…and Back (Season 4, Episode 26)
Premise: On an Ontario pig farm, the BAU uncovers dozens of victims and races to find the brother of a paralyzed doctor before he kills a kidnapped girl.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 4, Episode 26
- Unsub
- Mason Turner (Garret Dillahunt), Lucas Turner (Paul Rae)
- Location
- Sarnia, Ontario, Canada
- 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)
- Closing quote
- “Like I said, sometimes there are no words, no clever quotes to neatly sum up what’s happened that day. Sometimes the day just ends.” (read by Hotch)
- Guest stars
- Sharif Atkins as William Hightower, Lily Kershaw as Kelly, John Lacy as Officer Jeff Bedwell, Rowena King as Det. Tay Benning, C. Thomas Howell as George Foyet
- Ripped from the headlines
- Mason Turner was reportedly based on Robert Pickton, a real-life serial killer who ran a pig farm with his brother. Unlike Turner, Pickton was not paralyzed, and his brother was never charged; Pickton was killed by another inmate in May 2024 while serving a life sentence.
- Director
- Edward Allen Bernero
- Writers
- Edward Allen Bernero
Summary
The Case
“…and Back” resumes at the Ontario farm, where Mason Turner turns out to be a quadriplegic. Bedwell, sure the BAU was wrong, moves to reclaim Hightower until agents find a bloody handprint near the pig pens and a bin of bloody shoes in every size, far more than ten victims’ worth. Reid warns that pigs eat anything, so there may be no bodies, though the process is slow enough that Kelly is probably still alive. Mason blames everything on his brother Lucas, says Lucas beat him when he once tried to call for help, and warns that Lucas is huge and violent and should be shot on sight, which makes the agents wonder if he wants his brother silenced.
Lucas, childlike but quick to rage, holds Kelly in an underground hunting shelter and waits for Mason’s calls, which can’t reach him there. Kelly, frightened and sick, slowly wins him over as a friend. Reid finds where Lucas sleeps in the barn and reads his drawings as signs of autism or an intellectual disability, not psychosis. Morgan oversees the evidence and clashes with Detective Benning over Detroit’s failure to look for Lee, and Hightower finds an item of his sister’s. With a warrant, Garcia cracks Mason’s laptop and uncovers crude, failed experiments on the victims meant to cure his paralysis. Mason dismisses the dead as useless to society, scoffs that no jury will convict a man who can’t move, and admits Lucas pushed him from the barn loft years ago when he wanted to sell the farm.
The Team
Morgan tells Prentiss that the brothers killed 89 people while the BAU never knew, and that the work will never end, and Reid asks Hotch if he ever senses a case will end badly. Hotch’s closing narration asks how many more times his team can look into the abyss, and it is cut short when George Foyet, the Reaper, tells Hotch he should have made a deal, followed by a gunshot.
The ending
Spoiler: Kelly persuades Lucas to let her step outside, his phone comes back on, and she reaches Garcia for a moment before he grabs it. Garcia traces the signal to the woods less than half a mile west. As the agents close in, Lucas confesses to Kelly that he pushed Mason, and she calls out to them from the hidden shelter; they order Lucas to raise his hands. Hotch’s narration then says that both brothers are dead, that Kelly will go home but never be a child again, and that Hightower sacrificed what remained of himself to avenge Lee.
Why it stands out
- The season ends on a cliffhanger: Foyet, the Boston Reaper, gets into Hotch’s apartment and appears to shoot him, and Hotch’s fate stays unknown until the next season opens.
- Instead of closing with a famous quotation, Hotch’s narration begins by saying that some days have no clever quotes to sum them up.
- Lucas Turner, the childlike brother who cares for Mason, has been likened to Lennie Small in Of Mice and Men.