CRIMINAL MINDS Season 9 - 910. The Caller - Review

Don't answer you phone any time soon...

you never know who will be on the other end...

CBS released another new episode of Criminal Minds titled “The Caller” (written by Sharon Lee Watson, and directed by Rob Bailey) investigating a young boy who goes missing from his home in St. Louis in the middle of the night, and the distraught parents who find themselves getting disturbing prank calls from a child saying he was going to get them at the same time. The BAU soon find out that this case striking a similar to another cold case several years ago.

The masterminds behind this episode brought you a different take on what you'd usually expect from the show. Like the previous episode, it was creepy, but this episode was very different from the usual formula... and it worked!

In the beginning of the episode, the audience isn't given who is the unsub right away. There was no watching the unsub go after multiple victims or after a particular member of the team.

The story was still able to keep the audience on the edge of their seats. I wasn't sure who was the culprit. For almost 30 minutes into the story. I was sure that the short tempered, overly controlling father was the unsub until his wife went missing next, and he was being taunted on the phone by the same prank caller when it happened. In the older case, the father was suspected as well, and was even interrogated during the investigation. Was it really him, or just a very elaborate copycat? The evidence pointed to the father again, just like last time. But could it really be him? Hotch and the gang find out that the recordings are exactly the same as the previous case. It ended up being a recording of the unsub's voice when he was a child from an old home movie.

In the mean time, Andy, the current missing child was found dead. Turns out, the unsub identified with the child and saw the kills as mercy kills, as he thought he was sparing the children a fate worse than death: staying with their parents. He saw Andy's parents and the boy before him, as surrogates for his own and had been trying to save the boys.

Although the story didn't directly center itself on any the members of the BAU, I was particularly pleased with the ending when Reid saved Blake by killing the unsub instead of someone saving Reid. That character is slowly growing up.


~~~~Gwendolyn