During thr half term, I watched Criminal Minds (Season 2, episode 7: Noth Mammom).
It is a well-known American crime tv drama about a group of profilers/detectives who analyze the nation's most dangerous criminal minds in an effort to anticipate their next moves before they strike again. However in this episode they work on a kidnapping case in a small town in Pensylvania as a favour to a fried of JJ (a detective).
Judy, a mother of a teenage girl, pleads her old friend J.J to help her find her daughter, Polly and her 2 best friends, Kelly and Brooke.
The three teenage girls were the stars of their school soccer team and are kidnapped after the boys soccer pep rally. JJ eventually convinces her team to take on the case after two identical voice messages from Polly and Kelly are left to their parents saying that they are going on a roadtrip. The team finds the messages unrealistic and travel to Pensylvania to find the girls.
Meanwhile, the girls have been locked in a basement and Brooke becomes seriously weak and ill. They are starving, thirsty and extremely cold.
The team of investigators work with the local sherrif to track down the girls (whose mobiles have been mysteriously turned off) and find evidence such as several cigarette buds with the same DNA, right outside Brooke's house which lead them to believe that the Soccer coach (whose DNA matches the buds) has kidnapped the girls. It soon comes out that the soccer coach was also once arrested for having a under-age prostitute. This leads the team of detectives and the audience that he must be the kidnapper, however the coach has an alabi as he was caught on video at the pep rally when the girls went missing, therefore it could not be him.
Here red-herrings and multiple suspects have been used effectively to lead the audience in the wrong direction, keeping them intregued.
After finding other pieces of evidence such as the girls soccer shirts, it becomes clear that the evidence has been planted to try and make it seem as if other people had kidnapped the girls.
During this time, the girls are starving and Brooke's health is slowly deteriorating. The girls have been told that only two of them can leave and the third will be killed. They must choose which two are able to leave. Brooke overhears Kelly planning to leave Brooke behind and tells Polly.
Kelly finally convinces Poly that it's best if they go and leave Brooke behind as she is very weak and will die soon anyway.
Once they decide this, the kidnapper throws two hammers into the basement, making it clearthat the two girls must kill Brooke themselves if they want to leave.
Back at the police station, the team are trying to find out who the kidnapper is then become aware that their collegue has tracked the girls cellphones and one was outside the station.
The audience see two girls being dropped off outside the station but you can only see Polly's face, which makes the audience assume that the second girl is Kelly.
To our surprise, the second girl is Brooke and it seems like she killed Kelly as she was aware of Kelly's plans to sacrifice her.
After this, the team figure out that the kidnapper wanted to hurt the parents by turning the girls against each other. It seems like the kidnapper is someone who was on the football team with the Dad's when they were in highschool.
JJ takes a photograph to Polly who points out a man in it. This is the same man (a garbage collector) who gave the investigators the 'tip-off' of where the evidence was to make it seem like he was innocent and other people were the kidnapper.
The team go to the rubbish man's basemeant and find him in there with Kelly laying dead on the floor.
They arrest him while he explains how the rest of his football team mates were successful while he was a rubbish man and how he kidnapped the girls in order to get revenge on their fathers.
The clever use of red-herrings and multiple suspects makes this programme intreguing to watch. It was the first time I had ever seen Criminal Minds, and now I would like to watch it again as I can appreciate the conventions that it uses to make it a crime drama e.g evidence, but can also seem unique compared to other crime dramas.
Typical scenes would be the interrogation room, the police office, the lab ad the crime scene (in this case, the basement).
The motive was revenge.
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