L.D.S.K. (Season 1, Episode 6)
Premise: The BAU hunts a long-range shooter in Des Plaines who wounds his victims instead of killing them, while Reid, who has just failed his firearms test, goes unarmed.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 6
- Unsub
- Phillip Dowd (Timothy Omundson)
- Location
- Des Plaines, Illinois
- 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
- “The irrationality of a thing is not an argument against its existence, rather, a condition of it.” (Friedrich Nietzsche, read by Gideon)
- Closing quote
- “Nothing is so common as the wish to be remarkable.” (William Shakespeare, read by Hotch)
- Guest stars
- Marcus Giamatti as Dr. Barry Landman, Paula Newsome as Detective Shea Calvin (credited as Shea Clavin), Tony Denison as Weigart, Thomas Lumberg Jr. as Scott McCarty, Kent Shocknek as Reporter John Jenkins
- Director
- Ernest Dickerson
- Writers
- Andrew Wilder
Summary
The Case
“L.D.S.K.” sends the BAU to Des Plaines, where a gunman has hit three groups of strangers in two weeks. Henry Sachs died in a shopping center lot; every other victim was shot in the stomach and survived. The team avoids the word “sniper” and calls him a long distance serial killer. He uses frangible rounds that defeat ballistics, but one slug sits intact near the spine of park victim Jerry Middleton, and trauma surgeon Dr. Barry Landman removes it despite the chief of surgery’s doubts. Garcia traces it to an M-4 rifle.
The shootings cluster around the change between police shifts, the shooter scouts his firing spots in advance and he crosses jurisdiction lines. The profile describes a narcissistic, paranoid veteran with law enforcement experience, perhaps a current cop. Reporter John Jenkins goes on air claiming the shooter is a Des Plaines officer, and JJ threatens to hold him under the Patriot Act until he gives up his source’s cell number. It belongs to Officer Scott McCarty, who is hidden in a car trunk playing the gunman in a reenactment as punishment from Sergeant Weigart. When SWAT has him open the trunk, the real shooter shoots McCarty dead.
Garcia’s geographic profile centers on two hospitals, pointing to a “hero homicide” killer who wounds people in order to rescue them. Landman, an Army veteran who began in military police school and was recently passed over for chief of surgery, offers an alibi. The team realizes that emergency room staff follow the same shifts as police, and the head nurse names Phillip Dowd, a nurse who also works at a hospital in Arlington. Dowd, a former Army Ranger who was dishonorably discharged and then fired from the Arlington police after nine months, takes Hotch and an unarmed Reid hostage.
The Team
Hotch, drawing on his SWAT days, coaches Reid on shooting, but Reid fails his firearms qualification and must work the case without a weapon. Gideon tells him that a profile is the deadliest tool the unit has.
The ending
Spoiler: Hotch works on Dowd by claiming the police sent him in with a useless partner, then asks to beat Reid. While Weigart readies an assault, Reid gets hold of Hotch’s second gun during the beating and shoots Dowd dead. Hotch lets him keep the gun and says that, as far as he is concerned, Reid has passed. Reid tells Gideon that he feels nothing about killing a man; Gideon answers that he did what he had to, that many lives were saved and that he is proud of him.
Why it stands out
- The episode reveals that Hotch once served on SWAT and that Reid went to public school in Las Vegas, which is Matthew Gray Gubler’s real hometown.
- Marcus Giamatti guest stars as Barry Landman, the arrogant trauma surgeon who becomes an early suspect.
- The title stands for “long distance serial killer,” the term the team uses instead of “sniper.”