Risky Business (Season 5, Episode 13)
Premise: A run of teen hangings in rural Wyoming looks like suicide until the BAU finds an online choking contest and the adult secretly running it.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 13
- Unsub
- Wilson Summers (John Pyper-Ferguson)
- Location
- Uinta County, Wyoming
- 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
- “Life is a game. Play it. Life is too precious. Do not destroy it.” (Mother Teresa, read by JJ)
- Closing quote
- “Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn.” (C.S. Lewis, read by JJ)
- Guest stars
- Michael Bolten as Christopher, Clare Carey as Sheriff Rhonda Samuel (credited as Sheriff Samuels), Christopher Weir as Mr. Leake, Lauren Letherer as Mrs. Leake, D.C. Douglas as Mr. Krouse
- Director
- Rob Spera
- Writers
- Jim Clemente
Summary
The Case
“Risky Business” starts when JJ takes a call from Sheriff Rhonda Samuel of Uinta County, Wyoming: four healthy teenagers with no history of trouble have been found hanged in their rooms on two straight Friday nights, among them Trish Leake and Ryan Krouse, who was revived but died days later. JJ talks Hotch into an equivocal death investigation, and Garcia flies out to search the teens’ computers. Garcia gets past a program hiding Trish’s files and finds that Trish and Ryan both visited a choking game site the night they died. Its host pits schools against each other: players choke themselves alone with a ligature and upload webcam video, and the school with the most time wins this Friday. Garcia keeps the site running to trace its creator.
The first profile points to a lonely teenage boy. During a talk to students about how Ryan died, a goth student, Christopher Summers, bolts and is caught; his neck shows bruises of different ages. His father, Wilson, an EMT with the fire department, says the boy has struggled since his mother died. His laptop is heavily encrypted, and he barely speaks until Garcia wins him over, telling him she lost her parents at about his age. Christopher gives Garcia his pirate earring before his father ends the interview. His late mother’s name, Cynthia, turns out to be the site password, but after Garcia shuts it down, videos keep arriving through other servers. The posts show two writers, one teen and one adult. Christopher’s records show repeated strangling and CPR bruising, and his mother was rushed to the ER again and again without a diagnosis. The team decides Wilson is the unsub, a case of Munchausen by proxy who lures teens into the game and works Friday nights so he can answer the calls. A search of his house turns up dozens of discs.
The earring tells the team Christopher plans to die. Guessing that Wilson will take him to Cynthia’s grave, the agents head to Oaklawn Cemetery, where a chapel has power for the download; Garcia has swapped in a fake site that gives Wilson nothing but static. They burst in as he is choking his son and save the boy.
The Team
Hotch thanks JJ for pushing to take the case. She tells him that when she was 11, her sister gave her a favorite necklace and said she loved her no matter what, and that she thinks of her every day. She assures him that in time, remembering someone you have lost stops hurting.
The ending
Spoiler: The sheriff thanks the team and goes to tell the families the deaths were not intended. Later, Reid picks apart the fable behind a star puzzle.
Why it stands out
- John Pyper-Ferguson guest-stars as Wilson Summers, the father behind the viral choking game.
- The real school in Evanston, Wyoming, is Evanston High School; the town was founded by James Evans.