JJ Returns To Work With A Major BAU-Gate Breakthrough

Warning! Spoilers ahead for Criminal Minds: Evolution season 3, episode 4, “I’m Fine, It’s Fine. Everything’s Fine.”

Criminal Minds: Evolution returns to form in season 3, episode 4, even featuring a case-of-the-week that is truly disconnected from the overarching Sicarius storyline. The BAU is back to work after Will’s funeral in Criminal Minds: Evolution season 3, episode 3. That includes JJ, who even finds a lead that is more relevant than Emily Prentiss ever could have anticipated. While it was a necessary reprieve to acknowledge the death of one of Criminal Minds’ major characters, in a short 10-episode season, there is no more time to dedicate to anything other than the story.

Elias Voit and his evolving recovery are a main storyline in Criminal Minds: Evolution season 3, but his relationship with Dave Rossi continues to surprise. While it would have been interesting to hear Spencer Reid’s take on Voit’s brain injury, since he has not only an eidetic memory but a mother with Alzheimer’s, there was no time in Reid’s limited appearance in Criminal Minds: Evolution season 3, episode 3. As always, Criminal Minds: Evolution leaves the episode with a cliffhanger ending, while some questions are answered, more are always forming.

Criminal Minds: Evolution Season 3, Episode 4 Unsub & Case Explained

The BAU Has Its First Case Unrelated To Sicarius & Tyler Green Plays A Pivotal Role

Refreshingly, the BAU has its first case in a long time that is completely unrelated to Sicarius’s network from Criminal Minds: Evolution season 2. In fact, the unsub’s motivations are both deeply personal and tragic, which somehow makes them all the more despicable. The BAU is called in to Tucson, Arizona to investigate after a second victim is found headless, handless, with organs harvested, and largely skinned. It’s staged to look like cartel activity, but the BAU posits that this is a misdirect.

The unsub team is revealed surprisingly early in the episode: an EMT who is solely interested in the profits to be made from black market organ harvesting, and a surgeon who is experimenting to find a better version of a skin graft to heal his daughter. It’s a special type of evil to have a doctor, who swore to do no harm, use living people as lab rats, no matter who he is trying to save.

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Luke Alvez and Tyler Green track a black market organ harvester through the microscopic metal filings left on the bodies, and he points them in the direction of a disgraced EMT, Michael Falco, let go under suspicion of stealing and selling drugs. The BAU cross-references doctors Falco would have crossed paths with, and find their unsub: Dr. Malcom Ramsey. Six months ago, Dr. Ramsey caused a car crash that not only killed his wife, but covered his daughter Arielle with third-degree burns.

We meet Dr. Ramsay and his daughter, Arielle, who he has kept isolated and ignorant of his crimes. Arielle begs him to let her go home, but her father is delusional, convinced one more experiment will lead to the breakthrough they need. Unfortunately, Arielle wanders into the room and discovers her father’s methodology, which horrifies her.

In a shocking twist, when the BAU bursts in on Dr. Ramsay, it’s his daughter Arielle who stabs him in the neck, but she collapses shortly after. Tyler Green shows he brings much more to the BAU than just his Sicarius intel when Tyler compassionately carries Arielle outside so she can see the stars one more time. In a tender moment after the shocking violence, Tyler assures Arielle that she isn’t the monster, but she had the courage to kill the real one.

How Voit’s Relationship With Rossi Gets Increasingly Complicated

Voit’s Trust In Rossi Completely Inverts After A New Psychological Evaluation

Elias Voit has had an implicit trust in Dave Rossi since regaining consciousness in Criminal Minds: Evolution season 3, episode 2, mistaking the veteran profiler for his father when he first laid eyes on him. Rossi has a positive effect on Voit, so although he is loathe to do so, he agrees to spend time with the unsub at the hospital. The BAU is trying to coax Voit’s memories back without influencing him, so he knows Rossi is an FBI agent, but he doesn’t have any context for their relationship.

Voit has no memories, but he is still intuitive, and he is picking up clues that he was a bad person in his former life. Voit has a nightmare and decides he needs a fresh start, shaving his head in the age-old sign of a mental crisis. Voit wants to remember, but he’s also afraid that he won’t like who he used to be.

When Voit wakes up in fear, he instinctively asks for Rossi and Tara Lewis for comfort. Voit tells Rossi he feels like there is something trying to break out of his head, so Rossi suggests a controversial psychological test. Tara, who is a forensic psychologist, administers a form of a Rorschach test on Voit, which triggers something that makes his body sense that Dave is a foe, not a friend. Suddenly, Voit orders Dave to get out of the room, when just before Dave was his source of comfort.

Voit agrees to do the test a second time if another doctor gives it, but Rossi forces his way into the room in a medically and ethically questionable way, but it gets a major result. Voit remembers one of his murders in his shipping container. He is horrified by the memory and immediately recuses himself. If he didn’t have a reason to feel like Rossi wasn’t his friend, he certainly does now.

JJ’s BAU-Gate Woes Are Tied To Voit (& What It Means For Both Of Their Futures)

JJ Finds A Mysterious Video On BAU-Gate During Her Bereavement Leave

JJ is on bereavement leave after Will’s funeral in Criminal Minds: Evolution season 3, episode 3, but she has been obsessively checking BAU-Gate, which was down until a new video appears. JJ seems to be holding up better than anyone could expect, although her fixation on BAU-Gate suggests she is just displacing her grief. The upload is a Paranormal Activity-style video of someone in a creepy, angular mask. JJ is convinced Voit has something to do with it, and Emily Prentiss hesitantly allows her to work the video with Penelope Garcia.

An image of the unique, white mask is what Rossi showed Voit during his Rorschach test, and while he didn’t consciously recognize the video, it did force a breakthrough. Rewatching the video, JJ recognizes a subconscious gesture that makes her realize the masked figure is Voit himself. JJ storms into Voit’s room against medical advisement and finds him unresponsive.

JJ should not be working while she is going through the most intense period of mourning, but she will take her constant monitoring of BAU-Gate as a sign that her obsession is not just healthy, but helpful. JJ is able to alert doctors who are able to revive him, but JJ is physically rough with Voit, wanting him to know she cracked the video case and prevented what she clearly thinks was a suicide attempt. JJ’s compassion might have died along with Will.

Meanwhile, Voit was already going through an identity crisis, and Rossi forcing his recovery too fast was clearly causing psychological distress. Voit is being medicated, but it’s a delicate balance between aiding his mental growth and physical harm, because too high a dose triggers bodily effects, like migraines and nose bleeds. JJ is likely correct that Voit is the masked figure in the video, but that’s not mentally the same person lying in the hospital bed.

Was Voit Accidentally Overmedicated Or Did He Intentionally Overdoes?

Tara Lewis Expressed Concerns About Voit’s Medication Well Before The Shocking Ending

Tara Lewis knows the medication Voit is on and voices her concerns to his primary doctor. The specific medication is helpful at a low dosage, but the higher the amount, the greater the side effects – and exact dosage is an art, not a science. Voit experiences a variety of symptoms all episodes — including headaches, nosebleeds, and nightmares, but these could all conceivably be the stress of naturally remembering his murders.

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Luckily, JJ catches an unconscious Voit in time for the doctors to save him. Tara suggests Voit might have been hoarding his medication and overdosed on purpose to escape his reforming memories. However, because the doctors are able to revive Voit with just one dose of Naloxone, it appears more likely to be a miscalculation with his medication, although it won’t be confirmed until next week. Even if this was a medical misjudgment instead of an attempt at self-harm from someone who is clearly no longer a sociopath, it could still be a major setback on Voit’s road to recovery.

Voit has been making great progress, and the BAU needs his memories to fully recover if they are going to charge him as Sicarius. However, now Voit will have to change medications, or at least lower the dosage, and Rossi no longer provides the healing comfort. After just one real memory of Sicarius, Voit might not want to remember anymore, putting his goals at odds with the BAU’s in Criminal Minds: Evolution season 4.

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Criminal Minds

8/10

Release Date

September 22, 2005

Showrunner

Erica Messer

Directors

Félix Enríquez Alcalá, Rob Bailey, Matthew Gray Gubler, Joe Mantegna, John Gallagher, Douglas Aarniokoski, Guy Norman Bee, Larry Teng, Nelson McCormick, Alec Smight, Charles S. Carroll, Rob Spera, Charles Haid, Diana Valentine, Rob Hardy, Tawnia McKiernan, Bethany Rooney, Karen Gaviola, Sharat Raju, Thomas Gibson, Aisha Tyler, Anna Foerster, Gloria Muzio, John Terlesky

Writers

Bruce Zimmerman, Virgil Williams, Edward Allen Bernero, Janine Sherman Barrois, Chris Mundy, Simon Mirren, Debra J. Fisher, Kimberly A. Harrison, Jay Beattie, Dan Dworkin, Karen Maser, Oanh Ly, Stephanie Sengupta, Aaron Zelman, Kirsten Vangsness, Erica Meredith, Andi Bushell, Holly Harold, Alicia Kirk, Jeff Davis, Randy Huggins, Edward Napier, Jayne A. Archer, Chikodili Agwuna

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  Kirsten Vangsness

  Penelope Garcia

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  Matthew Gray Gubler

  Dr. Spencer Reid