In a world filled with fascinating yet disturbing procedural dramas, Criminal Minds contains some of the most frightening plot lines yet. Debuting to screens on September 22, 2005, the series boasted an ensemble cast of actors that would only rise in popularity, correlating with the show’s growth from another police drama to one of the most recognizable series on cable.
Against the backdrop of perturbing crimes, the personal lives of the protagonists are also explored. At its most stressful and sorrowful, the two worlds converge. While they make for excellent television, watching beloved characters and one-episode victims go through some of the most traumatic and gut-wrenching experiences would leave anyone anxious to leave the lights off at night.
Sharing more in common with slasher films and psychological thrillers than other police procedural dramas, Criminal Minds has a slew of episodes that range from creepy to absolutely frightening.
11 Season 5, Episode 12 – “The Uncanny Valley”
In Atlantic City, New Jersey, the BAU are alerted to investigate a series of crimes that find women kidnapped, murdered, and their bodies undergoing a creepy doll-ification process. The women in question all shared a similarity that the BAU agents found crucial to their investigation. The abductees were all women who were in their late 20s.
The unsub, Samantha Malcolm, is a tailor with a traumatic childhood. Her father, a doctor named Arthur, routinely molested her and bought her dolls to “apologize” for his transgressions. The gifts also came with electroshock therapy, training Samantha to stick to a story that corroborates Arthur’s falsities.
The episode chronicles the cycles of abuse that occur and explores how the lack of accountability enables the proliferation of more abuse. The agents do not pacify Samantha but offer her rehabilitation, sending her to a mental institution after preventing her from killing Bethany, one of her potential victims.
10 Season 5, Episode 13 – “Risky Business”
“Risky Business” taps into the hysteria of social media’s exponential popularity. After reports of a popular, online trend prompting teenagers to commit suicide, the BAU head to rural Wyoming to peel off the veneer of the seemingly nonsensical phenomenon to reveal a much more unsettling explanation for these disturbing deaths.
Viewers come to learn that the suicides were all part of a vile project conducted by EMT Will Summers. Summers not only experimented with the lives of his victims but also his family members. He was unmasked as the proxy murderer of the Wyoming teenagers, as well as the murder of his wife Cynthia. Poisoning Cynthia, Will routinely brought her to the doctors until she passes away after unknowingly consuming a fatal amount of the poison. Once the agents learn of his discretion, they race against time to apprehend WIll before he murders his son Chris.
“Risky Business” highlights the carelessness that Will carries into his profession, arriving at the scenes of the crimes he committed and collecting trophies after his victims are announced dead.
9 Season 3, Episode 5 – “Seven Seconds”
“Seven Seconds” plays on the sadly contemporary fears of parents in public with their children. After their daughter, Katie, goes missing, Paul and Beth Jacobs rely on the BAU to help discover their daughter’s whereabouts before they are too late.
What starts as a common, yet frantic search for Katie soon progresses into a dark hour of unearthing harrowing secrets about those close to Katie. The episode does a fantastic job of dispelling myths around sexual abuse while raising awareness of the dangers of internalized misogyny. The unsubs are revealed to be Richard and Susan Jacobs, Katie’s uncle and aunt. After learning of Katie’s molestation at the hands of Richard, Susan irrationally frames Katie as the party responsible for her failing marriage.
Whisking Katie away, the disgruntled wife attempted to asphyxiate her niece, all the while knowing that Katie was asthmatic. While their plans are ultimately futile, the episode is a bone-chilling reminder that most victims are harmed or led to their death by those they know: family, friends, and seemingly trusted adults.
8 Season 2, Episode 7 – “North Mammon”
In “North Mammon,” three young soccer players and best friends are kidnapped by a then-unknown assailant who keeps them bound in a sealed-off location. The abductor then surveys and instructs the teenage girls to kill one of their friends if they want to escape his hellish, make-shift prison alive.
The perpetrator is revealed to be Marcus Younger, a trash collector who desired to kidnap and manipulate the three girls as a form of confirmation bias. Discarded by his friends in high school after a career-ending knee injury, he aimed to expose the shallowness of teenagers by kidnapping and pitting them against each other.
Younger is one of the few suspects that have been able to get away with his intended crimes, much to the dismay of Agent Gideon and the audience alike.
7 Season 2, Episode 6 – “The Boogeyman”
“The Boogeyman,” premiering as the sixth episode of the season, saw Cameron Monaghan of Shameless and Gotham fame in one of his earliest roles, and quite possibly his most perturbing. His character, Jeffrey Charles, is introduced as one of the schoolchildren that the BAU has come to protect. After Jeffrey discovers the body of Joseph Finnegan, the agents assume the age of the unsub, believing them to be an adult.
After Agent Rossi interviews Jeffrey’s father, he comes to learn that Jeffrey is a manipulative serial killer that targets other classmates due to his complex abandonment issues.
6 Season 10, Episode 21 – “Mr. Scratch”
To describe “Mr. Scratch” as a mind game would be an understatement. One of the most complex murder mysteries of the series, the BAU is tasked with investigating three murders. The implicated parties all reiterate variations of the same story: they lost control over their bodies and were seemingly possessed, remembering the sight of a shadowy figure with claws.
The startling conclusion sounds like it came from the deepest parts of a person’s nightmare. Mr. Scratch was revealed to be Peter Lewis, a math genius employed at the NSA. His motivations stem from the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. After his father is falsely accused of pedophilia, he is arrested and subsequently murdered. Lewis, using his newfound station as a vehicle, began hunting those he deemed responsible for his father’s murder. Infiltrating his victim’s vents and drugging them with dissociative agents, Lewis would then prompt them to murder their loved ones during their harrowing hallucinations.
5 Season 5, Episode 16 – “Mosley Lane”
“Mosley Lane” continues to leave audiences awake at night. Much like the aforementioned episodes, children are the victims of this case. With the exception of Stephen Shepherd, the children return to the safety of their parent’s embrace. Despite being memorialized as a martyr, Stephen or any other child should not be subjected to such selfish cruelty
A common plot twist, the unsubs are revealed to be a couple. As a result of an inability to have children, Anita and Roger Roycewood have spent the last eight years kidnapping and abusing children. It is not until March 2, 2010, that the two meet their demise. Just as agents Rossi, J.J., and Hotchner barge into the Roycewood residence, the three children have just narrowly escaped their murder due to their witty thinking.
Mosley Lane is a visual reminder that children are prone to extremely dangerous forms of abuse. Furthermore, the rationale behind the abuse is not guaranteed to be understandable to the authorities or other parents. The Roycewood’s actions highlight the pervasive and egregious entitlement that many people carry in their heads and hearts.
4 Season 4, Episode 21 – “A Shade of Gray”
The death of several children rocks Cherry Hill, New Jersey to its core. As a result, the agents arrive and come across a killer by the name of Hugh Rollins, and seemingly, the slew of abduction and murder cases are solved. That is, until, they come across a case that contains a stark difference from the rest of the killings.
The title of the episode is named after a phrase that denotes an occurrence or object that appears shady or sketchy. The episode lives up to its title once it’s revealed that the murder of Kyle Murphy, a child in the community, was the fault of his older brother Danny, to the shock of many. Finding his brother a nuisance for breaking his toys, Danny killed his brother in a fit of rage, shoving the broken pieces of his recently purchased toy plane down his throat.
Reading about the episode is a spine-chilling experience itself, however, watching the events unfold onscreen is on another level of perplexing.
3 Season 3, Episode 18 – “Lucky”
“Lucky” continues to send chills up the viewers’ spines. Eight episodes into season three, the BAU are sent to Bridgewater, Florida to investigate a rather disturbing trend in murders. With Jamie Kennedy portraying the unsub, he excels in startling the audiences, shaking off any resemblances to Randy from the Scream franchise or Professor Eli James from Ghost Whisperer.
Floyd Feylinn Ferrell, Kennedy’s character is a vile, cannibalistic murderer with a pen chance for a subset of Satanism. The most frightening factor of his character is the subsequent decisions he chose to make after the killings. The agents and the audiences alike were understandably disgusted with the revelation that Ferrell serves his victims innocent civilians and even law enforcement.
Furthermore, viewers also had to deal with a fan favorite’s life hanging in the balance of life and death. An elated Penelope soon finds herself embroiled in a budding romance with police officer Jason Clark Battle. However, the BAU and their avid champions sitting at home would come to learn that Officer Battle was anything but Penelope’s dream man.
2 Season 3, Episode 3 – “Scared to Death”
Disney Media Distribution
For many viewers, “Scared to Death” was one of the most uncomfortable episodes to sit through. The unsub in this episode is a serial killer that targets people with seemingly little to no connections. Airing alongside the team reeling from the effects of Gideon’s sudden leave of absence, the agents pick and prod at the cases until a connection between the victims is unearthed.
The unsub, Stanley Howard, is a psychiatrist who kills his victims by turning their greatest fears against them. As a young child, Mr, Howard was afraid of the dark and to punish him, his mother would lock him in dark rooms, which would have a monumental effect on his modus operandi. From burying his victims alive to drowning them in large bodies of water, audiences were subjected to viewing a callous killer carrying out the cruelest of murders.
1 Season 5, Episode 9 – “100”
Disney
“100” continues to be one of the most remembered episodes of the series, for all the wrong seasons. Introduced in the episode Omnivore, the Reaper (C. Thomas Howell) inches closer and closer to the BAU’s inner circle, continuing his tour of terror and leaving shattered hearts and gruesome crime scenes in his wake. At the time of the episode, the Reaper, real name being George Foyet, arrives in Washington D.C., hunting down his mortal enemy Aaron Hotchner.
After invading Hotchner’s home, viewers watched in disgust as Foyet murders Haley Hotchner in cold blood, with Hotchner’s son Jack narrowly escaping. The ripples of the murder reverberate throughout the rest of Season Five, with Hotchner and Jack suffering from immense trauma understandably.
Criminal Minds sits in between predictable propaganda and shattering the existing theater of safety that has remained prevalent among American cable and streaming series. With some of the most devastating episodes to air on television, Criminal Minds contributes to the allure of law enforcement while also exposing the corruption within these high-ranking institutions. Nevertheless, the series remains one of the most iconic cable network programs of the 21st century.
