Elle is on her way to interview a prisoner when a psych patient, who is being taken to a conference by his psychiatrist, has a psychotic breakdown and takes the train carriage hostage. The team must come to the rescue by buying into his delusions in an effort to convince him to let everyone go.
Early on we are shown the back stories of the handful of hostages, with some top notch acting. The psychotic and his 'invisible' friend (who eggs him on to kill everyone) are completely convincing.
There's great interplay between the team members, especially Reid and Morgan, and Morgan and Garcia. Reid takes a central role (again) but is acted off the screen by Mandy Patinkin as Gideon. Gideon is having one of his bad stress days, which is something about this show I really like - we never know if we're going to get warm and fuzzy Gideon or brittle and tetchy Gideon.
Overall a tighter script and more action than other episodes to date, but yet again it is left up to a non-BAU team member to save the day. Some of the back stories presented at the beginning are never 'resolved', something this show does quite often, leaving it up to the watcher to worry about what happens next to minor characters. I just wanted to know if the guy who saves the day at the end goes off to kill his wife as he intended at the beginning. Guess I'll never know.
Early on we are shown the back stories of the handful of hostages, with some top notch acting. The psychotic and his 'invisible' friend (who eggs him on to kill everyone) are completely convincing.
There's great interplay between the team members, especially Reid and Morgan, and Morgan and Garcia. Reid takes a central role (again) but is acted off the screen by Mandy Patinkin as Gideon. Gideon is having one of his bad stress days, which is something about this show I really like - we never know if we're going to get warm and fuzzy Gideon or brittle and tetchy Gideon.
Overall a tighter script and more action than other episodes to date, but yet again it is left up to a non-BAU team member to save the day. Some of the back stories presented at the beginning are never 'resolved', something this show does quite often, leaving it up to the watcher to worry about what happens next to minor characters. I just wanted to know if the guy who saves the day at the end goes off to kill his wife as he intended at the beginning. Guess I'll never know.