I’d like to start out this
review by saying that originally The Blacklist wasn’t one of the new shows that
I was anxiously waiting for before its premiere at the beginning of the fall
season, and I actually wasn’t planning to watch it at all. However, once The
Blacklist premiered, I heard a lot of really great things about the show so I
finally decided to check it out. After watching the first episode alone, I was
instantly hooked on the show and immediately viewed it as being the best new
show of the season. That’s an honor that I had originally believed that I would
go on to bestow upon Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which has unfortunately
proven to be a major disappointment. Don’t get me wrong, I really like Marvel’s
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and it has definitely improved significantly since its
first episode, but it definitely hasn’t lived up to all of the hype that surrounded
the show before it premiered, whereas I was blown away by how good The
Blacklist is right from the very first episode, and I used to be incredibly
nitpicky when it came to crime dramas.
Part of The Blacklist’s
appeal for me personally is the fact that the premise of the show reminds me
somewhat of the premise of White Collar in the sense that both shows involve a well-known
criminal working with the FBI to catch other criminals. What I think are the key
differences between the two shows are how Neal Caffrey ended up working for the
FBI’s white collar division and how Red started working with the FBI, but
biggest differences between the two shows is definitely the overall feel and
tones of each show. White Collar often has great blend of drama and light,
comedic moments, whereas The Blacklist is much more dramatic and rather dark
and gritty at times, especially when it comes to this episode. That being said
here are my thoughts on this episode.
This episode was definitely
the most action packed episode of the series at this point in time. The episode
began with a quick flash of Red with a seriously injured Donald before they
went to the present where Red was hanging out with some friends of his in a bar
when Donald arrived, telling him that there’s apparently an imminent threat on
his life and that they need to take him into protective custody. However, Red
basically shrugged off Donald’s urgency, saying that there’s always someone out
there who wants him and instead wanted to know where Elizabeth was since he’s
still insistent that he only talks to her. Red also expressed frustration about
the fact that the FBI are able to track him thanks to the tracking the device
that they implanted in him.
Upon arriving back at the
FBI headquarters, Red talked to FBI agents about what was going on and still
wanted to know where Elizabeth was. Despite Elizabeth not being there, Red
filled them all in his complicated history with a man named Anslo Garrick and
he also chastised them about the fact that their actions was going to lead to
Garrick and his men invading FBI headquarters and trying to capture him, which
was just beginning to get underway as he was giving them all of this
information. When Red was filling everyone in on his history with Garrick, he
mentioned that Garrick appears to be strangely immune to bullets, which Red
said he could personally attest to due to the fact that he had once shot
Garrick in the head at point blank range, and yet Garrick was still alive. It’s
obvious that Red shooting Garrick in the head is what caused Garrick’s speech
impediment and mildly deformed face.
Once the raid had gotten
under way, Donald was quickly shot in leg while trying to keep Red safe. Red
managed to get Donald to safety, locking the two of them in the protective glass
security box/room where they’ve kept Red before. Unfortunately for Donald, an
artery in his leg had apparently been severed when he was shot, causing his leg
to bleed heavily. Red has apparently learned quite a bit over the years about
how to treat injuries, so he spent a large chunk of the episode tending to
Donald’s injured leg. At one point in the episode, Red determined that Donald
needed a blood transfusion. Apparently, Donald’s blood type is B-, which is
very rare. Red even mentioned that people whose blood type is B- only makes up
for about two percent of the population. While anyone with a heart who watches
this episode will probably agree that it absolutely sucks to be Donald at the
moment, he did catch one lucky break in this episode, Red’s blood type is also
B- and he also had some supplies on hand that he was able to use to perform a field
blood transfusion on the spot and gave Donald some of his own blood. Later on
in the episode, he performed a makeshift procedure to get the artery to stop bleeding.
I have to admit that prior
to this episode, I found both Donald, as a character, and Diego Klattenhoff, as
an actor, rather forgettable. It’s not that I didn’t like the character or
Diego Klattenhoff as an actor, I just felt like nothing had happened to make the
character Donald or Diego Klattenhoff’s acting on the show truly memorable.
That being said, I feel like Klattenhoff did a truly wonderful job in this
episode. He did a fantastic job of making the viewers really feel Donald’s pain
throughout the episode. At times, Diego Klattenhoff’s acting was hard to watch
in this episode, but that’s only because he was so convincing in conveying the
physical pain that Donald was in.
Since the promos for part
two of the fall finale are calling the episode a major game changer, I’m really
anxious to see what the people who make the promos for NBC mean by that. As I
was watching Red and Donald interact with each other throughout this episode, I
couldn’t help but wonder how Red tending to Donald’s injuries might change
their relationship in future episodes. Assuming that Donald doesn’t die in the
next episode, it will definitely be interesting to see if the fact that Red
took drastic measures to save Donald’s life will bring them closer in some way
in future episodes, or if it will at the very least cause Donald to be just a
little bit nicer to Red.
In case I haven’t made it
perfectly clear, the scenes between Red and Donald were definitely one of the
biggest highlights of this episode for me personally. Not only did James Spader
and Diego Klattenhoff do a phenomenal job in this episode, we also got a little
bit of character development for Donald. Red asked Donald about a woman named
Audrey Bidwell, who Donald mentioned that he had been engaged to at one point.
However, Donald explained that he had apparently become so consumed with trying
to help the FBI find Red so he could make a name for himself that it ultimately
led to his fiancée leaving him. Out of all the interactions between Red and
Donald in this episode, my favorite was definitely Red’s “One more time”
monologue to Donald about how he expects that the two of them will make it out
of their current predicament alive. That was probably the best moment from this
episode, and this episode had a lot of really great moments. I found the
following picture that was released by NBC, which has Red’s “One more time”
monologue printed on it.
When Red wasn’t tending to
Donald’s injured leg, Red was interacting with Garrick who killed his bodyguard
Luli, and it also looks like Garrick killed Red’s other bodyguard, Dembe, as
the episode ended. Several times throughout the episode, Red also begged Harold
to open the box he and Donald were in, but Harold refused to do that.
The only real criticism that
I have about this episode is with the scenes with Elizabeth. Aside from the
scene between Elizabeth and Tom at the beginning of the episode where they are
talking about her adoptive father and how she feels now that he’s dead, I found
all of the scenes with Elizabeth and the guy she ran into as she was making her
way through the building so she could deactivate the signal jammers and call
for backup rather forgettable. The main thought that I had about them is that
they reminded me a lot of Mission Impossible, or just about any other action
movie that I’ve ever seen. Don’t get me wrong; I didn’t dislike those scenes,
but the scenes between James Spader and Diego Klattenhoff when they were in
that glass security box/room together were just so terrific that they overshadowed
the scenes featuring Elizabeth, in my opinion.
All things considered, I
truly believe that this is perhaps the best episode yet of The Blacklist, and
this episode made me feel really glad that I decided to start watching the show.
While I found Elizabeth’s scenes in this episode largely forgettable, the
scenes between Red and Donald were beyond phenomenal and more than made up for
her scenes being so forgettable. James Spader and Diego Klattenhoff both
deserve to be commended for their fantastic acting in this episode. This
episode definitely featured some great character development for both of Red
and Donald, and the ending of this episode has definitely left me feeling very
excited for the conclusion of the two-part fall finale.
That being said, my final
score for this episode is 9 out of 10.
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