Criminal Minds

The first scene in “Conflicted” has a doctor speaking to a “woman” smoking a cigarette. I put woman in quotations because I knew it wasn’t. Did anyone else know this? Was it supposed to be a big surprise? Dr. Reid is there and tells the patient that he is looking for Adam, that she needs to do the right thing and help him find Adam. And boom, you know Adam is the other personality that is lost inside this one.

The action shifts to a spring break scene in South Padre. A young man finds out that his girlfriend will be delayed, so of course he finds the first substitute he can - a “woman” by the elevator. More quotation marks! But it very purposefully does not show her face. The camera makes a point to show only her back - and heads up to his room. Then we see him tied to the bed, face down, with a plastic bag over his head.

And then there’s Adam, who works at the hotel. He is sent to clean the room, which he does, oblivious to the dead body in the closet. He opens it to clean it, noticing that clothes are still in it (do college students on spring break hang their clothes in a closet and fold them in the dresser this neatly?), and finds the body. Turns out there was another from the same hotel found in the same position. Later, Reid and Morgan question Adam about this - he come upon him smoking pot, which he says is for his migraines. He asks Reid how long it will take before he can close his eyes without seeing the bad things. He’s clearly affected by what he’s seen.

The team discusses the case and we find that the victims were sexually assaulted. They’re wondering if maybe the victims were gay and that’s how/why they met the unsub. Through their investigation, they discard this theory and develop one in which the unsub is working with a partner. A woman lures the men in and then the man ties them up and rapes them.

At this point in the show, I remember thinking, “Was it supposed to be this obvious? Was it not supposed to be a big ‘aha’?” Anyway, another victim is found at another hotel. The team thinks that the unsubs work at the first hotel and saw them investigating, which is why they switched. So they focus on the hotel in which Adam works. As the team is thinking that a pair of killers is at work, we see Julie. We see her relationship with Adam, and this seems to point us in the direction of her as the woman half of the killing team. We also find out that one of the victims had accosted another employee and Adam had stepped in. This causes the team to look more closely at him.

We find out about his past - his mother had been severely abuse by her husband. After her “sudden death,” Adam was left with his stepfather, who began beating him. This was ongoing, and Adam was sent to the hospital multiple times. The victims mirror his “alpha male” stepfather. The connection between Adam and Julies is one of sympathy. Julie has helped Adam, providing him with money and work, because she was raped and understands his pain. This is supposed to lead us into thinking that in fact Julie and Adam are working as a team to kill these men. I almost changed my mind and thought that maybe that was the case, especially when Adam was in custody and we see the same set up at a club. Julie is dancing and a man approaches her. She’s about to leave with him when Rossi and Hotch come for her.

The scene flashes forward to Reid and the “woman.” She says that Adam is in a better place. Again, we flashback to Reid’s interrogation of Adam. He doesn’t remember the fight, but then says he does. He does and he doesn’t. Both he and Julie were given polygraphs, which they passed. One thing that I noticed was that they were asking them questions that required answers other than yes or no. I didn’t think they did this, and the only question Adam flubbed up on was one involving a geometrical equation. Both are let go, and Adam makes eye contact with Reid for the first time. Reid watches the video of the fight and realizes that Adam wasn’t really Adam then, nor was he when he made eye contact or answered the geometry question. Reid thinks that when Morgan asked the question, Adam’s alter personality stepped in - she knew the answer but realized that Adam would not, so she lied.

The next scene has Julie finding Adam’s stash of woman’s clothes. She confronts him on the roof where he is in terrible pain. All of a sudden, it’s Amanda. The voice changes and the look changes. Jackson Rathbone was a great choice because his look is so versatile. He is a beautiful person, but not an alpha male, to borrow that term from the show. He can look very different. Anyway, Julie is attacked, and Amanda runs away.

The team finds Amanda at the home of Adam’s stepfather. Amanda is holding him with a plastic bag over his head and a knife to his throat. She says she has to protect Adam. Finally, she lets him go, but Adam is gone. Amanda has taken over.

Reid’s affected by this because he feels like he should’ve been able to save Adam, to keep him from being subsumed into Amanda. He feels like the good person is in there somewhere - like Tobias. (From season two - still my favorite episode.) At the end, Reid is visiting Amanda and says he’ll keep visiting until he finds Adam. Amanda says he’ll be waiting for a very long time.

I didn’t like the music that was playing at the end; it was a bit on the cheesy side. But I did love the quote. Stephen King: “…Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.” I like how they aren’t afraid to not have a happy ending or one that is neatly tied up.

Overall, I liked this episode. What I particularly liked was Jackson Rathbone - I thought he was the perfect choice. I am also fascinated with dissociative identity disorder, or multiple personality disorder. It affects from .01 to 1 percent of the general population and most often occurs as the result of severe recurrent abuse, which is what Adam had experienced as a child.

What did you think of “Conflicted”?

Updated: The directing was mentioned in the comments (check it out and see what you think) - Jason Alexander, aka the freakshow from “Masterpiece,” aka George Costanza directed this episode of CM.