Recap / Criminal Minds S 8 E 7 The Fallen

The Fallen

Directed by Doug Aarniokoski
Written by Rick Dunkle & Danny Ramm

Rossi: "You never find yourself until you face the truth." Pearl Bailey.

An LA UnSub tries to cleanse the street of homeless people by murdering them. Rossi meets his former sergeant (Meshach Taylor), who is now a homeless veteran.

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Tropes:

• Driven to Suicide: When the UnSub is cornered by the team and with his hostage gone, he sets himself on fire. Given that he's suffering from a drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis, he was probably going to die anyway.
• Firefighter Arsonist: The UnSub is revealed to be a firefighter who was kicked out of the service for becoming infected with a drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis when saving homeless people from a fire. Already having a severe case of OCD and germ phobia, the firefighter decided that homeless people were a plague and had to be exterminated, with his victims drowned in bleach and then used as kindling for setting abandoned buildings ablaze.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Hernandez threw himself on a landmine to save Rossi and Scott in Vietnam.
• Kill the Poor: The UnSub is a former firefighter who is also a germaphobe. When saving some homeless people from a fire got him infected with a drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis because of blood spatter, he concluded that all of them were nothing more than walking diseases and had to die, so he began hunting homeless people one by one and drowning them in bleach before setting them on fire.
• Lack of Empathy: The UnSub is completely unsympathetic to the homeless victims he murders. Even after Rossi tells him that the man he's holding hostage is a Vietnam War vet, he remains unfazed, still believing he's a worthless nobody.
• Pure Is Not Good: The UnSub tries to cleanse the streets of homeless people with bleach and fire.
• War Is Hell: The lesson of Rossi's stint in 'Nam.
• Whole Episode Flashback: We see multiple flashbacks to Rossi's time in Vietnam.

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Rossi: "I am not concerned that you have fallen. I am concerned that you arise." Abraham Lincoln.