as the team is looking for something to cheer them up from the horrors of their job.
- Not Good with Rejection: Cy doesn't take Lyla's rejection of him lightly, kidnapping anyone that resembles her and having them raped and dismembered. Not to mention that he despises Matt for marrying her.
- Not the First Victim: It isn’t confirmed but the number of tapes Cy has in the area where he carries out his crimes imply he has more victims than the team knows about, possibly suggesting he’s been a killer since before the supposed trigger event of losing his second chance to have Lyla and merely started targeting a different, more conspicuous kind of victim (girls resembling Lyla) at that point.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Cy looks and speaks like a stereotypical mentally disabled person, but while he is disabled, he's nowhere near as unintelligent as everyone assumes.
- He lures his victims in by playing up his stupidity and kidnaps them afterwards.
- This is combined with Honey Trap by the BAU when they get Lyla to draw him towards the house and into an ambush via phone call.
- Papa Wolf: Matt is ready to throttle Cy when he gloats over how he wants his brother to go deaf over hearing his daughter’s screams of pain.
- Passive-Aggressive Kombat: Reid first deliberately phrases his observations in ways that it could apply to JJ, then the latter finally has enough and does it herself on Reid.
- Psychopathic Manchild: Cy is a very juvenile man who also tortures, rapes, and murders young women out of amusement.
- The Sociopath: Cy shows no empathy towards anyone, harms others for his amusement, and plays innocent to get his way. He even knows what he does is wrong but does so anyway because he enjoys it.
- Stalker with a Crush: Cy was this in high school to Lyla, his future sister-in-law.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Of Floyd Feylinn Ferrel in regards to when he's found out:
- Evil Gloating against someone personally involved with a victim of his.
- The same person trying to attack them in retaliation before being restrained by a BAU member, specifically calling him a "son of a bitch".
- Evil Laugh.
- Taking the Heat: When Hotch confronts Reid about his attitude towards JJ:Hotch: If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at me.
- Teens Are Monsters: Cy had zero qualms against raping Lyla in high school.
- Tempting Fate: The team comments that Tammy will probably be fine for a while unless she does something to antagonize Cy. The scene cuts to her realizing that Cy is an Abhorrent Admirer her mother told her about and telling him so, while making it clear that her mom (his crush) hates him before dishing out a Groin Attack and trying to escape. Her captivity then takes a turn for the worse and she's lucky to survive.
- Then Let Me Be Evil: Subverted with Cy. It looks like he does what he does because his brother and everyone else mocked him throughout his childhood, but what he shares about murdering a puppy as a child and the implied unreliability of his memories about Matt indicate he was going to grow up to be a sociopath all along.
- Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Tammy Bradstone is a baseball player who talks about the number of homeruns she hit, but she is also very excited about wearing her mother's former Homecoming dress and dyes her hair to look better for the dance.
- Villainous Breakdown: Happens when Cy's arrested by the BAU after an ambush they staged with Lyla's help.Cy: How could you do this to me..? HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?!
- Yandere: Cy is this towards Lyla, trying to sexually assault her when they were teenagers and resenting his older brother for marrying her.
- Rossi: Scott Adams wrote, "Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge."
