The Big Wheel (Season 4, Episode 22)
Premise: When a Buffalo killer sends police a film of a murder ending in a plea for help, the BAU hunts an obsessive-compulsive man who has killed for a decade.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 4, Episode 22
- Unsub
- Vincent Rowlings (Alex O’Loughlin)
- Location
- Buffalo, New York
- 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
- “In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.” (Francis Bacon, read by Hotch)
- Closing quote
- “No matter how dark the moment, love and hope are always possible.” (George Chakiris, read by Morgan)
- Guest stars
- Jake Cherry as Stanley Wolcott, Erika Alexander as Det. Lynne Henderson, Martha Madison as Kate, Giselle Jones as Alice, Rebecca Avery as Kim Rowlings
- Director
- Rob Hardy
- Writers
- Simon Mirren
Summary
The Case
In “The Big Wheel,” Buffalo police receive an edited film of real estate agent Michelle Watson being stabbed at an open house, shot from the killer’s point of view; at the end he writes “help me.” The team works out that the camera was in his glasses and that an older tape playing in his editing room is badly worn from years of viewing and shows a woman in 1980s clothes. Garcia’s searches help confirm 11 stabbings, Michelle’s included, of blond women in their 30s in places where they felt safe, about one each spring for a decade. Noticing the killer step around sidewalk cracks and turn his sandwich twice, the agents profile a man with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder who sincerely wants to stop but can’t. A date circled twice in Michelle’s planner, the 29th, suggests a plan.
The killer, Vincent, a wedding videographer, sends away an acquaintance, Alice, who drops by his spotless home, but she later recognizes the police sketch on television. The next morning a young woman’s body is found dumped and gently covered, unlike his other victims. A camera shop owner knows the sketch as a customer named Vincent who had tiny cameras fitted to his glasses. Rereading the files, the team singles out the tenth victim, Joyce Wolcott, whose son Stanley was home that night. Morgan and Rossi find Stanley on his birthday: blind from birth, he gets around by echolocation, and his foster mother, Kate, is about to adopt him and move to California. Walked back through the night, he realizes the killer saw him and let him live. Meanwhile a mugger shoots Vincent, who stabs him, and the surviving mugger describes Vincent clicking his tongue.
The ending
Spoiler: The team sees that Vincent learned the clicking from Stanley and that the boy is his plan for the day. Stanley is gone, and there is blood on his windowsill. Kate says Vincent mentored Stanley for over a year and began visiting more after she told him they were moving, the stressor behind Michelle’s murder. Garcia matches the old film to Kim Rowlings, killed at home in 1983; her nine-year-old son, Vincent, filmed it and sat with her body for more than a day. A Ferris wheel Stanley built with Vincent leads the team to a theme park. At the top, Vincent describes the lights, tells Stanley never to wish he were dead and admits he did bad things like his father. The wheel is stopped and Morgan brings Stanley down. Later Stanley asks Morgan whether Vincent killed his mother.
Why it stands out
- Alex O’Loughlin guest-stars as the killer, Vincent, who regrets his murders but is driven by urges he can’t control.
- Two of Vincent’s compulsions, avoiding sidewalk cracks and throwing away a fresh bar of soap after one hand-washing, are shared with Melvin Udall in As Good as It Gets (1997).