House on Fire (Season 4, Episode 19)
Premise: When an arsonist’s fires kill dozens in a small Indiana town, the BAU traces him to a boy the town once drove out over a rumor about him and his sister.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 4, Episode 19
- Unsub
- Tommy Wheeler (Tommy Dewey)
- Location
- Royal, Indiana
- Starring
- David Rossi (Joe Mantegna), 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
- “We all live in a house on fire. No fire department to call, no way out.” (Tennessee Williams, read by Hotch)
- Closing quote
- “I have loved to the point of madness; that which is called madness, that which to me, is the only sensible way to love.” (Françoise Sagan, read by Hotch)
- Guest stars
- Shannon Lucio as Tina Wheeler, Michael Rooker as Chief Carlson, Sam Anderson as Dr. Rawlings, Marc Bossley as Fire Captain Danny Wales, Charlene Amoia as Nancy
- Director
- Félix Enríquez Alcalá
- Writers
- Holly Harold
Summary
The Case
“House on Fire” opens with a blaze that traps a crowd inside a movie theater in Royal, Indiana, a town of about 2,000. Nineteen die there, two days after a recreation center fire, for 31 dead in all, following smaller after-hours fires at a convenience store and a restaurant. The unsub shut off the sprinklers and set two fires, driving those fleeing the lobby toward smoke and a blocked exit. The team profiles a local man aged 17 to 30, works with Chief Carlson and Dr. Rawlings, who knows everyone in town, and presses the volunteer fire company about fires that never got reported. Garcia finds small gasoline fires in Franklin, 300 miles away. The unsub skips the memorial service and instead throws a firebomb into Pop’s Place, a bar, with both doors chained, killing five.
The smaller toll tells the team that the bar fire was aimed at someone in particular. Its owner, Jason Elliot, had married EMT Tina Wheeler two days earlier. The bartender, Nancy, recalls an angry stranger who kept changing seats, which suggests a local who left before the bar was built. Tina lost her parents to a fire at age five, and she and her brother Tommy were raised by grandparents in Royal. Rawlings, Tommy’s pediatrician, describes how the orphaned siblings became each other’s whole world. Rumors that they were too close got Tommy expelled, and at 14 grown men beat him badly; his grandparents sent him to a Colorado boarding school and cut him off from Tina. Using his mother’s maiden name, Boren, he spent three years in juvenile detention and later bought gasoline in Franklin. Tina goes missing.
The Team
Hotch makes Garcia dig through the victims’ private lives, a job she hates. After she calls Tommy’s old teacher herself and confronts Rawlings with what she learns, she realizes she acted on rumor just as the town did. At the end she says she chooses to see the good in people, and Hotch thanks her for her work and says he would never want her to change.
The ending
Spoiler: A dance photo leads the team to the community center, where Tommy holds Tina, insists they belong together and admits killing everyone for her, Jason included. Confronted, he threatens to burn the whole town; told that if he loves her he will let her go, he tells Tina he loves her.
Why it stands out
- Tommy Dewey guest-stars as serial arsonist Tommy Wheeler, with Shannon Lucio as his sister, Tina.
- Michael Rooker, who plays Chief Carlson, played the title killer in the 1986 film Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, based on Henry Lee Lucas.