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"Supply & Demand" is Episode 24 of Season 6 and happens to be the sixth season finale of "Criminal Minds." It features Nicholas Brendon and A.J. Cook as guest stars.SPOILERS!
The episode begins with a man driving along to Rolling Stone's "Shattered," appropriate for the subject matter we see later. He tries to drive around a slow truck and crashes off a roadside cliff to avoid collision with another vehicle. Although it appears he's the victim in some form, two bodies are discovered in his trunk. With the man suffering from severe head trauma, and a tip from local authorities that a serial killer is on the loose, agents stay in VA to solve the crime for themselves.
"And yet to every bad, there is a worse"- Thomas Hardy
The victims, a boy and a girl, are about age 20 and come from two completely different areas of the US; they have different sorts of torture wounds, suggesting more than one unsub ("Unidentified Subject"). Reid also hypothesizes that the unsubs were committing an organized crime/disposal vs. a first-time murder.
A local agent is called in to assist the BAU. She reveals that she's been tracking for three years an organization that abducts college kids across the country. The traffickers abduct young people, then receive money from outsiders who take pleasure in watching the prisoners tortured (sexually and physically). Although these kids are the traffickers' ticket to cash, agents guess that most likely the acts were getting so depraved and violent that someone went too far, resulting in dead bodies. The local agent reveals that she has agents undercover posing as potential targets for the traffickers, while eventually we learn that one of these agents has gone missing.
The man who crashed his car in the beginning had no cell phone or GPS, raising the question of how he was checking in with his bosses. A medical examiner points out to the agents that despite the victims being a little muddy on their legs, they didn't suffer malnutrition nor were they as dirty as most vagrants are, suggesting they were mostly dragged through a dirt area and were sedated (the girl victim had medicinal abortion substances in her system also). Morgan and Rossi head to a local gas station where the unsub who crashed his car had stopped and discover that he used an outside payphone to call another nearby payphone- again suggesting these unsubs are smart in not getting tracked down, but also suggesting that they are holding their prisoners captive locally.
Meanwhile, we see the undercover agent being held captive in a fenced in, underground area. She is talking with her friend in the cage across from her about how they should plan an escape. The friend is taken downstairs presumably to be sold and/or tortured, until we see that in fact she is the one in charge of the traffickers.
Because the group is tight-knit, sufficient and swift due to the pursuit of money, agents need to figure out the point-of-view of the group's leader (the girl). They realize that this group most likely needed money initially to fund the organization of such an operation, as the entire operation isn't just buy and sell, but also a form of entertainment to them. Through real estate records, agents track down an abandoned warehouse.
Meanwhile the leader of the traffickers goes to converse with the undercover agent, pretending still to be a victim. When the agent reveals that she knows more about the operation than the average Joe, the leader suspects she is a cop, and the agent learns of her deceit. The leader takes her to the "bidding room," where she precedes to play Russian roulette, until the FBI breaks in. Morgan is attacked by one of the guards, but Rossi saves him. They find the undercover agent beaten but alive. The female leader of the group tries to escape by passing off as a victim, but Rossi catches on to her scheme; before she pulls a gun to shoot Rossi, Morgan shoots her first.
"What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do"- Aristotle
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Another mini-theme running through this episode is that certain changes are being made in the BAU. Hodge tells agents that soon they will have alternatives to work elsewhere. In the episode's conclusion, we finally see JJ (A.J. Cook) return, although only to briefly state that she is "coming back." Although "Criminal Minds" fans have been getting adjusted to the switches in the line-up, hopefully the network will keep the main faces of the group for at least another season.
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