Let me begin this review by
saying that while I wasn’t all that crazy about part two of the two-part fall
finale, I absolutely loved this episode. Although, I have to say that this was
definitely a somewhat difficult episode for me to watch because it featured
quite a few scenes that were rather gruesome and violent. Unlike part two of
the fall finale, the action and violence in this episode served more of an
actual purpose in both the storyline with Liz dealing the criminal of the week,
The Good Samaritan, and the whole storyline with Red trying to track down the
people who ordered the attack on his life in the fall finale instead of simply
having all of the violence in the episode cause the episode to feel like a
wannabe action movie like the fall finale did in my opinion.
It was stated at the
beginning of the episode that three weeks had passed since the events of the fall
finale. Donald was already back at work after being shot in the leg in part one
of the fall finale and is currently walking with a cane. The bureau was still
trying to figure out who the mole within the bureau was, and Liz and the rest
of the bureau also hadn’t had any contact with Red since he left town in the
fall finale.
The end of the fall finale
definitely left me wondering what was going to happen next since Fowler had
disbanded the task force that was working to capture all of the names on the
blacklist while Red told Liz that he was leaving town for a while. I personally
liked that for the first new episode of 2014 the writers had the criminal of
the week, who the public referred to as The Good Samaritan while his name was
actually Carl Hoffman, wasn’t technically a name on the blacklist. He was a
criminal that Liz had been trying to catch for years after one of his first
victims died in her arms, but she had never been able to see any discernable
connection to his victims or his methods of hurting them. Carl Hoffman got that
name due to the fact that he calls for paramedics to come rescue his victims
after he done torturing them.
The episode began with Carl talking
to a woman named Karen who was at an arcade with her son. He approached her,
offering her some punch to drink and telling her that he was there with his
nephew. It turns out that he had spiked the punch with a drug to make her pass
out, because she passed out soon after getting in her car in order to go pick
up her other child from their piano lesson. The episode then cut to Carl
strapping Karen down to a table as he was preparing to torture her in his
garage. Originally, Cooper wanted Liz to pass the case onto some other FBI
agents, but after Liz mentioned that if Red were to find out that she was
working on the case and saw that it was important to her, it would make the
case seem important to Red and perhaps lead to him contacting her, Cooper
allowed her to stay on the case.
Liz’s plan worked, and when
Red contacted her and she told him about the case, he suggested that perhaps
the injuries that The Good Samaritan/Carl inflicts on his victims say more
about the victims then his tactics say about him. With that bit of advice, Liz
was able to figure out that his victims have all been people who have
physically abused others, such as their spouse or children. It turned out that
Carl is a temp nurse who works in emergency rooms, and when he’s torturing his
victims he’s trying to recreate the injuries that they inflicted on the people
that they abused based on their victims’ medical charts. It was revealed that
Carl had been abused by his mother when he was a child, so he had his now
elderly mother watch as he tortured his victims so she could see firsthand the
kind of abuse that she had inflicted upon him as a child. That being said, I do
have to wonder how aware of what he was doing his mother was when she was
watching him. After all, she never talked once the entire episode and she seemed
pretty out of it when she was sitting in her wheelchair as she watched him. It
seemed to me like she was always off in her own little world. Anyway, once Liz
took Red’s advice she was able to figure out that Carl Hoffman was The Good
Samaritan pretty quickly.
Once Liz had figured out
that Carl was The Good Samaritan, she also figured out that he was torturing
his victims in the garage of his childhood home where his mother had abused him.
Liz and the other FBI officers arrived just as Carl was in the process of
torturing a man who had a history of abusing his wife. Liz ended up shooting
Carl, and once the man Carl had been torturing was at the hospital, she told
him that without his wife cooperation, she doesn’t know what kind of charges
the police would be able to convict him of and threatened to personally come
after him if he ever did anything to hurt his wife again in the future.
While Carl creeped the hell
out of me in pretty much every single scene he was in, I have to say that Frank
Whaley did a fantastic job playing the role. I’ve honestly never heard of him
prior to watching this episode, but after watching this episode, I’m definitely
interested in checking out more of his work.
While all of that was going
on, Red was trying to track down all of the people who were involved with the
attempt on his life; interrogating and torturing them for information and in
many cases killed them. While a fair amount of these scenes were pretty dark, I
like that the writers were able to inject some humor into these scenes. The
writers have always given James Spader some great one-liners on the show, and
he always delivers them perfectly. One of my favorite scenes is when Red goes
to the home of a man named Henry, telling his wife, Janice, that his name is
Bernard and he keeps talking about how much he loves stroganoff, and at one
point locks Janice in the closet after he shoots Henry so he can get the name
of some of the people who got paid to make an attempt on his life. That was a
truly brilliant scene with a great combination of drama and humor. It was
definitely my favorite scene out of all of James Spader’s scenes in this
episode. Spader did a great job in this episode as a whole though.
For a brief part of the
episode, it looked like Aram was the mole, but after Red captured him and
demanded that he steal five million dollars from somebody’s account and put the
five million dollars into one of Red’s accounts, saying that he had to do it by
the time he finished assembling and loading his gun, which he said would take
about two minutes, or he would kill him. Ultimately, Aram was able to steal the
money for Red, and Red came to the conclusion that he couldn’t have been
involved with the people who had made the attempt on his life, so he let Aram
go. I have to say that I love the way they edited the part of the episode where
they showed the FBI raiding Aram’s house right before they revealed that Red
had captured him. Personally, I’ve always thought that the editing on the show
was pretty good.
In the end, it turned out
that Grey was the mole who had betrayed him, so Red killed him by suffocating
him with a plastic bag so his death would look like an accident and his wife
wouldn’t find out what he had done. Honestly, I was definitely surprised by the
fact that Grey was the mole. I wasn’t expecting that at all.
With Red’s tour of torture
and murder over, he paid Liz a visit at her house. They had a nice talk, but
Red was acting rather cryptic when Liz asked him if he was back for good. Liz
definitely reminded me of a little kid who asks their parents or someone who is
visiting their family if they brought them anything when she asked Red if he
brought her anything. Red told her that he was there to give her the next name
on the blacklist as the episode ended. Given the fact that the title of episode
1x12 is “The Alchemist”, I think it’s safe to assume that that is the next name
on the blacklist.
One last thing that I would
like to comment on in this post is a very interesting theory regarding what the
connection between Liz and Red could possibly be that I came across on the IMDB
message board for the show (RED is NOT her father, but has a huge r...). A poster on that board suggested that Red
isn’t Liz’s father, but whomever Red put as the number one person on the
blacklist is her biological father and Red thinks that by working closely with
Liz he’ll be able to track him down. Personally, I really like that theory and
while I said in my review for the fall finale that I wasn’t entirely convinced
that Red was being honest when he told Liz that he isn’t her father, I’m really
hoping that Red isn’t Liz’s father now. Somebody in that thread mentioned that
given the fact that they showed people doing a DNA test on Red and Liz in an
earlier episode, the writers would have a lot of explaining to do if they
reveal that Red is Liz’s father down the road, which wouldn’t make the show
look as good as I think the show is in my personal opinion. For the record, I
had forgotten that they had shown Liz and Red having a DNA test done in an
earlier episode when I wrote that review.
Tom wasn’t in this episode
all that much, but he was still trying to convince Liz to move to Nebraska with
him. Apparently, he had gotten a job interview for a teaching position at a
school in Lincoln, Nebraska. Given the fact that I live in Lincoln, Nebraska, I
personally enjoy the references that the show makes to Nebraska. Although,
given the fact that I read in the Lincoln Journal Star that the creator of The
Blacklist, Jon Bokenkamp, is from the Nebraska, I’m not all that surprised that
they would make so many references to Nebraska on the show.
Honestly, I don’t see the
character Tom lasting very long on the show. If I had to guess, I would say
that Tom will either be killed off at the end of the first season, or Liz
working with Red will ultimately drive a wedge between Liz and Tom to the point
where they get divorced and the writers will write Tom off the show by having
him move to Nebraska alone. After all, Tom seems much more interested in moving
to Nebraska than Liz is at this point, so if they split up it won’t surprise me
if Tom ends up moving there.
All things considered, this
was a truly excellent episode with great writing and acting from everyone
involved, but especially James Spader and Frank Whaley. This episode once again
featured some great editing. I really liked the ending of the episode, and the
ending definitely left me feeling excited to see what happens next since Red
was kind of cryptic when Liz asked him if he was back for good and the episode
ended just as Red was about to give Liz the next name on the blacklist.
Watching this episode really reminded me why The Blacklist has ended up being
my favorite new show of the season even though I had originally been expecting
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to be my favorite new show of the season. While
that show continues to disappoint me, The Blacklist continues to blow me away
each week with how good the show truly is.
That being said, my final
score for this episode is 10 out of 10.
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