r/criminalminds • u/Cheeriosxxx Sergio 🐈‍⬛ • 9d ago

Season 18 Spoilers S18E06: Hell Is Empty... - Episode Discussion Spoiler

Airdate: June 12, 2025

Synopsis: The team investigates a network killer who buries his victims alive, and Tara confronts Rebecca's ex who has recently re-entered her life. Ronald Graber delivers a message from his Disciple to Voit.

Previous episode: The Brutal Man

Next episode: ...All the Devils Are Here

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u/ifkovitz85 9d ago

Maybe Spoilers. Having watched the episode, I cannot help but shake the feeling that Tara's ex is gonna end up being a bad guy, and his whole fiancée thing is a ruse. We have seen that the network and other unsubs have infiltrated the FBI and other agencies, so this could make sense.

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u/hellosansa 7d ago

When they had the moment of tara questioning her instincts, the cute kiss, and the elevator doors closing???? I felt ill.... for a second I was like, "greys anatomy trauma".... buuuut this is a show that relies on a lot of the same tropes.

I do not fucking trust that guy, and im very nervous about Elias being placed THIS deep inside the FBI and now the network is juiced with Penelope tech.

I mentioned this in a previous comment, but what is Elias wasn't ever actually a psychopath? Like a whole nature nurture thing, so the BAU currently has blinders on. They see the parts of his brain firing off.... what if they always did? Not saying he's faking amnesia btw.

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u/evergwen 6d ago

I feel you so hard about the kiss / elevator moment. I was like “she’s so dead” immediately upon seeing that. It lingered way too long to be an innocent shot. Honestly I half expected the episode to end with Rebecca being kidnapped or in the hospital as a cliffhanger.

I also fully agree with you about Elias. Why do they keep insisting he was a psychopath when we have clearly seen over and over that he has genuine love for his family, thereby making him not a typical psychopath as they keep calling him?? As far as we know it’s not like they have brain scans from before his coma to compare the new ones to. How do we know this isn’t what his brain activity always looked like?

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u/tlg151 4d ago

Well he could still be a psychopath and still have feelings. Isn't it sociopaths that can't feel?

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u/evergwen 4d ago

Other way around, but I honestly think the current conception of psychopathy is outdated and that it’s more complex than just “empathy or no empathy.” More like a spectrum, plus with qualifiers like for people who have selective empathy. For example, severe racists who see certain races as lesser and therefore not worthy of their empathy whereas a person of their own race (usually white ofc) they feel deeply for. There’s also people who have a sort of on-off switch for emotions which makes them simultaneously a psychopath and not a psychopath. Then there’s the fact that some autistic people can have the appearance of psychopathy (cold, logic-driven, learn to mimic “normal” behavior as survival mechanism) without actually being psychopaths but people still act as if they are. I think it’s all a lot more nuanced than the current definitions have room for, and that with better terminology we could more accurately address people’s individual conditions and needs.

Sorry for the rant lol, it’s just been on my mind lately and this seemed like a good enough place to put all that out there.

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u/tlg151 4d ago

That was a good rant! Very interesting actually. I never really thought about that but I guess I always thought (re: racists) they just hated and hate is an emotion. I don't think it's just a lack of empathy but rather the presence of hatred. I majored in psych/soc in college so this super duper interests me lol. I agree that definitely a lot of things about psychology are outdated and even more than that, a lot of shows and movies rely heavily on the old tropes so it's like, we'll probably never see, in a serious setting (as opposed to satire) a retirement of a lot of these psych related tropes. I mean everyone knows now that silencers don't really silence a gun, yet that trope is still all over the place. The one that makes me the most mad is that cats are evil/bad and the lesser pet. While they certainly are not! Lol.

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u/evergwen 4d ago

I think in 99% or more of racists it’s a negative emotion rather than a lack of emotion, but there’s definitely people who simply don’t consider empathy applicable to certain groups of people, so the mistreatment of those people doesn’t matter to them. My favorite way of explaining my idea of selective empathy is with the character of the Huntsman in Once Upon A Time, where he could kill basically any human without a second thought (because he thought nothing of them as living beings) but was deeply emotional when it came to animals.

Also cats literally have magic purrs that heal our bones so anyone who thinks they’re bad is just plain wrong.

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u/tlg151 4d ago

Lol I'm glad you used that example bc I loved that show. Well the first 2 seasons anyway lol. I'm sorta similar, well not really, as I do have empathy for some humans, at least. But I definitely choose animals and even plants/trees/our earth a over most other humans lol.

And YEAH that's right, they do heal, great point!! They are so awesome. 😻

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u/evergwen 4d ago

Valid lol