The Blacklist - S1E4
WARNING: This review contains spoilers.
OK, by the fourth episode of a new network show, its fate has usually been sealed. Future episodes are ordered, or the ones already in the can will likely be burned off at 8 PM on fall Saturday nights.
The fourth episode of The Blacklist worked for me, as it moved back to the promise offered by the pilot. Not coincidentally, this episode (along with the pilot) was directed by Joe Carnahan, and it showed. Carnahan may not be able to do much about the writing, but he put the "creep" in "creepy" as our latest Villian of the Week was an odd bird indeed.
Played by veteran character actor Tom Noonan, this week's Big Bad is yet another unknown evildoer that is known in unknown criminal circles as the Stewmaker, for his penchant at chemically disposing of bodies and making folks disappear. And he likes to dissolve of bodies while he is nude and he takes pictures of their faces for his scrapbooking hobby. His body is covered with burns and scars, suggesting that he is a victim of some prior abuse, likely abuse that has led him to his particular specialty. When the Stewmaker is not disposing of corpses, he is a typical suburban father, a dentist with a 13-year old son and a wife who thinks he goes fishing a lot. The Stewmaker has been hired by a druglord to dispose of the body of a key witness, who is dramatically killed during the druglord's trial.
The druglord is heading to SuperMax after his courtroom antics, but his henchmen attack an armored car and helicopter and spring the boss, and in the process capture Elizabeth Keen. So the stage is set for some Reddington badassery.
Reddington, like last week, is running around the world and continuing his criminal operations. Because, even though he's on the FBI's Most Wanted List, a man has to be given the opportunity to make a living. This week, he flies to Haiti to run some guns, but gets a call from Elizabeth Keen about how to capture the Stewmaker. After receiving Red's vague instructions, Elizabeth then proceeds to get captured.
The drug lord turns Elizabeth over the Stewmaker, who is changing his modus operandi and considering the addition of some new skills to his LinkedIn account, as he plans to kill Elizabeth before giving her a chemical peel. He has also been contracted to make her suffer, and dutifully goes about his assigned tasks. Except Red, our omniscient evil genius, uses the Stewmaker's dog's tracking collar to find the naked contractor and kills him by pushing him into a bathtub of chemicals. Elizabeth accuses him of being a monster, which Red admits, and we have our resolution.
In other news, Elizabeth has found a clue about her mild-mannered husband who is married to a smoking hot FBI profiler-hacker. Her husband's redacted file did not yield much info, but she sneaks into the evidence room and finds a box with the title "Angel Station 6/23/12". Coincidentally, her and her husband were having a romantic getaway in Boston on that date. By the end of the show, her husband is proposing another getaway. Probably because he's a super secret agent and has to kill someone. Stay tuned.
A surprise this week was Agent Ressler, our dumb-as-a-rock FBI agent. He goes undercover with Red to meet with the druglord and actually shows signs of intelligent life. And he gave our beautiful protagonist a hug. I see a budding relationship with Elizabeth Keen. Now there's a plot twist. Will he tell her about his adulterous liaison with Monica Baccarin on Homeland?
Lastly, Red recovers a photo from the Stewmaker's scrapbook of a young girl, who was a past victim of this week's nude villian. Don't know where we are going with this new bit of information, but I am intrigued.
Random Thoughts:
- There is still a fair amount of the suspension of logic when watching this show. Like how does Red, a known criminal, start working with the FBI and all of these criminal genius unknown criminals don't found out about it?
- Less horrific throwaway lines for Spader this episode.
- Reddington told the FBI (and us) in the pilot that he never does business over the phone or by email; he prefers to meet in person. Then he takes a call from Elizabeth on his cellphone while brokering a gun-running deal and talks openly about the Case of the Week. Huh?
- No "Elizabeth, I'm likely your father" stuff this week.
- The premise of the show is that the FBI lets a known fugitive move freely around the world to conduct his vast criminal activities, while the known criminal gives them tips on how to catch criminals that the FBI has never heard of and that they didn't know existed. I just wanted to point that out again.
What did you think?
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