Somebody's Watching (Season 1, Episode 18)
Premise: While teaching in Los Angeles, Gideon and Reid join the hunt for a stalker who kills a young TV actress’s rivals, and Reid grows close to her.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 18
- Unsub
- Maggie Lowe (Katheryn Winnick)
- Location
- Los Angeles, California
- 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
- “A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.” (Diane Arbus, read by Gideon)
- Closing quote
- “An American has no sense of privacy. He does not know what it means. There is no such thing in the country.” (George Bernard Shaw, read by Gideon)
- Guest stars
- Amber Heard as Lila Archer, Ian Anthony Dale as Detective Owen Kim, Peter Jacobson as Michael Ryer, Jason Olive as Parker Dunley, Alejandro Furth as Joseph Martinez
- Director
- Paul Shapiro
- Writers
- Ed Napier
Summary
The Case
“Somebody’s Watching” finds Gideon and Reid in Los Angeles to teach a profiling seminar for the police. At an art gallery where Reid’s high school classmate Parker Dunley works, they meet Lila Archer, an actress on a TV series about beach volleyball. Soon after, a gunman dressed as a helmeted messenger shoots rising star Natalie Ryan in the head at her Hollywood bungalow and kills her fiancé, Jeremy Collins. Detective Owen Kim links the case to two earlier shootings with the same kind of .22: producer Wally Melman and actress Chloe Harris. The rest of the team flies in, and the BAU profiles a delusional assassin who leaves no evidence.
Lila’s manager, Michael Ryer, brings her to the police with a note reading “You owe me.” Melman passed over Lila for Natalie, Chloe looked like her, and red anemones turn up in her trailer on the 7th of every month: the team decides an erotomanic stalker is killing anyone in her way. Reid and Morgan guard Lila, who refuses to stop working, while Hotch and Elle find Ryer dead; the team keeps the news from her for now. Nude photos of Lila in Ryer’s office lead to paparazzo Joseph Martinez, whose studio holds Lila’s schedule and photos of Reid, and a police officer at Lila’s house is shot in the shoulder. Garcia finds that Lila’s love of anemones was never in print, so the stalker is someone close.
Martinez is caught photographing from Lila’s bushes and arrested, but the trail moves on. Reid takes apart a photo collage on Lila’s wall and finds it charts her whole life since college. Dunley, who gave it to her, admits it came from Maggie Lowe, Lila’s college friend, now working on her show in a job Lila got her.
The Team
Lila’s pull on Reid grows. At her house she lures him into the pool and they kiss, though he keeps telling her it is only transference, and she turns on him when he finally tells her about Ryer. Afterward Reid asks Morgan whether he has ever crossed a line with a victim; Morgan tells him he saved her life and does not have to decide tonight whether to call her.
The ending
Spoiler: Maggie phones Lila, and Garcia traces the call to inside the house. Holding Lila at gunpoint, Maggie insists she created her; Reid tells her Lila loves him now and that they kissed. A shot goes off, but Reid takes Maggie down without firing, and she begs to be killed. Before the team leaves, Lila asks whether she can call Reid if she ever gets to Washington.
Why it stands out
- Amber Heard guest stars as TV actress Lila Archer, with Katheryn Winnick as Maggie Lowe, the killer obsessed with her, and Ian Anthony Dale as Detective Owen Kim.
- The episode reveals that Reid finished high school at 12 and that Gideon is a fan of contemporary art.