Ding dong, the BAU witch is dead!
Linda Barnes (Kim Rhodes) has been terrorizing the BAU for weeks on Criminal Minds, but the team was able to regroup at their lowest point to finally bring her down. Barnes tried her best to split up the team, but even reassigning members or forcing them into retirement couldn't break them apart.
She put herself in charge of the remaining BAU members but denied them going to investigate any of the cases they brought her, forcing J.J. (A.J. Cook), Simmons (Daniel Henney) and Alvez (Adam Rodriguez) to basically twiddle their thumbs while innocent people were murdered by unsubs.
Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness) was reassigned to Cyber Crimes and discovered that one of her suspects was hoarding photos of women being kidnapped and murdered. She passed it along to her colleagues and they regrouped in rogue fashion to try and bring in the unsub capturing pretty brunettes in the D.C. area. The team reassembled afterhours knowing if they got caught Barnes would fire them all, but the pleasure of working together encouraged them to persist.
Criminal Minds' Adam Rodriguez Says You'll Laugh at the Team's Darkest Moment
It looked like Barnes would have all the ammunition she needed to shut the team down when they realized they needed access to one of her old cases, which they believed the unsub was connected to. J.J. had to reveal the team was investigating, which cost her her badge. However, the unsub then kidnapped a senator's daughter, adding a lot more profile to the case.
Garcia's computer hacker skills and Prentiss' (Paget Brewster) logic were able to help the team locate the senator's daughter before she died from an inflicted overdose, and the senator couldn't be more grateful. It was a team effort by the BAU, so he had Prentiss reinstated as a sign of gratitude, which gave her full hiring authority to throw Barnes under the bus and give J.J. her job back.
The senator wasn't too pleased to hear how Barnes had interfered with the team and he instructed the FBI director to make sure she kept her hands off of the BAU unit. The team came back together and we finally got our happy ending -- hopefully having learned their lesson about playing by the rules better. You know, until someone else gets gruesomely murdered in next week's episode.
Criminal Minds airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on CBS.
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