Here is a wonderful review of Criminal Minds Episode 8.20 “Alchemy”. It is written by Meredith Jacobs over at The Examiner. “Alchemy was written by Sharon Lee Watson and Directed by series star Matthew Gray Gubler.
Matthew Gray Gubler once again directed such a good episode of “Criminal Minds,” and like his previous episodes, Wednesday, May 1’s 820, “Alchemy,” was nice and creepy—but with a surprise sad ending!
“Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?”
Unsurprisingly, this “Criminal Minds”episode was filled with creepy imagery, from the skin-like walls to the creepy kid walking around to the old woman vision to the final image of Tess. And a lodge was the perfect setting for it. Really, it was exactly what you expect from a Gubler-directed episode (and he once again did an amazing job behind the camera). However, what wasn’t expected was the way it ended, as it didn’t end on a sinister note but instead on a very sweet one.
It was Reid who made the connection that put the team on the case, as since he wasn’t sleeping (more about that later), he found it in one of the 38 small town papers he subscribed to, (“It used to be more, but a lot of them disappeared,” he explained. “You mean gone digital,” Rossi said. “Same thing.” Oh Reid, you and technology, please don’t ever change.) Two men were found dismembered with cupping marks on them within an hour’s drive of each other, the first on reservation land. They figured out they were dealing with a male-female team, with the female experiencing Black Widow Maternal Desire after losing a child. She was trying to get pregnantto replace the child she had lost, and she blamed the child’s father for her loss. They profiled her partner as the submissive. However, as it turned out, they did get part of the profile wrong. Tess had lured in a new victim in Chad, and after a couple of nights together, she dosed him. “We should’ve saved him, you know it was our fault,” she told him as he collapsed.
“Do you know what real pain is? That hollow ache? That gaping hole that comes from senseless tragedy? No you don’t. You live in blissful ignorance like all the happy-go-lucky people who have no idea that darkness is a whisper away.”
It was after a visit to the bar where Tess had found Chad that JJ and Rossi realized that the female unsub had played on his protective instincts after Rossi talked to a woman (“That was the fourth Mrs. Rossi, if I’m not careful,” he commented to JJ) Chad had turned down. They began looking into the local hotels since Chad had checked out of his the night he disappeared, and they eventually put the pieces together. Twenty years ago, a man had received permission to stay on the reservation to study medicinal herbs but was kicked out when he was suspected of poisoning someone with the same toxin found in their victims. Roger became Raoul, the owner of the lodge—and husband of Tess.
However, Tess did realize—a bit too late—that Raoul had been manipulating her into killing these abusive ex surrogates, the men (her lovers) who were “threats” to the sanctity of their vows, and Chad took the opportunity presented and attacked Raoul. The team burst in in time to save Chad and arrest Raoul, but they were too late for Tess, who was already dead in the same lake where her son drowned when they got there.
“I will not say do not weep, for not all tears are an evil.”
Reid hadn’t been sleeping because he dreamed of Maeve when he did. “When I see her, I feel the sweetest relief imaginable. She always asks me to dance, but I can’t because I don’t know how to dance and because I never even got to touch her when she was alive,” he explained to Rossi. “I know if I give into that fantasy, I’ll be lost forever, so I force myself to wake up.” Rossi eventually offered up some advice: “It’s alchemy. Alchemy turns common metals into precious ones. Dreams work the same way, turning something awful into something better.” He advised him not to think, just to sleep. And so Reid did, leading to a surprising sad and touching ending to an otherwise eerie episode. He dreamed he and Maeve were in a library, and after a so cute debate over Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and their location (Oxford versus Edinburgh), she asked him to dance. “I want to hold you once before I’m a ghost of a memory,” she explained, and so they danced. It was beautiful and sad and touching and perfect and just what Reid needed.
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