Criminal Minds (TV Series)

The Inspiration (2013)

Jeanne Tripplehorn: Alex Blake

Quotes 

• Aaron Hotchner : Garcia, Heather Clarke is the victim that our unsub's been feeding to the others.

  Penelope Garcia : Yikes.

  Aaron Hotchner : See if she had any enemies.

  Penelope Garcia : [typing]  No. I mean, she was her company's top regional manager, she... she looks loved.

  David Rossi : Well, the unsub's rage has probably been brewing for a long time.

  Alex Blake : And he most likely expressed his disdain for her long before he killed her.

  Derek Morgan : Baby girl, check middle and high school records.

  Penelope Garcia : [typing again]  No, zero. Zero, there's nothing there.

  David Rossi : There's gotta be something. See if her parents ever filed a restraining order.

  Penelope Garcia : [finding a result]  Oh, creepy bingo.

• Dr. Spencer Reid : You know what's odd? Usually in cannibalism, it's the visceral organs and the fleshy parts being eaten. But this UnSub is making the victims eat exclusively from the head. Why?

  Alex Blake : That may be symbolic. It's the one body part a person cannot survive losing.

• Penelope Garcia : [Hotch has called the team back into the office]  You must be peeved.

  Alex Blake : I get to Dulles, make it through security, about to board the plane to Boston and bam, I get the call.

  Penelope Garcia : I say we all demand a vacation.

  Dr. Spencer Reid : From who, the guy that works three jobs? Good luck with that.

• Dr. Spencer Reid : The praying mantis can kill and eat a multitude of creatures but the most interesting fact is that oftentimes the female mantis engages in sexual cannibalism, meaning she'll bite off the head of her mate once copulation is complete, sometimes even during intercourse, actually.

  Alex Blake : So, that's what someone did to our UnSub.

  Dr. Spencer Reid : It also explains why he shoots his victims in the heart.

  Jennifer Jareau : But the center of our UnSub's anger didn't bite off his head.

  Dr. Spencer Reid : No, but she hurt him so badly that she got into his brain.

  Alex Blake : So, he's flipping the script.

  Dr. Spencer Reid : He's completely taking it over. He basically sees the victims as the praying mantis out to destroy him, so before they can get to him, he rapes them, forces them to engage in cannibalism, thereby taking away their control of the situation. He's essentially walking them through the mating behavior of a captive praying mantis, only entirely on his terms. He even mirrors the decapitation of the insect by forcing them to eat pieces of a human head, only it's not a male human head, it's a female human head.

  Aaron Hotchner : The woman that's the core of his rage.

  Dr. Spencer Reid : Exactly. Now all women are his enemy. They're his predators and he believes they're out to get him.

• Penelope Garcia : Two women, Sarah Beck and Jill Elks, were found in a park in Glendale, Arizona within the last three days. Both of them were single in their late twenties, and following their normal low-risk routines when they were abducted.

  Alex Blake : Where we they taken from?

  Penelope Garcia : Sarah was on her way to her theater group rehearsal, and Jill was abducted form her apartment. The unsub broke in through a window.

  Dr. Spencer Reid : Well, clearly he's hunting a specific type.

  Derek Morgan : He left the jewelry untouched.

  Aaron Hotchner : Yeah, it's not about robbery.

  Penelope Garcia : Both women were sexually assaulted and then they were shot in the heart and left in that... prayer position.

  Jennifer Jareau : It's odd.

  David Rossi : Maybe it's religious. Looks like they're leaning on a cross.

  Derek Morgan : Their hands are titled forward.

  Dr. Spencer Reid : He could have made them supplicate and their hands clenched in rigor mortis.

  Jennifer Jareau : So they're possibly trying to atone for their sins.

  Alex Blake : I doubt that. Both women have pretty clean backgrounds.

  Dr. Spencer Reid : Since the posing was done postmortem, maybe it's representation of the way in which he made them beg for their lives.

  David Rossi : We've definitely seen that before.

  Aaron Hotchner : Hmm. He's getting off on the power. Let's head to Arizona. Wheels up in thirty.