FBI Season 7, Episode 18 Continues a Troubling Season-Long Trend for the CBS Show

FBI Season 7, Episode 18, “Blkpill” is a pretty standard episode for the CBS series, including all the elements that viewers have come to expect. Its biggest problem is a massive one — that this episode is one of several in Season 7 to revolve around extreme acts of violence against women. For whatever reason, the show has gone to that well more than once, and it’s an unnecessary and disturbing recurrence.

“Blkpill” is named after the online message board where men who are “incels” (involuntary celibates) vent their anger at being rejected by women. However, the invention of an Uber-style dating app called Scorch, which allows women to rate their matches, pushes a few of them over the edge. They take violent revenge on the women who have downvoted them, and while the episode has all the tension and action of a regular FBI outing, it’s hard to ignore how creepy it is.

FBI Season 7, Episode 18 Features Another Case Targeting Women

This Unintentional Trend Makes the Episode Worse

The major issue with FBI Season 7, Episode 18 is that it’s at least the third episode this season to center around terrible acts of violence that are specifically targeting women. The show isn’t doing this every week, but multiple episodes in the same season is surprising, and they stand out because the crimes committed in these episodes have been particularly gruesome. Season 7, Episode 4, “Doubted” featured the serial abductor and rapist who went after women, including Special Agent Sydney Ortiz’s sister. Season 7, Episode 6, “Perfect” was a disturbing hour about women who were taken and operated on against their will. And now in “Blkpill,” men are dousing women in homemade napalm, lighting them on fire, and watching them burn to death.

It’s worth noting that the show has had its characters express how horrible these events are, and in each of these episodes, the good guys are able to stop the perpetrator(s). And because this is network TV, there’s a limit to how much FBI can show. But that doesn’t mean the writers have to keep telling stories that go well beyond what the series usually does, or that these stories have to revolve around female victims. There have been other Season 7 episodes that were more impactful even though their cases of the week were less intense. And this mini-pattern is even more odd on a show that has such strong and well-rounded female main characters.

In general, FBI has some wonderful female agents, starting with but not limited to Special Agent Maggie Bell, who is front and center in this episode. The characters are depicted as smart, capable heroes who can handle anything thrown at them (and in Maggie’s case, she definitely has) and who have the respect of their peers. That makes it a little more disappointing to see an episode like “Blkpill,” where the female guest characters are mostly victimized horribly — except for one who’s completely underused.

FBI Deals With Some Tired Themes Other Shows Have Done

Season 7, Episode 18 Isn’t Presenting Anything New

Once one sets aside the troubling premise, “Blkpill” isn’t offering anything that makes sitting through that violence worthwhile. The subject of “incels” and their beliefs prompting them to hurt women has been fodder for TV crime dramas for a while — most notably coming up in multiple episodes of another Dick Wolf series, Law & Order: SVU. The SVU Season 16 episode “Holden’s Manifesto” was based on the case of Elliot Rodger, who was known as the “Incel Killer.” And at its most base level, a jilted lover or would-be lover killing someone they feel rejected by is a fairly common storyline. There’s nothing new here except for how twisted the method of murder is.

The episode does check all the boxes as far as the bones of the story are concerned. There’s some technical wizardry, an interrogation scene, and multiple action sequences, including the climax that takes place on a stage at the fictional Hudson University. Fans get the drama that they are used to from this show, and all of the main actors are as reliable as they’ve ever been. John Boyd is a bit of a scene-stealer, as his character Stuart Scola offers up more blunt commentary, plus he gets involved in a shootout and then also gets to shoot at a speeding van. The core cast is doing their best.