Psychodrama (Season 2, Episode 4)
Premise: When a Los Angeles bank robber who strips his hostages starts staging violent scenes with them, the BAU must understand his fantasy before he kills again.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 2, Episode 4
- Unsub
- Caleb Dale Sheppard, “The Stripping Bandit” (Jason Wiles)
- 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), Haley Hotchner (Meredith Monroe)
- Opening quote
- “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth.” (Oscar Wilde, read by Hotch)
- Closing quote
- “The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but that this humiliation is seen by everyone.” (Milan Kundera, read by Hotch)
- Guest stars
- Michael Chieffo as Bill Henderson, Jean St. James as Claire Henderson, Austin David Young as Darren Henderson, Gary Wolf as Roland Lynch, Connie Cooper as Karen Sheppard
- Director
- Guy Norman Bee
- Writers
- Aaron Zelman
Summary
The Case
“Psychodrama” sends the BAU to Los Angeles after a masked robber with a MAC-10 hits four banks, each time making the customers undress and locking their clothes in the vault. In the latest robbery he also beat a uniformed guard and forced two pairs of naked hostages to simulate sex at gunpoint. The team sees a skilled robber, probably shaped by years in prison, turning into a sexual predator, and he has been dubbed the Stripping Bandit. Bank manager Henderson, whose wife and children were among the hostages, claims he erased the security tapes by mistake. Garcia’s analysis first suggests a shorter second robber, until she finds lifts hidden in his boots.
The next robbery leaves a delivery man dead; the robber takes no money and gets away on his motorcycle. Agents arrest Roland Lynch, a pimp and armed robber who fits the list, but while he is in custody a masked man takes over a restaurant, separates children from their parents and orders the sons to hit their mothers, killing one who refuses. The Hendersons finally admit that the robber’s scene at their bank involved their children too. Darren mentions that the man apologized afterward, which tells the team he is acting on a compulsion rather than sadism: he is directing a psychodrama, a therapy in which actors stand in for people from a patient’s life. Such a program once ran in San Luis Obispo’s county jail, and Garcia matches a former inmate there, Caleb Dale Sheppard, who lives in Inglewood.
Sheppard’s mother, Karen, is lonely and dulled by painkillers; his sister died by suicide. Agents find meth and his abandoned bike at his hotel and head to a nearby park, where Sheppard is holding a hunting knife to a boy’s throat.
The Team
As the team leaves for Los Angeles, Haley Hotchner comes to the office to tell Hotch he missed their son Jack’s hospital tests; Jack has a treatable condition. She warns him he could wake up one day not knowing his own son, but tells him to go. Later Hotch watches a video of Jack’s first steps that Haley sent him five months earlier, the last thing he has added to his laptop.
The ending
Spoiler: Sheppard is shot and taken down before he can hurt the boy. Wounded and going through withdrawal, he demands painkillers and blames his mother for what she did to him, but the agents refuse, pointing out that a 14-year-old boy is dead because of him. Back at Quantico, two of the agents admit that each case seems to get harder.
Why it stands out
- The psychodrama program Reid cites was real: it ran from 1997 to 1999 in the San Luis Obispo County Jail under social worker Leonard Manzella, who has consulted for CBS.
- Jason Wiles, who plays Sheppard, was police officer Maurice “Bosco” Boscorelli on Third Watch.
- The MAC-10 seen in the episode is a nonfiring replica.