My wife and I have been watching this since the start. Last night’s episode (#11) really took the show to a whole new level. As JFrazer mentions, Spader’s character (Red) finally shows just how he earned his reputation, and it’s wonderfully acted by Spader in each and every scene. From the almost comical interaction with the banker and his wife, to the way he seemed to express real sorrow when talking with the paramedic, to the final scenes by the lake, it’s all Emmy-worthy stuff.
I did find last night’s episode somewhat confusing though. I missed parts of a couple of previous episodes, so I am unsure what is going on with the husband. Do Red and Elizabeth both know he was involved with another agency, or is there still something sinister yet to be uncovered there? Also, the whole thing with Red going through his network and settling scores with the folks who sold him out was fantastic, but who the hell was the final guy? Were we supposed to know him, or was he just a final cog in the machine meant only to show us the two sides of Red (“I’ll take care of your family”, “Look at the water…”).
I like how now he’ll go from having killed all these people to just showing back up at the Blacksite, ready to get back to work.
The final guy was one of Red’s inner circle. He was only in a couple of episodes and didn’t stand out to me; took me a sec to say “oh yeah, he was one of Red’s agents”.
As for the husband, there are still questions out there. Elizabeth doesn’t have any suspicions about him (it seems). He’s been stabbed, questioned, kidnapped, home invaded, monitored, etc. It’s not unreasonable that he’d want to relocated to a place a little less…life threatening. She doesn’t want to leave her job and the scene with him leaving town without her is more of a regular husband/wife spat as opposed to something more telling. They keep leaving it open to whether he’s really an agent or if it’s Red trying to set him up.
I was kind of disappointed at the end of the episode when they made it clear they were returning to the work of hunting down people on his list. I kind of wanted the show to forget everyone else and just go with Spader going forward.
I can’t remember where I saw it mentioned but ever since I read a comment that in later years James Spader appears to be turning into a potato, it’s hard for me to see anything else.
Ive. Had this on tivo for a while now, 10 episodes, im uk and see nothing to say more are coming so im gathering its just started up again in the us, normally we are slightly behind.
Watched the first 5 episodes this week and its great. The lead female is week butt he rest are fine, Spader is great, love the twists and nothing is as it seems. Watched The Stewmaker last night and enjoyed Tom Noonan in the baddy role, especially the body disposale set up.
We have been watching this the whole time, it is very entertaining. As JFrazer said, due largely to Spader.
Spoiler for #11
if you are catching up
The final man (the mole) was present with Spader for a few episodes and appeared to be very close to Spader. A few times Spader said things to the effect of “I could never do this without you”, “I trust you completely”, “Thank you for being here with me”, etc. They meant to set him up as very, very close.
So count me in as another person who didn’t bother watching this at first and then binged to catch up on it just recently. Everyone else is just kind of there for the most part, but James Spader on a revenge killing spree doesn’t require anyone else to make the show good. Which is also to say that the blacklist itself seems to pretty much be some kind of revenge list of Spader’s, given that he happily kills anyone on it and makes you root for him while doing so.
The recent episode once again reminded me of how much I’m watching this show just for Spader’s performance. So much fun. The FBI plot, on the other hand, didn’t interest me at all. The solution wasn’t overly exciting, and Keen just remains bland. Also, with the show’s trend to make the FBI more incompetent with each episode I’m assuming Ressler won’t be able to tie his shoelaces by the end of the season.
Btw., the Good Samaritan was really on the blacklist? He had a number, after all. Keen seemed to know him and his deeds. I thought the point of the blacklist/show was being about bad guys the FBI isn’t aware of at all.
So why did Lizzie say she didn’t work for the FBI? It was strongly established that she did, in fact, work for the FBI. They call her FBI special agent every single episode. She’s a FBI profiler.
The boyscout is FBI agent Ressler, the stern black guy from Dollhouse is the FBI director of antiterrorism. The only non-FBI major cast members on the show are the indian woman (she is CIA), Red and his posse, and Lizzie’s husband.
Maybe they are on secondment to a special team the Not FBI but FBI team… I mean I thought the CIA didn’t do anything on US soil but a lot takes place on it. Also didn’t the polotic try to shut them down yet you don’t shut down the FBI, as I type this it must be a project,special project like most businesses have ;)
I thought there was some thing about how the Blacklist team was sort of a black-ops that used FBI as a cover. I.e. they’re technically FBI agents, but they don’t really answer to the FBI or something.
For all that people joke about the cops being useless in say, Dexter, or The Following, this show is really about the FBIs being the worst FBIs in the history of FBI-ing. The fuck everything up every single time despite Red telling them exactly what’s going to happen.
It’s hard to get too invested in Red as a genius when everybody around him is so clown-shoes. It’s like when Batman is the smartest person on the Justice League by virtue of his basic grasp of deductive reasoning.
The pull of the show, like so many procedurals, is clearly competence porn. It’s somewhat unusual in that Red (and sometimes Lizzie) are the only competent ones.
Finally caught up with this over the weekend. Can we just turn Blacklist into a show that follows Red around all the time? The show seems to have two separate writing teams, one for scenes with him (amazing!), one for scenes without him (painful!). Compare the closing scene in the last episode (which was incredible) with any scene of Tom and Lizzie discussing their marriage/jobs/adoption. Night and day.
And whoever picked Sundown to play (and for Red to listen to while waiting) should have a dozen Emmy’s thrown at them. I still have it stuck in my head.
This show has gotten so stupid. And so disjointed. Nothing that happens seems to have any relation to anything else. I honestly can’t even remember if Red is free with the governments leave or not. The Tom/Lizzie stuff is so much Kim, season 1 of 24 melodramatic garbage I can barely stand to sit through it.
