The Fight (Season 5, Episode 18)
Premise: Sam Cooper persuades Hotch to defy orders and let his Red Cell team join the BAU’s case in San Francisco, where a former convict abducts fathers and daughters and makes the fathers fight for their lives.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 18
- Unsub
- John Vincent Bell (Jason Brooks)
- Location
- San Francisco, California
- 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), Erin Strauss (Jayne Atkinson)
- Opening quote
- “I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.” (Mother Teresa, read by Hotch)
- Guest stars
- Forest Whitaker as Sam Cooper, Michael Kelly as Jonathan “Prophet” Simms, Matt Ryan as Mick Rawson, Beau Garrett as Gina LaSalle, Jason Wiles as Ben McBride
- Director
- Richard Shepard
- Writers
- Story: Edward Allen Bernero; Story & teleplay: Chris Mundy
Summary
The Case
“The Fight” begins with a badly beaten man found shot in the head in San Francisco’s Presidio Park, and with a stranger who knows 14-year-old Jane McBride’s name taking her and her father, Ben, with a threat to kill them both. Agent Sam Cooper, who heads the Red Cell unit, briefs Hotch: for the past two years a homeless man has turned up beaten and shot in the park, three more followed over three days, and then a father and his brunette daughter were found dead. He believes the same killer is behind both, but the FBI’s leadership has refused to send his team. The captor tells Ben that both of them will live if he hands over Jane, and Ben refuses.
The BAU works the bodies, while Cooper’s agents, Jonathan “Prophet” Simms, Gina LaSalle and Mick Rawson, comb school absences and find Jane, whose father has missed two days of work. Ben’s wife, Leslie, says the abductor warned her off the police and left a video of the first park victim on her porch. Skin under the victims’ nails and welts from rubber bullets suggest the transients are made to fight Ben, and that the unsub learned to control prisoners while locked up himself. Prophet takes Rossi to San Quentin, where an old acquaintance, Nelson G, describes a big white inmate who went wild after his daughter died, challenged men to fights to the death and served out his term in solitary. The McBrides saw a Tenderloin family counselor who also evaluated parents for social services. Garcia’s lost-custody list from that office, teenage deaths on the killing dates and a lead from Prophet point to John Vincent Bell, who beat to death a social services agent sent to remove his daughter, Mandy; she died after a car crash while he served seven years.
At Bell’s family’s closed gym on Hall Street, a battered Ben tells Jane he loves her. To save him, Jane agrees to go with Bell, who drags her away just before the agents arrive. From a police helicopter, an agent predicts that a man kept three years in solitary will head for the roof.
The Team
Hotch backs Cooper against the orders of Erin Strauss, and a colleague who has known Cooper for 20 years urges the team to help. When Strauss phones, Cooper takes the blame, tells her she can fire him tomorrow, and keeps working. Afterward she calls him directly to say he did good work, still promising a reprimand for him and Hotch.
The ending
Spoiler: Agents corner Bell on a rooftop, and the standoff ends with Jane safe. Ben will recover and is reunited with Jane and Leslie, and the two teams share drinks.
Why it stands out
- The episode served as the backdoor pilot for the spin-off Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, introducing Forest Whitaker as Sam Cooper and his Red Cell team.
- Jason Wiles, who plays Ben McBride, previously appeared on the series as the unsub in the season 2 episode “Psychodrama.”