I don’t take on new series lightly. In fact, I’ve become somewhat mercenary. In recent days, I deleted Bates Motel and The Walking Dead from my DVR series recordings.
However, I’ve been meaning to check out The Blacklist, having heard good things about it, and since the episodes are piling up I decided to see if it was worthwhile. It had one strike against it from the get-go: It was on NBC. Of all the shows I watch at present, only two are on that network, and the ones I’ve tried out in recent years have either been disappointments or canceled when they were getting interesting. Or both. However, The Blacklist has enough episodes under its belt that it looks like it will be around for a while, and I’ve heard good things about it from others, without paying too close attention to what it’s about.
James Spader (Boston Legal) plays Reddington, who has been on the FBI’s most wanted list for 20 years. In the first episode, he walks into the agency headquarters and surrenders himself. He is a valuable font of information; however, he has a condition. He will only talk to Elizabeth Keen, a newbie profiler fresh from Quantico. In fact, it’s her first day at her new job. No one knows why he picked her, and he’s not saying. She bears scars, literal and metaphorical, from her past. In the first episode, she and her husband are in the late stages of adopting. By the second episode, she’s not sure who her husband is any more.
Reddington has a list, which he calls his blacklist for the sake of drama (by his own admission). This mental list contains names of criminals, many of whom the Feds don’t even know exist. If some of his other conditions are met, he will divulge names and details, which he does on a week-by-week basis. Though in general he’s working on the side of good after two decades, he has hidden motives and sometimes uses the Feds to his own benefit. He’s a real card: Alan Shore if things had gone another route. He’s smooth and skillful and charming and lethal. It’s not clear why he’s so interested in Elizabeth, but he knows a lot about her. At this early stage, three episodes in, I’m open to the idea that he might be her real father. We’ll see. It’s a crime-of-the-week show with an through-line. I like that.
This week’s Survivor was a real wowser. Tribal Council was the best part. Two people played idols on behalf of other people, unplanned, but the vote from the other tribe was aimed at someone else, so it was a useless gesture. Except, just when it seemed like they were going to lose someone, a player on the other team flipped and broke the tie in the opposite direction. My jaw dropped. It will be interesting to see the repercussions, but it seems like next week will focus on this new immunity idol with secret special powers.
It was nice seeing Stuart Margolin on NCIS this week. People of a certain age will remember him as Angel on The Rockford Files, Jim’s jailhouse friend who was always trying to run a con of some sort.
Talking about jaw-dropping, Raylan’s gambit at the end of this week’s Justified is a real hail mary. By upping the ante, having Kendall charged as an adult, he’s really putting the screws to Daryl Crowe, Jr. Crowe thought a few years in juvie would toughen up his brother slash nephew, but this is a whole new game. Only one episode left to see how it resolves.
The running joke of the past few episodes has been the bartender in Boyd’s joint. “This is the worst job in the world,” he says after being shot in the knee, a week after being coshed and tied up. The comedy continued with Dewey’s run-in with the old lady from whom he was “borrowing” some gasoline to keep his smokey Gremlin going. “You’re a little touched, aintcha child?” she asked, moments before she went after him with her shotgun. Finally, Dewey gets caught incriminating himself and demands some final respect from Raylan. “My advice: stop talking about yourself in the third person. Makes you sound like a fool.” Dewey doesn’t understand the literary reference. “Third person? You mean, this guy?” he asks, pointing at the driver. “I don’t understand you,” he says to Raylan, and not for the first time.
Ava’s in a tight spot, and she missed her chance to use Boyd to improve her situation. Hard to imagine that ending well, unless Boyd can make another deal. The savior with the silver tongue has talked himself out of corners before, when he’s not resorting to a “redneck I.E.D.” But what about poor Jimmy? Is he going to be on the receiving end of a skin-related procedure?
A nice nod to Elmore Leonard when Tim cuts Boyd’s long-winded story off: Why don’t you leave out the parts we’d like to skip?”
