The Blacklist Review S02E15
The latest Blacklist episode is flashback central as Keen’s legal problems continue to gain momentum.
The review for this episode will be short, as most of the forty-odd minutes of this episode are sequences we have seen before. Keen finds herself under fire from a judge who is tasked with determining whether or not national security is at stake and therefore, whether or not her prosecution will go ahead. Desperate to avoid all sorts of government secrets going public (such as, ‘we are a black site task force who runs around and gets ourselves abducted on a weekly basis on the command of the FBI’s most wanted man’), Keen lays it all out for the judge in the form of flashbacks: how Liz came to work with the task force, her relationship drama with Tom, her relationship drama with Red. Nothing is off limits. And, unfortunately, nothing is particularly entertaining.
As soon as a television series lowers themselves into a ‘flashback’ episode, it becomes immediately apparent that the writers and show runners are trying to fill in time before something big happens. It also becomes immediately apparent that this is the episode where, when you are binge-watching the DVDs later on, you go and do the laundry, make more snacks, evaluate your life choices as you stew in your own filth, write a novel and so forth. And The Blacklist is no different: unless you hit your head and forgot the last season and a half, or randomly decided to start the series in season two, episode fifteen, then most of the information gleaned from Keen’s tearful recalls is nothing new.
Red, on the other hand, has a little more actual work to do. Despite Keen’s troubles, he sets the FBI on a rather dubious task (the kind that say, if Keen went to trial, means that a lot of other FBI agents would be getting some serious side-eye action) in order to catch the Blacklister of the week. This Blacklister is The Major, a Professor X-type character for juvenile delinquents with psychotic tendencies. The Major isn’t Red’s actual target however; rather that honour goes to a certain one of his pupils who grew up to marry a profiler and, as far as Red is concerned, screw all his carefully laid plans to hell. That’s right, be careful Not-Tom. Raymond Reddington has a serious axe to grind, and he’s coming after you.
Unfortunately, Red’s search for The Major – and the first steps towards next week’s episode of his search for Not-Tom – is not engaging or exciting enough to make up for the snooze fest we are forced to suffer through in Flashback Central. This episode is definitely a filler, and although next week promises a wild ride, this week fails to satisfy.
Review by Hannah Fitzpatrick.
