Critic’s Ranking: 3.95 / 5.0
3.95
Felony Minds: Evolution is again, and it wasted no time diving into darkish waters — actually.
Felony Minds Season 18 Episode 1 (or Felony Minds: Evolution Season 3 Episode 1, who actually is aware of anymore?), “Swimmer’s Calculus,” is a haunting, high-stakes season opener that plunges the BAU into the thoughts of a twisted killer who makes use of swimming pools as a psychological battleground.
However as chilling because the unsub’s techniques are, it’s the psychological fallout, ongoing Voit storyline, and Tyler Inexperienced’s evolution (pun meant) that make this episode sink its hooks in deep.
Let’s begin with the plain: seeing something within the opening scenes is almost unattainable. Paramount+, I urge you to put money into a flashlight or two. The darkness is so thick it borders on parody.
What we will discern includes a capped man slurping espresso and luring a stranger earlier than spraying him within the face with aerosolized fentanyl. A cop arrives, will get tricked by a wasted brother ruse, and releases the perp. No ID verify? No suspicion? Simply vibes, I suppose.
Minimize to a seaside celebration that screams dangerous concept, the place a girl correctly rebuffs a drunk dude who needs to comply with her into the water.
She’s received the instincts of a Last Lady, however alas, this isn’t that form of present. When the man stumbles on a corpse within the surf, the vibe shifts to full BAU mode.
As at all times, our workforce arrives with the velocity of teleportation, able to unravel the unsub’s twisted logic.
The killer has a sample: puncturing victims’ ribs so that they fill with salt water and sink. It’s a forensic misdirect that solely works if our bodies aren’t discovered — however a chilly entrance modified the ocean’s currents, and voila, our bodies are again on shore.
Enter Tyler Inexperienced, now a full-fledged FBI trainee (sure!) and dealing laborious to remain near the workforce. Sadly, he hasn’t gotten his subject workplace project but. Spoiler alert: it’s not going to be D.C.
Tyler’s evaluation reveals the most recent physique wasn’t truly an ocean drowning. As an alternative, swimmers calculus — brown residue from chlorine — factors to a pool.
The unsub is drowning folks in his yard and making it appear to be they died at sea. That revelation alone is sufficient to ship chills, however what actually drives the horror house is the tactic: forcing folks to tread water till exhaustion claims them.
He watches, he waits, and he lets them die slowly. It’s greater than sadistic — it’s deliberate psychological torture.
And that’s the place the present excels: in peeling again the layers of prison psychology. Why do folks like this exist? Why do they need others to undergo as they did?
Franklin, the killer, witnessed his household drown below a pool tarp when he was ten. His alcoholic lifeguard father compelled him to repeat swim assessments he couldn’t cross.
The trauma didn’t simply stick with him — he made it his identification. However right here’s what at all times will get me: what makes somebody leap from ache to replication? What turns trauma right into a weapon?
This present has by no means been about simple solutions, and that’s what makes it price watching.
JJ and Tara’s hypothesis about aquaphobia and Tyler’s enter concerning the killer revisiting his personal trauma are the sorts of threads that elevate this past case-of-the-week storytelling. It’s about how worry curdles into hatred, and the way the thoughts builds its personal jail.
In the meantime, Rossi is having his personal psychological disaster. With Voit in a coma after being shanked in jail (after which by some means managing to kill his attackers earlier than collapsing), Rossi is below the microscope.
OPR thinks he is likely to be concerned. And whereas he insists he had nothing to do with it, he additionally has that Rossi grit: “If I wished him lifeless, he’d be lifeless.” God, I really like him.
Voit’s mind scans are baffling — he’s received injury within the prefrontal and occipital lobes, but additionally decades-old scarring. As Prentiss quips, his mind resembles that of a retired linebacker. (Ouch, and truthfully, identical. My mind might need related mileage.)
Penelope, ever the empath, sees one thing totally different. She believes there’s an ember of humanity left in him. Luke doesn’t agree, however he believes that she believes. That’s sufficient for now.
The episode’s most harrowing sequence includes a mom and daughter compelled right into a pool after their husband/father is executed for refusing.
They need to tread water beneath a lined pool whereas the killer watches from above, inhaler in hand. It’s terrifying.
The mom coaches her daughter to preserve vitality, and ultimately, they use a corkscrew (a birthday present) to poke a gap within the tarp to outlive. It’s equal components horror and heroism.
Tyler doesn’t swoop in to stab the killer, however the knife he carries as he awaits the OK to hold a gun turns out to be useful. He stabs the pool cowl, tearing by means of it to free the ladies and get them air.
That second of rescue is tense and triumphant, and required after Franklin crushed the pool cowl distant below his boot and shot himself within the head.
His final phrases, one thing alongside the strains of “perhaps this was at all times the plan,” are haunting. Did he need rescuers to really feel as powerless as he as soon as did? Was the entire thing a meticulously staged recreation of his personal trauma?
Frankly, I’ll by no means perceive the prison want to torture others as you’ve gotten been tortured. How is their mind wired that they suppose this may heal them indirectly? Have there been research? It’s nuts.
Tyler’s reward? A subject project in Cellular, Alabama. It’s not what he hoped for, however when you suppose he’s staying away from the BAU for lengthy, you haven’t been paying consideration. That is his origin story, and I’m right here for it.
Nonetheless, it begs the query: how would possibly Tyler discover his approach again to Quantico? His inside data of Voit, his potential as an analyst-turned-agent, and his confirmed instincts within the subject would possibly work in his favor.
Add in the truth that Rossi is below scrutiny with OPR respiration down his neck or the likelihood that the workforce would possibly quickly face emotional upheaval they didn’t plan for and immediately, having somebody like Tyler shut feels much less like a luxurious and extra like a necessity — even when the FBI isn’t able to admit it but.
Rossi, too, has a small win. He discovers Voit had stashed a shank within the laundry room — a element that clears some suspicion however doesn’t absolutely exonerate him. Nonetheless, it’s momentum.
Emily factors out that Franklin’s remark, that this was all a part of the plan, helped them uncover one other clue: Franklin had been importing torture movies utilizing encrypted codecs.
It’s eerily just like the strategies Voit and his community as soon as used. And let’s be trustworthy, there’s no approach Voit’s community simply disbanded as a result of he’s in a coma.
These guys aren’t influencers who sign off when issues get tough — they’re darkness junkies. Torture and dying are their model. That chilling breadcrumb is nearly actually the throughline for the season forward, and it means one factor: Voit isn’t going wherever.
And simply whenever you suppose the episode is over, it hits you with a brutal closing shot.
Voit, the puppy-eyed coma affected person Penelope has been sitting with, immediately wakes and begins strangling a nurse. No alarms, no screens. Simply pure, calculated violence. No matter he’s, he’s again. However significantly. Would any of you’ve gotten gone into that room with one in every of his arms unrestrained??
Welcome to Felony Minds Season 18. It’s going to be a experience.
Let’s maintain the dialog going — it’s the one approach the great things survives.
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