IMDb Summary: A high-priced call girl that is killing her clients must be found and stopped.
When one ponders serial killers, sympathy is not what comes to mind. Confusion at how a human could possibly commit such brutality, devastation at the results, fury at both the murderer and the world for making them such--yes. But sympathy? Sympathy for the killer rather than the victims? Rare. Very rare. But in "Pleasure Is My Business," an unapologetically raw episode of crime show extraordinaire Criminal Minds, sympathy is on the mind.
The episode is centered on big league call girl Megan Kane. She's beautiful, versatile, and deadly. The first scene shows her scantily clad, walking towards a man of high stature and low morals. He takes a sip of champagne.
And dies.
Megan watches her poison drain the life out of him as she receives a call engendering another "appointment."
Cut to Special Agent Aaron "Hotch" Hotchner speaking with Patrick Jackson in Texas, the man in charge of a case of serial murders pertaining to--guess who--a high-end hooker. The case is a delicate one. If any of Megan's clients become known to the public as such, their careers as judges/senators/etc. are down the drain. Acknowledgement is dangerous to their reputations, but Megan is dangerous to their wellbeing. As such, Hotchner and his team will have to tread lightly.
Meanwhile, Hotch boards an elevator up to his hotel room, where he makes polite small talk with a professional-looking blonde woman typing on a Blackberry. Like stated: versatile, because little does he know, the woman just feet from him is the one he's about to so desperately seek.
The episode's concept in itself is unique to both Criminal Minds and society in general. Female serial killers are far less abundant than that of males, and it's proven that their motives vary greatly. Most male serial killers are sexually motivated--in it for the chase and subsequent torture when faced with a victim of their sexual preference. Child molesters, too, fall into this category.
"99% of abducted children who are killed die within the first 24 hours, 75% within the first three hours." - Dr. Spencer Reid in the episode "Seven Seconds"
However, in "Pleasure Is My Business," the scenario of the female serial killer is explored in more depth--along with her motives.
Normally--and as with Megan--the female has to have suffered a personal affront by her victim, such as physical or emotional abuse. In her case, the offense was at the hand of her father--Andrew Kane.
As discovered as the episode continues, Megan herself came from regal breeding before her father left her mother for his own call girl, cutting off both her and her mother emotionally and financially. Ironically, all Megan has left of her father is the purity ring he gave her and the list of clients she bought from another escort with Andrew Kane's name glaringly in the repertoire.
As clients are crossed off the list and await burials, Aaron and his team race to find their murderer. Their major break in the case comes in the form of marriage--those of the defunct variety. Penelope Garcia, the team's technology analyst, uncovers the fact that all of the victims had several marriages under their belts, all of which for they were not paying alimony, despite their excessive riches.
"18 cars, 6 houses and 3 boats. Can you even boat in Dallas?" - Dr. Spencer Reid
It's revealed that Megan--in a psychologically disappointed state--is taking out her loss of a father figure on those who are similar to him: those who ignore their families in favor of a loose lifestyle and unreliable ethos.
As she "devolves," her intent to kill those only like her father weakens, and she no longer sticks to her profile. She talks with Hotchner on the phone, shooting another man--one whose wife died of cancer almost a year previously--as they speak. The need to catch her before she unravels further intensifies.
The team--made up of Dr. Spencer Reid, Agents Derek Morgan, Jennifer Jareau, Emily Prentiss, David Rossi, and, most importantly, Aaron Hotchner--finally come to realize Megan and Andrew Kane are going to meet at a pricey hotel, for Andrew wants to manipulate his daughter into giving up the list of her clients.
She gives her father the phone assumed to hold the information, and he escapes moments before the agents storm the hotel room.
Megan sits on the balcony, an empty champagne glass beside her. Poison. Dying slowly, she begs Aaron to stay with her for her last minutes. She gives him the memory chip containing the names of clients from the phone she surrendered to her father.
She asks him to reveal the immoral men's names to the public. Her objective is unveiled. She was a little girl left abandoned, and what she became is at the fault of not her but her father.
The viewer, at such a point, is overcome inevitably with pity and sympathy. The kills were not to be justified, of course, but the mental damage inflicted upon Megan due to the deprivation of true family and warmth do make one watching sad for her.
"You're the first man I've ever met that didn't let me down," Megan says to Hotch with her last breath.
And even with the unspeakable crimes she's committed, a melancholy sigh escapes the viewer when her eyes close for good.
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