Tonight on CBS Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders airs with an all new Wednesday March 16, season 1 episode 1 premiere called “The Harmful One,” and we have your weekly recap below. On tonight’s episode, the International Division of the FBI investigates cases involving Americans abroad. In the opener, three American volunteers in Thailand disappear during a trip to Bangkok.
Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders is an American police procedural series created by Erica Messer that will air on CBS and is produced by The Mark Gordon Company in association with CBS Television Studios and ABC Studios. The production is a spin-off from the successful Criminal Minds series, and will follow an elite team of FBI agents solving cases that involve American citizens on international soil.
On tonight’s episode as per the CBS synopsis, “the International Division of the FBI investigates cases involving Americans abroad. In the opener, three American volunteers in Thailand disappear during a trip to Bangkok. The International Response Team investigates and must gather evidence before a storm washes it away.”
Tonight’s episode looks like it is going it going to be great and you won’t want to miss it, so be sure to tune in for our live coverage of CBS’s Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders at 10:00 PM EST! How excited are you for this upcoming spin-off of the recently successful Criminal Minds? Do you think that the Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders will live up to the expectations and will be as good as Criminal Minds? Sound off in the comment down below and let us know!
Tonight’s episode begins now – Refresh Page often to get the most current updates!
Over sixty-eight million Americans leave the country every year and apparently it’s the International Response Team’s job to help if they ever find themselves in trouble overseas. However, the three Americans that had gone missing in Bangkok had purposely placed themselves in danger on tonight’s first episode of “Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders” when they chose to leave a farm in the middle of nowhere. And at night.
Apparently two college freshmen had heard through the grapevines that they could volunteer at local farms as a way to see the area as well as get fed regularly which would cut down cost. Especially overseas. So the two girls had chosen to volunteer at one farm and had even met a new friend that claimed to know Thailand like the back of his hand. And he had also been an American.
His name was Jeff Little and there had been a reason he had been in Thailand so long. He had actually been brought up on charges of statutory rape back in the states so he had gone backpacking to a foreign country as soon as he could. And he had joined the girls at this one farm where they had appeared to be enjoying themselves yet the conditions there had made them feel as if they should leave early.
Benz, the man in charge of the farm, had an unfortunate tendency of watching one of the girls taking a shower and so she had had enough of that. Laura Johnson had ended up calling her parents after one such incident and had told them about her impossible surroundings at the farm therefore they had wired over enough money to support her in Thailand. And Laura had talked her two friends into joining her because the money could be enough to put all of three of them up in a good hotel.
Yet, Sarah hadn’t wanted to leave with Jeff and Laura. She had felt bad about ditching Benz who only had five whole people to help him with the farm and she had also been mistrustful of Jeff. Jeff and Laura had hooked up together early into their trip and Laura had been the only one to question traveling alone with him at night.
So the only reason Laura left the farm that night was because she hadn’t wanted to leave Sarah alone with a Jeff. But Thailand is considered to be one of the deadliest places for tourist and the three hadn’t even made it back into the city before they were snatched. And IRT was called in to find them, preferably alive.
Only there were several problems with making that happen. The IRT didn’t know if Jeff had done something to the girls and so they didn’t know if they should think about him as another victim, but his parents along with the girls’ had all been notified about their disappearance. And the team ended up needing cultural anthropologist’s help just to navigate the area which was additionally hard with an oncoming monsoon approaching.
So Clara Seger proved to be a great help. She acted as a translator for Jack Garrett who was leading the IRT team and she had helped with the cultural difference when they found Jeff’s body. Jeff like it had been mentioned before was an American but he had died on Thailand soil. And thus the local police wanted to be in charge of what happened next.
Yet, it was their medical examiner that was busy and it had been their decision to simply stick Jeff into a room off the side of their main offices. Thus Jeff’s body which had already been out in the heat for two days was only going to deteriorate even more rapidly without a freezer though the locals didn’t want to hear about another solution. Nor did they want Mae Jarvis to even inspect the body in the meantime.
And so Clara told Mae that if she chose to look without asking questions then she could probably attain evidence without offending anyone. But Mae had seen that Jeff’s body had been left unattended and she took that opportunity to take pictures that she could bring back to her boss. Who like her noticed the odd mark on Jeff’s persons.
Jeff it seems had been marked with a branding iron and that played into the profile the IRT were already building. They team had identified their UnSub as a power assertive offender. He had killed Jeff right away because he had tried to reassert his dominance over the person he believed to the biggest threat to him and then he had branded Jeff to reiterate the man had been his prey. And it had showed the latter part had shown the team that he wasn’t going to kill the girls just for the sake of it.
He was instead going to hunt them!
Which made the IRT realize they still had time to save the girls. They knew the UnSub preferred to hunt at night because that’s when he snatched up the three Americans and so they took what they found to the local police. Who didn’t appear to trust something as nearly impossible to explain as a profile and who also tried to dismiss the idea that they had a serial killer running around in the countryside. Yet, Jack had shown them the picture of the brand mark.
The one the Americans weren’t supposed to know about seeing as they hadn’t been officially allowed near Jeff’s body, but that brand mark had been too important to ignore. So Jack mentioned and their tech support back in the states had found the original symbol of what the brand really appeared as. And it turns out the local chief of police had recognized the symbol.
He told IRT that the symbol had been a symbol indicating warriors and that certain houses use that symbol as almost a family arms. Though lately the symbol had been appearing as brand marks on mutilated animals some. So Jack told him that’s how serial killer start. They use animals to perfect their skill and its only after they feel confident enough to handle people that they transition over.
And so using the information about families that have often fought land feuds, they found their UnSub. He had been recently released from prison after he had tried to stab a man he found on his territory and his sole surviving relative had died within weeks of his release. Thus the UnSub was just hunting people. He was sacrificing them as a way to honor his dead relatives.
But Jack had thought it was possible to talk the UnSub down. So they had gone to UnSub’s farm to at least try to get him to release the girls of his own volition and he ended up taking a different route. It seems he told had Clara that he preferred a “warrior’s” death rather than surrender. And so he forced their hand.
And they had to take him out.
Later, though, the girls were returned to their families and a mutual respect was developed between the local police and the IRT.
THE END!