A Real Rain (Season 1, Episode 17)
Premise: A killer who executes New Yorkers acquitted in court is hailed as a hero in the press, and the BAU races to find him before he strikes again.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 17
- Unsub
- Marvin Doyle (Ethan Phillips), Will Sykes (David Aaron Baker)
- Location
- New York City, New York
- 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
- “Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society must take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness.” (W.H. Auden, read by Gideon)
- Closing quote
- “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.” (Mahatma Gandhi, read by Hotch)
- Guest stars
- Tonya Pinkins as Det. Nora Bennett, Dennis Boutsikaris as Lance Wagner, Marc Anthony Samuel as Ted Elmore, Sheilynn Wactor as Leanne Elmore, Irene Roseen as Parishioner
- Director
- Gloria Muzio
- Writers
- Chris Mundy
Summary
The Case
“A Real Rain” brings the BAU to New York City, where three people have been shot in the chest, stabbed through the ear with a blade whose handle was snapped off, and blindfolded, among them an East Harlem cab driver, Walter Derbin. A fourth victim, a priest once tried for abusing children, is found in his church; a parishioner saw a hooded man whose fingers kept moving as if playing a piano. The knives are flint, a symbol of retribution, and the blindfolds go on after death. Garcia finds that each victim was tried and walked free, and the team profiles a vigilante, likely someone who works around the justice system.
Reporter Lance Wagner breaks the vigilante story and keeps cheering the killer on, and the next victim is a cop killer who went free after the only witness was shot. All the cases passed through the Manhattan criminal courthouse. The team brings Wagner in as a possible suspect and decides he only lives through the vigilante. Then an undercover officer is shot in Central Park, and security guard Will Sykes, a mugging victim, gives himself up and confesses to every killing. He accepts a false detail about the priest’s death, and the team decides he is a glory-seeker who killed only the officer.
Through JJ, Wagner writes that the officer’s blood is on the vigilante’s hands, to draw a remorseful killer to the funeral. There Detective Nora Bennett mentions the bagpipes she can never get out of her head, and Morgan learns the cab driver’s trial has not been transcribed yet, so the killer must have been in the courtroom. The team reasons he is a court stenographer who cannot shut out the voices he records, and every trial had the same one: Marvin Doyle, whose parents were killed in a 2004 robbery. Doyle has called in sick. His soundproofed apartment holds about a hundred flint knives, an uncashed $250,000 insurance check and boxes of his notes, which point to Ted Elmore, acquitted of killing parents he said abused him.
The Team
An early case of Hotch’s comes up: in Iowa he talked a man who had murdered two boys into giving up his shotgun, but the man’s wife gave him an alibi, the jury acquitted him, and he later killed another boy.
The ending
Spoiler: Gideon phones the Elmore home just as Doyle arrives. With snipers in place, agents go in to talk him down; he is told no one could kill fast enough to answer every unjust verdict, and, worn out, he speaks of his murdered parents. Doyle is killed, and New Yorkers on the street argue over whether he was a hero or a murderer.
Why it stands out
- The title comes from a line in Taxi Driver, in which vigilante cabbie Travis Bickle imagines a real rain washing the scum off the streets; the line is quoted during the episode.
- Ethan Phillips guest stars as Marvin Doyle, a schizophrenic vigilante killer, with David Aaron Baker as Will Sykes, a would-be copycat who wants to be famous.