Won't Get Fooled Again (Season 1, Episode 3)
Premise: A Palm Beach bomber copying a jailed killer’s designs forces Gideon to bargain with the man behind his worst failure.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 3
- Unsub
- David Walker, “The Palm Beach Bomber” (Joe Hart)
- Location
- Palm Beach, Florida
- 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
- “Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.” (Samuel Johnson, read by Gideon)
- Guest stars
- Tim Kelleher as Adrian Bale, Jay Acovone as Detective Morrison, Tom Virtue as Gil Clurman, Caryn West as Mrs. Clurman, Joan Blair as Mrs. Walker
- Ripped from the headlines
- The forger who turns to bombing reportedly echoes Mark Hofmann, the document forger behind the 1980s “Mormon Murders” bombings, and the bomb locked around a hostage’s neck recalls the 2003 “Pizza Bomber” case.
- Director
- Kevin Bray
- Writers
- Aaron Zelman
Summary
The Case
“Won’t Get Fooled Again” opens with developer Gil Clurman brushing off an angry investor, Joe Reese, just before a bomb goes off in his driveway in Palm Beach, Florida. Package bombs that morning kill an older woman, Barbara Keller, and a housewife across the street, Jill Swenson, and Clurman loses a leg. The bombs use mercury tilt switches, so the bomber must have carried them to the doors himself. With news channels around the world covering the attacks, the team first suspects Clurman, whose $10 million condo deal collapsed when the land proved to sit on methane, but the bomb parts in his house belong to his 12-year-old nephew. At Quantico Morgan rebuilds the device with Garcia and recognizes the work of Adrian Bale, a bomber now in federal prison who killed six agents and a hostage in Boston; the powder mix and welds match too.
Gideon visits Bale, and the team lets him learn that someone is copying him. Garcia gets into an email account Bale reaches from a prison library computer and watches him warn users of a bomb-hobby message board. In another neighborhood a little girl carries a parcel addressed in blue block letters to her mother, and rescuers talk her through holding it level until it slips and she is told to run. One message-board user is an antiquities dealer, which ties to Keller’s suspicion that her coins were fake. David Walker, a former check forger, had been changing coin dates by electroplating, and Keller threatened to expose him; the other bombs were cover for her murder.
Walker sends a hostage into the police station wearing a collar bomb on a three-hour timer and demands a helicopter and passport. Agents corner him in a building across the street, but an email from Bale urging him never to let himself be taken warns them to pull back, and Walker blows himself up.
The Team
Morgan questions whether Gideon can handle another bomber after Boston, and Hotch tells him to profile the unsub instead. In prison Bale mocks Gideon for not searching him before sending agents into the warehouse while Bale still held the remote. To learn which wire to cut, Gideon gives the spoken confession Bale demands, calling the Boston deaths his mistake and apologizing to the families.
The ending
Spoiler: Bale names the red wire. Gideon has the blue one cut instead, reasoning that Bale once admitted he could never resist pressing the button, and the hostage is freed. Bale’s deal is void, and Gideon lets him know the other inmates have heard how eager he was to inform on them.
Why it stands out
- Adrian Bale, whose Boston standoff is first mentioned in the pilot, makes his first on-screen appearance.
- The title comes from The Who’s song “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” which is also the theme of CSI: Miami.