Derailed (Season 1, Episode 9)
Premise: A schizophrenic physicist takes a train car hostage in West Texas, with Elle among his captives, and Reid boards to play along with his delusion.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 9
- Unsub
- Ted Bryar (Chris Bauer)
- Location
- West Texas
- 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 belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses; it is an idea that possesses the mind.” (Robert Oxton Bolt, read by Gideon)
- Closing quote
- “The question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or the others crazy?” (Albert Einstein, read by Reid)
- Guest stars
- Susan Gibney as Dr. Linda Deaton, Jeff Kober as Leo, M.C. Gainey as Moretti, Anil Raman as Josh Patel, Alice Rietveld as Elaine Curtis
- Director
- Félix Enríquez Alcalá
- Writers
- Jeff Davis
Summary
The Case
“Derailed” puts Elle on a train across Texas on her way to a prisoner interview. When the train halts for an apparent suicide on the tracks, physicist Dr. Ted Bryar, a psychiatric patient whose doctor, Linda Deaton, is taking him to a Dallas conference, kills a security guard and holds the car’s passengers at gunpoint, Elle among them. Urged on by Leo, a figure only he can see, he refuses to talk to anyone but a “Higher Authority.” Reid spots the facial tics of long-term antipsychotic use, and the team decides to give him that authority and speeds to the train with lights and sirens to beat his deadline.
Working through Elle as his go-between, Bryar gives the agents an hour to remove “it.” Old scars on his arm lead the team to conclude that he believes the government implanted a tracking chip there. Garcia identifies the hostages for Morgan: salesman Harry Anderson, expelled student Josh Patel, Elaine Curtis of Terlingua and Deaton. Bryar, a leading M-theory physicist who once worked for the government, has been institutionalized for nine years.
Reid proposes faking the removal with sleight of hand and, over objections, boards the train as a technician, palming a fake chip. Bryar is convinced, but then orders him to switch it on and will not let him leave. As Patel feeds Bryar’s paranoia, Bryar shoots Deaton and decides that everyone on the train will die with him. Reid speaks directly to Leo, says he knows what voices are like and praises Bryar’s mind, urging him to see that only he can silence Leo. As the rescue team prepares to storm the car, Bryar is shot by a passenger who says there was no other way.
The Team
Elle is trusted with a prisoner interview on her own, and on the way she phones Gideon, who is too busy to hear what she wants to say before the call drops. Afterward she teases him by calling him Dad, thanks Reid for saving her and asks about his claim to know what hearing voices is like; Reid says he was only playing to Bryar’s delusion.
The ending
Spoiler: The siege ends there, and the hostages are freed. Deaton is taken to the hospital, and Elle, who insists she is fine, is told she must go as well because regulations require it. The episode does not say whether Bryar survives.
Why it stands out
- For the first time in the series, a bookend quotation is read by an actor other than Mandy Patinkin: Matthew Gray Gubler reads the closing one.
- Gubler practiced magic as a boy, and Reid performs a sleight-of-hand trick in the plot; one hostage shares the name of Harry Anderson, a magician Gubler has called an influence.
- Susan Gibney, who plays Dr. Linda Deaton, also starred in the 2002 film Derailed, which likewise centers on a hostage crisis aboard a train.