Apologies for the double review, everyone. Unfortunately, I got hit with so much work last week that I found myself concerned as to when I’d actually sleep. Hopefully I’ll be able to limit the amount that this happens over the course of the season so that I can cover Blindspot on a weekly basis!
Note: I wrote last week’s review before I watched this week’s episode.
So let’s get straight into things, kicking off with the previous Monday’s episode, Bone May Rot, in which Blindspot took three steps backwards. Having previously confirmed that Jane was Taylor Shaw, the show decided to throw some contradictory evidence at us that was also as conclusive as the DNA test.
Now, fortunately, the test Patterson did on Jane’s tooth didn’t suggest definitively that Jane was another person, just that she lived in Africa as a young child, which doesn’t match up with what Weller knew about Taylor. There are two possibilities. One: Weller doesn’t know as much about Taylor as he thought. Two: Jane isn’t Taylor Shaw.The most likely option that I’m seeing is the second. However, now that they’ve taken this twist, neither reveal can be pulled off cleanly. If Jane is Taylor Shaw, then it raises questions about how Weller didn’t know that she lived in Africa. If she isn’t Taylor, then the show misses out on the opportunity for some excellent development between her and Weller. Either way, the show loses something here. What’s perhaps even more frustrating is that I don’t see what benefits the show has picked up from doing this. They’ve created more problems for themselves than they need, all so that they were able to create a big twist.
This is extremely disappointing, because I had hoped that Blindspot would be the type of show that, while not afraid to pull off big twists and reveals, wouldn’t use them too frequently and wouldn’t use them instead of crafting a good story. Not only that, but we’re now following the same slippery path that The Blacklist did. It’s not something a show needs, especially not one with as many convoluted mysteries as Blindspot has. It’s far from too late for the show to recover from this misstep, but they haven’t done themselves any favours.
Aside from that, I enjoyed what they did with the tattoo-of-the-week. The fact that Jane’s latest tattoo was only visible when they visited the CDC was a neat idea, and it kept one idea consistent: That whomever it was that gave Jane all of these tattoos planned this out in extreme detail. That’s really the crux of this show, and that’s something that needs to be kept as the season unfolds. The case revolving around the idea that there are too many humans on the planet, and using natural viruses to cull the population is one that’s been used over and over in the past few years. That doesn’t make it a bad story, however - it’s still pretty topical, which helps, and definitely creates some debates, which I think is always good for a show to do. I thought Bone May Rot handled this idea pretty well, and I’d love to see the show tackle these kind of debates more in future.
The story between Mayfair and Carter took a more dramatic turn, and I’m impressed by how quickly the show is pressing this matter. We still haven’t learned a great deal, which certainly keeps things interesting. This episode, we discovered that Carter was CIA, and little else. Still, it’s nice to see Michael Gaston with something to do other than shoot dogs on The Leftovers.
Ashley Johnson’s Patterson continues to be great fun, too. The scenes with her boyfriend provided some nice comic relief due to her concerns over him seeing classified material. It’ll be a shame when they turn him into a bad guy. Or is it just me that’s seeing that happening?
Bone May Rot was a pretty solid episode. The twist at the end did little to help it, but aside from that, it was an enjoyable hour of television.
Ultimately, Split the Law was a much better episode, but it certainly didn’t start out that way. With a hostage crisis taking place within the first five minutes, I was concerned as to how this episode would be able to do some of the things Blindspot has done well in its first few episodes. Setting up a simple hostage crisis did not fit the bill at all, so I was relieved when things started to get complicated quickly.
However, the case itself - dealing with an ex-CIA informant who is now going to build a radiological bomb - wasn’t one that enthralled me too much. It was another of those ones where, because it was such a huge threat, it didn’t feel like a threat, because Blindspot was never going to wipe out a large chunk of New York (though that would have been cool). It was instead the developments that came out of it that were the most interesting.
Bringing Carter and the CIA into the fold far more this episode worked both within the context of this hour but also in terms of setting up the rest of the season. It was smart to give the team, but particularly Jane and Mayfair, an adversary so early on. Blindspot’s effort to be a serialised show was only going to work were they to do something like this.
Sure, we’ve still got the unresolved plotline of trying to find out who decided to tattoo Jane, gift wrap her for the FBI to find and why they did it, but given that the individual (or perhaps individuals) responsible for this is still an unknown at this point (assuming that Johnny Whitworth’s character, who was so easily dispatched in episode three, was not the mastermind) the show needed another antagonist.
In the form of Carter, they have a really good one. Really, the CIA and the FBI should be able to work together, but he’s is such a wild card in the pack. We’ve no idea what operation Daylight is, only that both he and Mayfair worked on it and that of the four people who knew about it, one is already dead. In addition, we’ve now seen him want a face-to-face with Jane (before getting it), taking aim on her with a sniper rifle and paying Zapata’s gambling debts in order for information about Jane. That’s not necessarily a great story for the show to tell, especially given that pretty much every member of the FBI that we’ve seen has suggested how much Weller’s team trust each other, but it will create some interesting conflicts which should be fun to see. Michael Gaston is great to watch, and as I said above, it’s nice to see him with things to do here. The story is beginning to build quite nicely now and I feel that there is a lot they can do with his character over the course of the season.
Odds and ends:
- Jane’s had another memory! This time, she remembered being led down into a basement by a man, whose face she couldn’t see.
- Kurt’s father (Jay O. Sanders, formerly Special Counsel on Person of Interest) made a brief appearance at the end of the episode, and Weller wasn’t happy to see him. It will be good to see that aspect of Weller’s character develop over the season.
- It wasn’t until someone online pointed it out that I noticed how shaky the camera was in this episode. It was really off-putting at times, once I noticed it.
So, what did you think of these two episodes? Let me know in the comments!
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