Criminal Minds season 14 episode 13 review: An introspective Rossi, AJ Cook directs
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Tonight’s episode of Criminal Minds is going to be a really important one for David Rossi as well as his relationship with Krystall. While he has had a lot to celebrate this season with his up coming wedding to Krystall, other aspects of his life are about to descend into chaos – and to add on top of that this may not be a one and done type problem for him.
We’ve never really seen Rossi this disoriented before, he just isn’t himself. So what’s going on? Whatever it is, he’s not willing to open up to anyone at work about it and with him being so closed off Prentiss sends him home where he finally starts to open up to Krystall about what happened. We know that Rossi has a lot of really close relationships at work, but with their wedding only being a few weeks away (we hope this means a season finale wedding!!!) we really appreciated seeing him choose Krystall as the person he opened up to.
Tonight we had a case of an UnSub that killed women, cut their faces off (his trophies are faces) and then burned the houses down to try to cover up his murder. So who was this UnSub? It was a man that has a serious anger issue with women older then him and used cons to get close to these women. At the height of their happiness he would pull the trigger on them so to speak, kill them, steal their faces and burn the home to the ground.
When the team figured out what this man was doing, and how easily he was switching identities himself as well as his own face with each con they start to figure out the pattern and are able to put enough together to start hunting. They learn that his mother was a con woman and her son played second fiddle to her men and cons through out his life with her and that he was the submissive to his mom through out all of the cons.
They visit the mother in prison where they figure out where he might be and that some of the stories he’s been telling these women might be true – or at least partially true. There is one other story that he’s been telling all the women which is that he had a 5 year old daughter named Grace who was accidentally killed by his mother when he left her with his mom one night, but is this really what happened? The mother’s reaction to that story tells us something different.
The last woman the UnSub was with decided to change things up and instead of him proposing and controlling the narrative, she proposed and he lost his mind smashing a vase over her head and scaring the daughter to death. Now that they were closing in on him they thought they were finally going to nab him, but the mother made a call from prison and he was warned. When the team got to the house to try and save the family they realized that they were all set up as the UnSub laid out all of the faces in the house and had his daughter Grace (who wasn’t dead and was in on the con with him this time) help to give him a chance to escape – but Rossi gave chase. The UnSub jumped Rossi and strangled him unconscious and while Grace was taken in the UnSub escaped, giving Rossi a cut on his face to remind him that he could’ve taken it, but didn’t.
Related News – Be sure to check out what’s coming up next time on Criminal Minds.
CarterMatt Verdict
The main thing that rattled Rossi from this case is that he feels that maybe he’s getting too old for field work, because he was bested by a younger man and this guy is still out there leaving the door open for this UnSub to come back for Rossi (or worse his family) in the future. As Krystall pointed out though, Rossi is incredibly smart and just because this guy is younger and stronger, doesn’t mean that Rossi isn’t smarter then him. This is really one of the first times that we can remember Rossi really doubting his abilities at his job and we wonder if the show is setting him up for eventual retirement when season 15 rolls around (it is the end of the series after all).
What did you think about Criminal Minds season 14 episode 13 overall? Be sure to share some of your thoughts now in the attached comments. (Photo: CBS.)