While John and Frank investigate the abduction of four people who are somehow linked to four deaths from years earlier, Frank fights for custody of his children.

We're never given the impression that the deaths of Gary Murchinson's family were recent, so why does he decide to abduct people now, or has he been gradually putting together a replacement family? This seems unlikely as he seems to need the entire group to feed into his psychosis of wanting a family around him. It seems rather unreasonable for Lt Avery to give him such a hard time as well; from what we're told, he is unable to control his actions and so shouldn't be held entirely responsible for them. It's not like Gary is in charge of his faculties.

While there's an undoubted cleverness in the way the case is built up which you maybe wouldn't get on others shows like this, John's abilities are beginning to make each episode a foregone conclusion, with his ability to work out who did what to whom and why within the space of the first few mintutes. It's also less of a major development in this story, as the person John and Frank manage to track down is very much the person they're looking for. The only real reason they can't prove it is because he's insane.

While Frank's reaction to child abduction is predictable and gives him more of a personality, the material about his custody hearing is fairly insignificant and, while it provides a close look at the very heart of the character, it's not very interesting to watch. If anything, it's not quite clear why he and his wife are separated in the first place; if it's his police work, that seems rather unreasonable. I mean, surely that's the kind of thing you go into a marriage with expecting there to be problems? If Frank's been a cop all this time, I'm not sure just what he's doing wrong. Likewise, if I were a judge, I'd not waste time on quoting various examples of past events to sway the current case. It's a bit emotional, but not very, due to some mediocre acting, but it does match the overall inexact approach to the episode, with all the elements being passable by not fully thought through.

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