Recap / Criminal Minds S 3 E 9 Penelope

Penelope

Garcia has been shot and is fighting for her life in the ER. The police at first assume it's a robbery gone wrong, but her teammates don't think it adds up. When she wakes up, she tells them it was her date.

The team profiles him as a narcissist who went to law school, but isn't a practicing lawyer. They discover that Garcia has been hacking the case list to mark cases concerning the loved ones of people from her grief support group as having higher priority.

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Tropes

• Anger Born of Worry: Rossi gets progressively angrier throughout the episode only because the UnSub attempted to murder a member of his team. He reminds Garcia that she is surrounded by people who care about her and want to catch her attempted killer and he demands her to tell him what she’s hiding from them.
• Ascended Extra: Kevin Lynch first appears in this episode as a temporary replacement for Penelope Garcia while she's suspended from duty. At the end of the episode, the two begin dating, and he becomes a recurring character for the rest of the series.
• Bleed 'Em and Weep: JJ appears to be in a Heroic BSoD after killing Battle, though she doesn't actually cry.
• Boom, Headshot!: How Battle goes down, JJ slipping behind him and shooting him in the head through the glass BAU door.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Sociable, friendly JJ is the one who takes out the unsub. It's easy to forget that while she's the media liaison, she's still an FBI agent. JJ herself notes how she felt no hesitation in the moment.
• Declaration of Protection: Once Morgan drops Garcia off at home, she assumes he'll head home for the night, since she has police protection outside. Morgan, however, declares that, cops or no, he'll be sleeping on her couch as extra guard until her shooter is caught. Good thing, too, as this ends up saving her life when Battle returns later that night to attempt to kill her again.
• Does Not Like Guns: When the UnSub comes to Garcia's apartment to kill her, Morgan pursues him, and gives Garcia his spare gun to defend herself in case the killer manages to double back and get past him. Garcia tries to refuse it for this reason, but Morgan insists.
  Garcia: I don't believe in guns.
  Morgan: Trust me, they are very real.
• Dueling Hackers: When Garcia is temporarily suspended from the BAU and needs to access her files, she engages in one of these with Kevin, the FBI tech who's substituting for her and does his job by attempting to prevent her hack. They go back and forth a few times, but Garcia ultimately emerges victorious. However, Kevin does well enough to genuinely impress her.
• Engineered Heroics: Battle himself secretly staged the drive-by shootings that made him a public hero.
• Geeky Turn-On: Penelope and Kevin are each very impressed with the other's skills during their hacking battle, such that he asks her out at the end of the episode and she accepts.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Rossi gets very pushy (verbally) with Garcia, who is still recovering from being shot, when he suspects that there's something she's withholding from the team and is pressing her for information, but it's only because he really wants to catch the guy who shot her. Moreover, he's right, and Garcia telling them this information does indeed allow them to determine the UnSub's identity.
• Killer Cop: Jason Clark Battle, the episode's UnSub, is a deputy sheriff who stages drive-by shootings so he could be a hero.
• Meaningful Name:
  • The UnSub's surname is Battle. His first name Jason is also a classic bad-guy name.
  • The episode name, "Penelope", is also this, since it's a major Character Focus episode for Penelope Garcia. This starts a long-running series tradition of naming episodes after a major character (either their real name or an alias) who receives a lot of focus therein.
• My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: As the doctors are trying to revive Garcia, her memories from her childhood are shown right up to the point where she was shot.
• Platonic Declaration of Love: Platonic Life-Partners Morgan and Garcia give these to each other when he stays at her apartment to protect her from another potential murder attempt.
• Playing Possum: Garcia held her breath when she heard her would-be murderer leaning over her so he would think she was dead.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: Battle uses a revolver. The BAU discusses this, and believe he uses it because it does not leave a shell casing behind. Also discussed when Battle buys a revolver from a gun store. The store owner comments that most people go for the greater number of bullets in a semi, only for Battle to counter that doesn't matter if you don't miss.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: After a cop assigned as protective detail to Garcia is killed by the UnSub, the police chief in charge of the investigation says, despite the BAU being suspended from investigating Garcia's shooting, he'll take any help they can give so he doesn't have to tell another cop's wife her husband was killed in the line of duty.
  Hotch: We're just here to comfort a friend.
  Police Chief: Yeah, well I've got to tell a good friend's wife her husband was killed tonight. I don't care what your office says, any help you can give is fine with me.
  • At the beginning of the episode, Hotch flat-out tells the team that none of them are to touch any new cases until they find out who shot Garcia, protocol be damned.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy / Revealing Cover Up: Battle targeting Garcia when she flagged three drive-bys he was responsible for and became paranoid that she would make the connection. She actually wasn't on to him and was just tagging them as favors for her support group. By shooting her, he brought the BAU onto his back.
• Shoot the Hostage Taker: JJ shoots Battle when he takes a hostage in the BAU offices.
• Smug Snake: The killer acts like this constantly. It's remarked that even after being hailed as a hero, his superiors held off on promoting him because they felt something was off. His smarmy behavior is likely why.
• Stalker without a Crush: Played with. The UnSub tricked Garcia into thinking he had a crush on her in the previous episode, but the BAU think he's been stalking her for a while and that he tried to kill her because he thought she was stalking him as she kept moving cases to the top of the priority list that he was involved in.
• Worthy Opponent: Garcia and Kevin both see each other this way after their hacking duel. Once Kevin finds out what Garcia was doing with her hack, he secretly sends her video footage when he realizes that Battle, who is currently in the BAU offices, is the UnSub, allowing her to alert the rest of the team.

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