'Criminal Minds' Season 10 Spoilers, Plot News: Episode 18 Recap 'Rock Creek Park'
On this week's episode of "Criminal Minds," a congressman's wife gets kidnapped, and the BAU investigates his political enemies as possible suspects.
Congressman Benjamin Troy's wife, Sophie, is kidnapped in broad daylight. The BAU realizes that if they don't find her soon, her abductors could manipulate the congressman into doing a lot of things, such as not lending his support to a particular bill.
Later, the team is baffled when the kidnappers drop off a ransom note demanding $20 million in exchange for Sophie. The note goes on to say that if the money is not delivered by midnight, then they'll kill the congressman's wife. The team thinks that the demand makes no sense, because how would they know if Ben has access to that much money? Ben says that all the money that he has was from the campaign, and it's not possible for him to get that to save Sophie.
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It's revealed that the kidnapping was not done out of political reasons—it has been personal all along. It turns out that Ben's brother, Paul, owes some Russian drug dealers some money and it's taking so long for him to pay it that he asks Ben to take care of it for him.
In exchange for the favor, Paul promises Ben that he won't tell Sophie that Ben has been sleeping with an intern. However, Ben has been faithful to Sophie since they got married. He did date the intern briefly, but that was before they got married. The intern refuses to leave him alone though and starts threatening to kill herself in order to get Ben's attention.
It also happens that Ben's mother never approved of Sophie, so she arranged for kidnappers to kill Sophie so that Ben could marry someone else, hopefully this time someone she likes. Moreover, she orchestrated the kidnapping to create sympathy and boost Ben's visibility with his approval ratings waning. But upon realizing that her scheme could hurt her son's career, she gives in and calls the kidnappers to release Sophie.
"Criminal Minds" airs on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on CBS.
