This first part of the Criminal Minds Season Finale reunited Agent Hotchner with his brother Sean in New York in an episode appropriately entitled Brothers Hotchner.  This one had victims’ blood boiling, literally.

The Breakdown

This episode of Criminal Minds had Agent Hotchner and Jack spending some time in New York with Beth.  After receiving a call from his brother Sean, Hotchner headed out to help.  His brother had just witnessed a woman die in the night club in which he bartended.  Although police were calling it an overdose, Sean thought there was more to it.

The woman who died at the club bled out from her eyes and other orifices as she crashed to the ground.  Agent Hotchner’s brother Sean explained that his girlfriend had recently suffered the same death.  His ex was not a drug user, so he did not believe the overdose conclusions.  Hotchner saw a case developing because there were more deaths of the same result and enlisted the rest of the team who soon flew to New York.

A girl and her parents sat down to dinner.  As her parents drank from glasses of wine with dinner, the girl looked up at them.  They each began bleeding from their eyes, nose, etc.  The BAU definitely had a case on their hands.

The team found out that there was a new drug on the street which was formerly not available in the U.S.  It was a form of ecstasy with meth used to “water it down”.  The thought was that the user would not feel the effects of the ecstasy quick enough, so they would ingest more.  By the time they felt the effects, the meth had already done its job.  Those who ingested the drug would literally heat up to a point of their blood boiling from the inside out.

Upon questioning Sean, Hotchner did not feel that he got far so he asked Rossi to step in as an objective agent.  Rossi was able to pull more info out of Sean.  Sean was a former drug user; apparently clean for a few months.  His drug of choice was ecstasy.

Since several of the victims were not drug users, the team was finally able to narrow it down to tampered wine.  Sean’s night club held the key.  So, he went undercover for the BAU and was able to pull out his bosses.  The drug had been injected into bottles of wine at their night club and some of that wine had gotten out – sold outside of the club.  Hotchner’s brother was unknowingly involved and unfortunately taken into custody.

This episode led the way into the second part of the Season Finale entitled The Replicator.

The Analysis

This episode of Criminal Minds was a pretty good one.  We got to see the “family guy” side of Hotch; not just with Beth and Jack, but with his estranged brother as well.

The idea for the tainted drug being injected into the wine bottles was a decent concept.  The body getting so hot that the blood boiled.  And, the visual way that the victims died was a bit morbid.  What is creepier than bleeding from your eyes?  The scene at the dinner table with the family was the eeriest one.  The poor little girl looked up only to see this happening to her parents.  It reminded me of something from a horror movie.

I also liked the lead into the second part of the Season Finale, The Replicator.  This was definitely one of the better episodes of the season, in my opinion.