Recap / Criminal Minds S 4 E 11 Normal

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A man suffers an intense masculine identity crisis after his youngest daughter gets run over by a car right in front of him. When we see him snap, he goes on to murder random women who resemble his wife — but the truth of his wife and family aren't revealed until his spree is almost over.

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Tropes

• Ambiguous Situation:
  • It is not clear if Jenny died on the spot or in the hospital, despite all the doctors' efforts to save her.
  • Due to them already being dead most of the episode and the scenes with Norman being shown from his perspective, it’s unknown if Norman’s family really did blame him for Jenny’s death or if he was so grief-stricken that he believed they blamed him.
• And I'm the Queen of Sheba: Norman admits to his (hallucinated) wife that he's The Road Warrior. She just laughs and says "and I'm the Zodiac Killer!"
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Norman's elder daughters Sasha and Britney are seen talking on the phone and playing a video game, respectively, while giving him annoyed looks, although it's implied he may have just imagined that as part of his breakdown.
• Bullying a Dragon: Subverted; during his high speed chase, Norman's wife and daughters blame him for Jenny's death even though he's currently on a deranged chase wielding a shotgun, but it later turns out that he's hallucinating the whole thing.
• Creation Sequence: Played for Horror as the BAU explains how Norman's psyche, now that it has gotten the high of his first murder, will never feel this good again and in the search of reaching it, he will refine his killing techniques, placed as narration over Norman using tools from his garage to saw off his shotgun's barrel and attach a bracket to the pump's handle so he can fire it one-handed out his car's window.
• Dead All Along: The UnSub's wife and daughters, who interact with only the UnSub the whole episode, were murdered right before the episode begins.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: The woman at the beginning is originally portrayed as a straight Asshole Victim operating on road rage who cuts off random drivers and lashes out at the UnSub when he tries to speak to her. As the episode later reveals, she's a single mother who was on her way to pick up her son from school because he got in trouble and lashed out in a moment of frustration. It's made clear that as mean as she was, she did not deserve what happened in any way.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: When the BAU enters the kitchen of Norman's home, everyone has a visible reaction to the smell. Foreshadowing the reveal that Norman's family has been dead for several days, which is revealed a few seconds later when Hotch enters one of the children's room and reacts with disgust.
• Going Postal: The episode never has anyone in the BAU directly answer the question of why the UnSub had a shotgun with him if the first murder was spontaneous, but gives the audience enough info to piece together that he was probably going to murder his wife and as many of his coworkers as he could at the party he was set to attend at the start.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: After being dubbed "The Road Warrior", Norm starts committing his crimes dressed in a leather jacket and Sunglasses at Night to bolster the persona.
• Heroic BSoD: Todd, when she sees the UnSub killed his whole family. She finally admits that she can't handle this job.
• High on Homicide: Discussed. As we see Norman begin to do modifications to his gun and put on a leather jacket to embrace the "Road Warrior" persona, the BAU (through Hotch's narration) talk about how many serial killers get a tremendous adrenaline high with their first kill and do anything to regain that high, including perfecting their methods, but they are never going to do so.
• Hot Pursuit: Norman takes his family hostage on a ride aboard his SUV and gets pursued by the BAU and the LAPD, until Vanessa grabs the steering wheel and the SUV flips over. It was when Norman discovers that his family isn't there at all, and he breaks down crying after he remembered that he shot his family to death earlier.
• In-Universe Catharsis: The opening scene plays out like a classic road revenge fantasy, with a bitchy Karen getting shot and her car crashing in spectacular fashion. It's easy to see why Norman found it so satisfying. That's part of the problem... the satisfaction eventually fades, and Norman goes to horrific extremes to recreate that experience again.
• Meaningful Name: The UnSub being "Norm Hill" is a little on the nose, but effective.
• Mood Whiplash: After returning to DC once Norman was caught, JJ brings her baby to the team to help them get over the stress.
• Mugging the Monster: The first victim did this. She admits to feeling free to be a complete jerk to someone she just cut off because he "looked so normal"... too bad she was demeaning someone suffering a grief-induced psychotic break who just so happened to have a shotgun in the car.
• My God, What Have I Done?: The UnSub realizes in the end that he shot his wife and daughters in their beds at the start of the episode.
• My Greatest Failure: Norman, about the loss of his daughter Jenny and committing the murders of his whole family.
• Never My Fault: Inverted. One of the BAU members actually worries about the potential collateral damage of their actions. Surprisingly enough, it's Todd, who had previously had a "But I just did what I needed to do" attitude in spades.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Two men see Norman in a bad mood and one of them asks if he's alright. Unfortunately for the pair, he hallucinates them laughing at him, resulting in their deaths.
• OOC Is Serious Business: Something inside him having changed, Norman later arrives at an office party, where his wife and co-workers notice that he is unusually happy and confident.
• Offing the Offspring: Norman shot his two surviving daughters along with his wife, shortly after his first kill.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Norman's youngest daughter was run over by a car after she wandered away while he was changing a tire. He keeps replaying that day, blaming himself for letting her die.
• Pater Familicide: The BAU predict that since the killer is murdering women resembling his wife, eventually he will kill his real family. The Reveal is that he'd done it before the episode even began, and was hallucinating that they were still alive. In the end, he gets told that he killed them and breaks down.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Norman's boss at the firm is clearly willing to needle him over some work he has due, but also tells Norman that he likes him personally and knows that he's been through a lot recently. The fact that he knows Norman's history so well leads him to recognize the profile from the press conference and call him in to the BAU.
• Red Baron: It's not long before the news manufactures a nickname for Norman's killer persona: "the Road Warrior".
• Sawed-Off Shotgun: Norman uses a pump-action one in all his killings, attaching a bracket to the fore-end so he can hook it on the edge of a car door and reload while driving.
• Shout-Out:
  • The UnSub has a miniature model of an Aston Martin from Gold Finger.
  • After the local news gives Norman the nickname of "the Road Warrior", Norman begins to wear sunglasses and a leather jacket in an imitation of Mad Max (although he resembles The Terminator a bit more).
  • Norman bears a resemblance to William "D-FENS" Foster.
• Sunglasses at Night: Part of Norm's "Road Warrior" persona is a pair of mirrored shades that he wears on his nightly hunting trips.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: The episode pulls off a fairly effective audience fakeout using this. Several times, it shows the delusions that the UnSub is seeing due to his psychotic break, but they're always given a wavering, distorted effect and the audience is immediately clued in that this didn't actually happen. It's not until the end of the episode that it's revealed that some of what the audience saw in scenes with him were delusions that weren't given the obvious special effects treatment or cutaway.
  • When hallucinating at his workplace, Norman believes that his coworkers are mocking him. Later, while in his car, two men in a vehicle next to him ask him if he's alright, but he believes they're taunting him, causing him to kill them both.
• Title Drop: Everyone, from a surviving victim to Agent Morgan, describe the UnSub as normal — before he suddenly turned out to be a serial killer, that is.
• Tragic Villain: Norman lost his youngest daughter to an accident which he feels personally responsible for. The grief, as well as the feeling of being judged and loathed by his wife and surviving daughters, caused him to enter a delusional state, killing them and then going on a killing spree, while hallucinating them as still alive. Only when he's arrested does he realize he killed his family, and that utterly crushes him again.
• Visible Victimology: Part of the reason Norman shoots at his first would-be victim is her superficial resemblance with his wife, namely her blonde hair, and in further incidents, he targets blonde women, but also ends up killing other people too.
• Wham Line: At the end, Norman has crashed his car, and is begging the police to help his family.
  Morgan: There's no one in that car! Your family's gone, Norman!
• Wham Shot:
  • The BAU entering Norman's home and finding his wife and children slain in their bedrooms.
  • When Morgan, who had gotten a call regarding the fate of the Hills from David Rossi, shows Norman the SUV is empty and tells him his family is gone, Norman suddenly remembers the truth — he murdered his wife and daughters shortly after shooting Judith Hannity.

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Rossi: "There's no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were." President Dwight Eisenhower.