I’ve really been enjoying
The Blacklist lately and it’s been a while since I wrote a review for the show,
so I figured that I would get back to reviewing the show. Personally, I
thoroughly enjoyed this episode for a lot of reasons, so here are my thoughts
on the episode itself.
For starters, I thought that
The Kingmaker was a very interesting and all around great character. I would
even go as far to say that out of all the “Blacklist name of the week”
characters that the show has had, The Kingmaker is definitely one of my top
favorites at the moment. If you ask me, Linus Roache played the role very well,
and for some reason Roache’s portrayal of The Kingmaker reminded me of the
character Mr. Birch on the Syfy channel series Defiance and the way that Steven
McCarthy portrayed him on that show.
As weird as it may sound, the
plot of this episode also kind of reminded me of Scandal, or to be more
specific, Scandal’s season three finale, since The Kingmaker was political
strategist who was apparently behind the rise of many powerful politicians over
the years. This being The Blacklist, The Kingmaker’s strategies were shady and
illegal, but that’s one of the reasons why I was reminded of Scandal as I was
watching this episode.
At the beginning of the
episode, The Kingmaker was in Prague disguised as a chauffeur who was driving a
limo for a politician named Emil Dusek. Right away The Kingmaker showed just
how shady he is by turning the heat in the limo very high, prompting Dusek to
drink some water that The Kingmaker had drugged with a roofie. Dusek ended up
waking up naked next to a dead male escort just as the Czech police came to
arrest him for murder while The Kingmaker was shown at the airport listening to
a news broadcast that was announcing Dusek’s resignation from the Czech
parliament, now dressed like a sinister banker.
Dusek being framed was also
bad news for Red since he’s apparently one of Red’s allies, so Red spent most
of the episode doing what at this time I feel he has been doing ever since the
episode “The Good Samaritan (No. 106), which would be going around to various
people that he’s associated with over the years to deal with the fact that
people he had one point in the past viewed as an ally at the very least have
been betraying him. Red did mention in this episode that in his mind, he doesn’t
have any friends though, so that’s why I choose to refer to them as his former
allies rather than refer to them as his friends. I found Red’s interactions
with Nico especially amusing and their interaction with each other featured
some classic dialogue from Red. This whole episode featured some great dialogue
from Red though.
Eventually Red met up with
Liz and told her about The Kingmaker who at that point was now in America. Wow!
The Kingmaker really gets around fast. Did he steal some kind of transporter
device from one of the Enterprises on Star Trek?
Anyway, The Kingmaker’s next
move was to orchestrate a fake hit-and-run accident with a young congressman
named Patrick, which quickly became the main focus of the episode as it
unfolded and Patrick was dealing with the aftermath and the FBI questioning him
about it. This aspect of the episode is really what prompted me to be reminded of
the season three finale of Scandal where Fitz and Mellie’s son was killed by a
deadly virus as a political move to gain people’s sympathy and would therefore
get him elected President of the United States for a second term since his
chances for being reelected weren’t looking very good at the time, but I
digress. Unfortunately for them, Liz and Ressler were hot on their trail when
they found some evidence suggesting that he was in a particular hotel room, but
The Kingmaker still managed to elude Liz and Ressler at that point in the
episode, and they only found that the room being occupied by a nice couple who
were sharing a romantic dinner together.
Since this is a crime show
and the bad typically isn’t caught until the end of the episode, Liz, Ressler
and the other FBI agents spent the episode following various leads on the case
with a little help from Red, and hitting dead ends along the way. I’ll admit
that while I found The Kingmaker to be a very interesting character, I did get
a little bored at times as I was watching the action in this episode play out
because it really did remind me a lot of the Scandal season three finale and as
a result the episode had a slight “been there, done that” feel to it for me
personally.
Eventually, they did catch
The Kingmaker after finding high tech surveillance equipment in another hotel
room. This discovery tipped them off to the fact that The Kingmaker was
planning to have a U.S. Senator killed so that Patrick could take their place.
The plan to have the senator killed was already underway in the form of a home
invasion at that point in the episode and The Kingmaker did manage to kill the
senator just as Liz and Ressler arrived at his house. The Kingmaker jumped Liz
and he almost managed to kill her, but Ressler saved the day by shooting The
Kingmaker in the head. I wonder if Liz will end up viewing that as a reason why
she should become romantically involved with Ressler. After all, there’s no
romantic gesture quite like killing someone in the defense of the object of
your desires.
Thankfully, the parts of
episode that dealt with Red talking to his various so called allies as he sought
the help of The Alliance really helped keep my occasional feelings of boredom
regarding the episode from diminishing my overall enjoyment of the episode too
much. This subplot included the return of Fitch who’s played by Alan Alda, and it
was great to see him again. I think his presence in the episode definitely helped
balance out my feelings of boredom and my genuine enjoyment of the episode until
they finally caught him at the end of the episode. Unfortunately for Red, The
Alliance refused to help him despite Red’s assertions that he’s under attack
and still plans to win the war in the end even though things aren’t looking too
good for him at the moment.
The other subplot in the
episode that dealt with Liz investigating the circumstances of the death of her
adoptive father, Sam, also helped compensate for the parts of the episode that
felt slightly tedious to me. Eventually, Liz found evidence that led her to
figure out that Red killed Sam. The scene where Liz confronts Red about the
fact that he killed Sam and getting him to admit it was a truly wonderful scene
both in terms of the writing for the scene and James Spader and Megan Boone’s
performances. Liz told Red that she was done working with him, and their
conversation prompted Liz to go to Ressler’s place at the end of the episode,
telling him that she didn’t know where else to go.
One thing that I’ve found
myself thinking about a lot for quite a while now is that I feel like the
writers had Red break away from working with the FBI too early on in the series
run. Sure, they are still going after the people on The Blacklist that Red has
compiled, but I was just expecting Red to interact with the FBI more throughout
the show’s run. I know that Red said right from the very beginning that he
would only talk to Liz, but back when I watched the pilot for the first time, I
figured that over time Liz would be able to convince Red to be more willing to
work with Ressler and the other FBI agents rather than just working with her
all the time.
The whole idea that the
writers would have something like Red murdering Sam lead to a falling out between
Liz and Red, as well as the whole thing with the mole within the FBI causing
Red to once again go off on his own are both the type of storylines that I
figured would happen at some point in the series’ run, but I definitely wasn’t
expecting both of those storyline developments to happen so early on in the
series. Personally, I think it was a mistake to have both plot developments
occur before the end of the show’s first season. While I disagree with the
producers’ decision to go in that direction with the series at this point in
time, it still hasn’t kept me from considering The Blacklist “Must See TV”.
Liz is still reeling from
her big fight with Tom in the previous episode, so much so that she still
hadn’t cleaned up the mess that Liz and Tom made during their fight. I know
that she’s upset about the whole situation and I would be too if I were in her
shoes, but I still figured that she would at least clean up the mess and start
the repairs to the damaged parts of their house relatively quickly. While Liz
hasn’t done that yet, she did at least show some signs that she’s going to try
and move past the whole ordeal with Tom and discovering that their entire
relationship has been built around Tom lying to her by taking her wedding ring
off towards the end of the episode though.
Liz trying to deal with the
aftermath of her big fight with Tom and the fact that he left and she has no
idea where he is led to some nice moments between Liz and Ressler throughout
the episode. As I was watching them interact with each other in this episode, I
couldn’t help but wonder if their scenes together were the writers’ way of
beginning to set up a possible romance between Liz and Ressler at some point
down the road. After all, Liz did go to Ressler’s place at the end of the
episode after she had gotten done talking to Red and had found out that he had
killed her adoptive father, saying that she didn’t know where else to go.
As action packed as the
previous episode was and as much as I enjoyed it, for some reason the main
thing about that episode that stood out to me was Liz telling Tom that she
hates pancakes as a way of giving him an example of honesty during their huge
fight. I have to ask, who on earth would ever in their right mind hate
pancakes? I absolutely love pancakes. I’ve eaten Jimmy Dean pancakes on a stick
for breakfast almost every day for I don’t even know how many years now. In
case anyone reading this doesn’t know what a pancake on a stick is, it’s
basically like a corndog, only with pancake batter used instead of the
traditional corn meal batter for corndogs and a sausage link instead of a
hotdog. They are very good, and I think a person would have to be insane to
hate pancakes.
In all seriousness, I know
that not everybody necessarily likes pancakes, and that’s fine. This is a free
country after all. Everybody is allowed to have their own opinions, likes and
dislikes. I’m just trying to have some fun here.
Tom was MIA from this
episode, but it will definitely be interesting to see when Tom will show up
again and what will happen when he does. Personally, Tom has always been a
character that I feel has fairly limited staying power on the show, mainly
because he’s not an FBI agent and this is a crime show, and he’s pretty much
just Liz’s husband. Sure, they’ve revealed that he has a rather shady past, which
definitely makes him an interesting character, but I don’t think there’s much
else to the character beyond that. Plus, he doesn’t really have any ties to the
other main characters on the show, aside from Liz. I feel that way even more
now given everything that has been revealed about him in the past several
episodes. At this point, I think it’s only a matter of time before Tom either
ends up going to jail for many years with that being a way to write him off the
show, or he’ll end up getting killed by the police while he tries to evade
arrest once he eventually returns.
All things considered, while
I did find the whole investigation surrounding Patrick and The Kingmaker a tad
tedious at times, this still managed to be a pretty good episode that really
left me feeling excited to see what would happen next. The moments between Liz
and Ressler, along with Red’s storyline in the episode and Liz’s investigation
into the circumstances of Sam’s death capped off with Liz confronting Red about
the fact that he killed him really helped prop up the parts of the episodes
that I found somewhat tedious and lackluster. As I said earlier, while I might
disagree with some of the producers’ decisions regarding the direction that the
show has taken, which were really put in the spotlight in this particular
episode, it hasn’t kept me from thinking that The Blacklist is “Must See TV”,
which it definitely is.
That being said, my final
score for this episode is 7 out of 10.
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