No Way Out (Season 2, Episode 13)
Premise: Called to a Nevada town where bodies missing a single rib have surfaced for years, the BAU closes in on the most prolific serial killer it has ever tracked, who has a hostage plan of his own.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 2, Episode 13
- Unsub
- Frank Breitkopf (Keith Carradine)
- Location
- Golconda, Nevada
- Starring
- Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin), Aaron “Hotch” Hotchner (Thomas Gibson), Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore), Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler), Emily Prentiss (Paget Brewster), Jennifer “JJ” Jareau (A.J. Cook), Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness)
- Opening quote
- “Evil brings men together.” (Aristotle, read by Gideon)
- Guest stars
- Amy Madigan as Jane, Melissa Leo as Georgia Davis, Otto Sanchez as Deputy Rick Siglock, James Horan as Mark Davis
- Director
- John Gallagher
- Writers
- Simon Mirren
Summary
The Case
“No Way Out” opens in a diner in Golconda, Nevada, where Gideon sits down across from a stranger named Frank and describes a sadistic serial killer, down to the notebook in Frank’s jacket, while armed townsmen gather outside. The story then turns back to how the team got there. Sheriff Georgia “George” Davis called in the BAU after two bodies, one of them Colorado runaway Katherine Hale, were dumped where an unidentified man’s rib cage turned up in 1996, each missing the same surgically removed right rib. The signature matches unsolved cases in Gideon’s files going back 30 years, all near Interstate 80, which would make the killer the most prolific on record. The victims were drugged with ketamine and mutilated while conscious, and the team profiles a meticulous man in his fifties who kills inside a soundproofed vehicle and logs each murder in a journal.
Jane, a local woman the town calls crazy, is hauled off to jail shouting that he is coming back. She tells the agents that 30 years ago, at 19, she was taken aboard a spaceship by an alien who drew lines over her body and then let her go. The team recognizes an abduction by the killer, with anatomical charts and a mirrored ceiling, and concludes that she survived because she showed no fear. A tip-line call from Hale’s cell phone shows the killer is still in town. That night George takes Jane home with her; the killer arrives, Jane runs, and George is taken. When Hale’s phone switches back on, Hotch, Prentiss and Reid search Jane’s property and find wind chimes made of human rib bones, the killer’s trailer, another woman’s remains and George, alive.
The ending
Spoiler: In the diner, Mark Davis bursts in with a gun demanding his wife, but the bag Frank carries holds the remains of someone else. George, freed, reports that Frank killed her son’s teacher, and a school bus is found abandoned: Frank has killed the driver and left the town’s youngest children in the desert. He offers them in exchange for Jane, whom he says he has loved and secretly visited every year since he let her go. Jane, who admits she wanted to see him again, asks to leave with him. Gideon drives them out of town until Frank points him toward the children. Gideon vows never to stop hunting him; Frank answers that he will never stop loving Jane, and tells Gideon to call him if he ever feels the same. The children are found safe, but Frank heads west with Jane and his tracks disappear, leaving the case open.
Why it stands out
- Keith Carradine’s Frank Breitkopf became one of the series’ most notorious criminals, with Amy Madigan as his love interest, Jane Hanratty.
- The episode was first scheduled for January 10, 2007, but was pre-empted by a public service announcement and aired a week later.
- The waitress’s order of “Adam and Eve on a raft” is diner slang for two poached eggs on toast.