Masterpiece 4.8

Jason Alexander guest stars as a serial killer who torments the team with pictures of victims he has murdered and a deadline to save five others from being killed. Read the BeeSight recap and review to find out what happened on the eighth episode of the fourth season of Criminal Minds on CBS and join in the discussion.

BeeCap

There is an underground room with a woman trapped inside. A camera takes several pictures as the woman looks for a way to escape.

At the office, a man presents Jordan with a case involving a girl that was killed 3 months ago. She looks at the case and tells the man that she will show it to her team and they will call him if they are interested. The man becomes upset and Derek walks in. He tells the man that he will look over the case and personally call him afterward. The man leaves and Jordan gets mad at Derek for stepping on her toes. He tells her that the language she was using to talk to the man was upsetting to him and he was just trying to help.

David and Spencer talk to a room full of college students about joining the FBI. David is well received, but Spencer tries to make a existentialism joke and bombs. The detectives finish their presentation and David tells Spencer that he is supposed to convince people to join the FBI, not scare them away. They are then greeted by Prof. Rothschild (played by Jason Alexander) who offers Spencer an alternative ending to his joke. He then shows the detectives pictures which he says are of seven different women he's killed. He says that their bodies have never been found because he used acid to dissolve all the evidence. He then tells them that five more people will be killed if they don't find them within nine hours. He then throws the pictures down the stairs and the detectives arrest him. David tells Spencer to remember everything that the professor says.

Jordan asks Hotch if he's heard any complaints about her job performance. Hotch assures her that she is doing fine. Emily then walks in and Hotch asks her to turn in the supplemental to a case so he can close it out. He then asks Emily to talk to Jordan to make sure everything is okay. Emily walks into Jordan's office and asks her how she is. Jordan says she'll be fine. Emily tells her that it's hard being a woman in the bureau, but says that it gets easier. Jordan thanks her for checking in on her.

David calls Hotch and tells him about the professor and the pictures. Hotch walks in to see Garcia , who was talking to Kevin about who is better Tank Girl or Superman, and asks her to look into the pictures.

In the car, the professor tells Spencer that his degree in philosophy doesn't go with his math and science background. He then tells David that he's read all of his books. The detectives ask why he is turning himself in and the professor replies that it is the only way to have his work discovered.

The agents are watching the news and they get a report of a missing woman and four children who were taken from a daycare. David and Spencer arrive with the professor and David asks about his necklace. The professor doesn't say anything and Derek reads him his rights. The professor says he doesn't want a lawyer because his game is more fun to play with fellow intellectuals. He then asks to have Spencer in the room with them.

The team analyzes the professor's statements and David says that he has a God complex. He says that they need to identify the seven dead women so that they can use their names to rattle him. The team does a reverse profile to trace the victims back from the killer. Spencer noticed that the professor entered the college class during the middle of the presentation which was a couple hours after the woman and children went missing. They figure that he probably only goes after local women who have daily routines that he could study and then take them by surprise.

Meanwhile, the missing woman and children are inside the underground room. Face masks suddenly drop from the ceiling and the woman straps them all to her and the children's faces.

Garcia says that the pool of unsolved missing women cases is huge. Garcia suggests that all the women in the pictures appear to be brunettes and in their 20-30s. They discover that the professor's fingerprints are not in the system, which means that he has no prior criminal record. Spencer points out that he can't be a real professor either, because teachers have to submit fingerprints. He thinks that he might have gotten a government grant to be able to teach a class.

Emily says that they need to figure out how he met the women he killed. Spencer asks to talk to the professor, but David won't let him because that it what the killer wants. Garcia tries to come up with a math equation to figure out the geographic radius that the killer was operating in. She then receives an email with pictures of the missing woman and children inside a room wearing face masks.

David talks to the professor, but the professor becomes angry and decides to leave. He opens the door and sees Emily. The professor gets nervous and backs up. David asks if he is afraid of women and asks if he attacks them like a coward. Emily leaves and the professor sits back down with David. He tells David that he didn't even ask what the rules are. He then looks at his watch and says 2:00, now there are four. He says that one person will die every two hours until they find them. Meanwhile, acid starts to drip from the ceiling, hitting one of the children.