Written by Lukas Reiter
Directed by Michael Watkins
Airs Mondays at 10pm ET on NBC
The most essential and important part of a television show is having characters that the viewer inherently cares about and whose interests or concerns they care about as much as the characters themselves do. Without that, the show becomes a house of cards that grows evermore unstable as time goes on. Sure, the story drives the episodes from one point to another, but emotional connections aren’t made with the story or, if they are, it’s to a much lesser degree. No connections are made with characters and The Blacklist has created a story that is adequate with characters that, outside of James Spader’s Red, are completely weak and as close to one-dimensional as it gets.
Continuing from last week’s episode, Red continues his search for the mole within the FBI, leading him to CIA attache Meera Malik (Parminder Nagra). Meanwhile, Keen (Megan Boone) prepares with her husband, Tom (Ryan Eggold), to adopt a not-yet-born child and, coincidentally enough, Red approaches Keen with a new Blacklist-er in the form of an adoption agency that is abducting children and giving them to unsuspecting prospective parents.
Subtlety is a concept totally and completely lost on this show. Just as Keen is about to adopt a kid and take off work for a couple months, it just so happens that they investigate an adoption agency. Their form of nuance and subtext resembles a sledge hammer more than anything. It doesn’t feel like the show is even trying at this point. Not that it ever truly felt like they were to begin with, but this is reaching absurd proportions.
Speaking of Keen, her storyline revolving around Tom and whether she can trust him, as well as their continuing desire to adopt a baby, is about the least interesting aspect of this show. How is anyone expected to care about any of this? The show has never successfully developed any kind of emotion regarding Keen or anything dealing with her, which is unfortunate since she’s one of the two main characters on the show. Anything that happens with her character feels utterly unimportant and pointless; it’s hard to convince the audience to care about her when they have no real attachment towards her to begin with.
This is a very roundabout way of saying that The Blacklist is just simply the worst. I don’t find myself looking forward to the next question- I instead end up dreading it. With each new episode that performs poorly, the series burns all the more bridges with its audience. Soon enough, viewers will dump this show altogether and that would really show them, wouldn’t it?