The Popular Kids (Season 1, Episode 10)
Premise: When a quarterback is killed and his girlfriend goes missing beside satanic symbols on a Virginia mountain, the BAU looks past the devil-worship panic to the person staging it.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 10
- Unsub
- Cory Bridges (Will Rothhaar)
- Location
- McAllister, Virginia
- Starring
- Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin), Aaron “Hotch” Hotchner (Thomas Gibson), Elle Greenaway (Lola Glaudini), Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore), Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler), Jennifer “JJ” Jareau (A.J. Cook), Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness)
- Opening quote
- “Unfortunately, a super abundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares.” (Peter Ustinov, read by Gideon)
- Closing quote
- “Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.” (Eugene Ionesco, read by Gideon)
- Guest stars
- Michael McGrady as Sheriff Bridges, Aaron Paul as Michael Zizzo, Shanna Collins as Brandi Dreifort, Rae Ritke as Veronica Hanson, Dale Duko as Reverend Paul
- Director
- Andy Wolk
- Writers
- Edward Allen Bernero
Summary
The Case
“The Popular Kids” begins on Massanutten Mountain near McAllister, Virginia, where high school quarterback Adam Lloyd is beaten to death on a training run and his running partner, cheerleader Cherish Hanson, disappears. Nearby lie a skeleton, a pentagram, candle wax and the letters LOD. JJ works to keep talk of a satanic cult out of the press, and the team notes that no satanic ritual killing has ever been proven in the country. Sheriff John Bridges insists none of his neighbors could be responsible.
The BAU persuades Bridges to search with local volunteers so the team can study who joins in. A volunteer with an assault record attaches himself to Elle’s search party, where a bloodstained note turns up declaring that a virgin will be sacrificed at that night’s full moon. When the profile of a cult led by a charismatic older figure is presented, the sheriff’s son, Cory, a bright student who hopes to become a profiler, names Mike Zizzo, a former student in his twenties who calls his heavy-metal followers the Lords of Destruction. Agents raid their hangout, and Zizzo calls himself an atheist rather than a devil worshipper. Cory then leads agents, Reid among them, to the group’s hidden outbuilding, where Cherish is found dead.
The trail of clues proves too convenient. Brandi Dreifort explains that the football team and cheerleaders secretly visited the skeleton, a hiker who had fallen a year earlier, and that the satanic symbols are new. Gideon tells the sheriff that his son planted the evidence, and a revolver is found missing from the station’s gun locker.
The Team
Reid admits to Morgan that he has nightmares about the job every night, and is angry when Morgan passes this on to Hotch and Gideon. Morgan answers with his own story: early in his BAU career, a strangled woman’s open eyes haunted him until Gideon, who had guessed, talked him through it. On the flight home Gideon shows Reid a photo of Deborah Louise Addison, abducted at 13 in 1985 and found alive thanks to a profile, who writes to the unit every year, and says he looks at it each night to keep the nightmares bearable.
The ending
Spoiler: Morgan confronts Cory about how neatly he steered the case, and Cory, armed with the missing revolver, takes Reid hostage. He quotes Nietzsche and says Cherish was never meant to be there, because the run was Adam’s alone. Told that he is just a jealous boy who wanted the cheerleader’s boyfriend gone, he protests, and Morgan tackles Cory and Reid together, ending the standoff. Cory is taken into custody.
Why it stands out
- The episode states that no satanic ritual murder had ever been proven in the United States; about six months after it aired, Gerald Robinson was convicted of the ritual killing of Margaret Ann Pahl in 1980.
- The character name Zizzo is a nod to The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, in which Matthew Gray Gubler appeared.
- The episode establishes that Gideon has been a profiler since at least 1985.