Hairtrigger
Directed by: Jim McKay
Written by: Gina Gionfriddo and Jerome Hairston
When a young man is traumatized by his experience surviving a mass shooting, and radicalized into becoming an anti-government terrorist, the team must act quickly to track him down before he can exact revenge on those he believes failed him.
Tropes:
- Axes at School: Doug Timmons is a survivor of a school shooting who plans to take revenge on those he believes failed him by staging a mass shooting at a government building.
- Conspiracy Theorist: Doug Timmons believes that the US government allows school shootings to happen to raise a younger generation who are terrified and easily controlled.
- Cop Hater: Doug Timmons has a deep-seated hatred of the police due to their failure to intervene earlier in the school shooting he was a victim of.
- Cop Killer: The FBI investigation starts when Doug Timmons shoots and kills a cop who tries to look in his trunk. Watching the footage of the shooting, Jess notes that the sight of a police uniform seems to put Timmons on edge and theorises that he has a deep-seated hatred of the police.
- Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: When Doug Timmons' car gets rear-ended by a drunk driver, a passing cop stops to investigate. When the cop goes to look in Doug's busted trunk, Doug panics and shoots the cop and then the drunk driver. Investigating this crime puts the FBI on the trail of a planned massacre.
- Recorded Spliced Conversation: Jess sends Mike Kellerman's wife Lena to speak to him in prison and get him to say certain specific phrases: recording their conversation and splicing Mike's words together to create a message the FBI leave on Molly's voicemail, telling her to change the target of the attack.
- Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: Mike Kellerman is what Jess describes a typical homegrown anti-government domestic terrorist. He recruits Doug Timmons by pretending to support his conspiracy theory about government support of school shootings, and then primes him to commit a massacre in a government building in Albany.
- Spree Killer: Doug Timmons is planning to carry out a mass shooting in a government building in Albany.
- Thrown from the Zeppelin: Earl Hansen is one of a trio of Right Wing Militia Fanatics planning an attack on a government building. However, he starts getting cold feet after one of their number, Doug, kills a cop. He says that the manhunt for Doug is drawing too much heat and they should postpone their plan. The leader Mike refuses and tells Earl that he is either in or he's out. When Earl announces that he's out, Mike orders Doug to shoot him and Doug promptly does so.
