“Naughty Monkey Kicks at Tree” was another great addition to “Blindspot’s” fourth season. I continue to appreciate the general feel of this season, and how the story continues to be pushed forward. I can’t quite decipher all the characters’ intentions out, and that’s what I love. I can’t tell where the show is taking us, where it’s going, and that’s fun. I have to say, though, that without Roman as Remi’s hallucinations, this episode felt more like one of a past season, but it was great nonetheless. I still hope that he will be popping back up though.
In this week’s episode, one of Rich’s old schemes has inadvertently created an eco-terrorism organization, and one of Jane’s tattoos leads the team right in the middle of it. This episode did a great job at pairing up different duos, that we aren’t used to see work together. Since Rich’s notoriety as Jackson Fernwood in regards to the group made him crucial for undercover work, the team used him as their ticket inside the terrorist’s compound. Weller played the role of Rich’s assistant while Jane and Keaton stayed in the van. Patterson stays at the lab, and Reade is nowhere to be found, stuck at his place, tied to a chair.
“Okay, maybe he has my name tattooed on his back.” –Rich
Rich continues to be hilarious, even if he is really over the top. In this episode he had a couple of great one-liners. The quote above was obviously a dig at Jane and Kurt, and I cracked up at it, I loved it. To save the day, Rich finds himself riding the pickup trailer to the drones’ destination, and road side assistance is of no assistance. This scene once again, pulled a chuckle out of me. How a show like this can both be ridiculous and serious in the same scene is an exploit in itself. I have to stick with Rich’s logic on one point, burning an entire city can definitely not be good for the ozone layer. In the end, like the true heroes that they are, the team saved New York city from an attack for the thousandth time.
Jane, with Boston’s help, recovered last week the CIA black-site locations. In this week’s mission, she wants to figure out where Shepard is, so they can plan an extraction. They have a reason to bring in CIA, Remi pushes for Keaton to help them, so she can get information from him on Shepard’s location. During the undercover operation, she volunteers to wait in the van with him. I really enjoyed their exchange, and it made me forget why we hate him so much. He feels for her, wants to help her. He even tells her they interrogated Shepard to see if she knew of a cure for Jane’s ailments. Jane tells Keaton she wants to interrogate her mother, see her before she dies. Since he kind of owes her for torturing her for months in a black-site, he agrees to take her there, giving Remi a general idea of where Shepard is being kept. I feel like her reuniting with Shepard will be a good thing, I think it’s what will bring her over to the right side of things, but that’s just my theory on all this.
When her back acts up and starts spasm, Jane finds herself stranded in the line of fire. It’s Keaton that risks his life to go get her. He gets hit right under his vest, and by the end of the episode, he’s in medically induced coma.
“You are kidding me.” -Keaton
In this episode, since she was without “Roman,” I feel like, somehow, that brought Remi closer to Weller and to the team. Still, when the woman Weller took a picture of tells Remi she can take care of him, Remi advises against it. She can get him under control. The first step in her tactic is to cut her hair in order to look more like Jane… If that sentence made any sense. Remi is essentially going at it alone now, in her quest to revive Sandstorm. She is also dealing with the fact that she is most probably going to die. I don’t think everything she does is acting. Weller is there with her when she gets tested for an experimental stem cell treatment that could possibly cure, and fearless Remi seemed scared, uneasy. She also took it very hard when she was informed that she did not qualify for the treatment, letting Weller comfort her, which I found odd for her. Remi, your Jane is showing. Either Remi has gotten a lot better at acting in this episode, or she is starting to care for these people, if it’s only just a bit. Without Roman, it’s a lot harder to read her, but she really did look saddened when Keaton passes out after having asked her to call his wife and kid.
Weller decided, by the end of the episode, that he wanted to stop looking into Jane’s mysterious contact, but Patterson had already dug out who she was. The woman is no girl scout. We already knew that, but Weller did not, and how he will react to this information could go either way.
While all this was happening, Reade was being held captive in his apartment. At the end of last week’s episode, it seemed, for a short moment, that Reade had the upper hand with Claudia. Then, Tasha pulled her gun on him so he dropped his. Tasha and Claudia needed his password to get protected files on the FBI database. Like Jane/Remi, it was hard to read Tasha in this one, but I still believe she’s playing for the good guys. The fact that she killed Claudia means nothing in my opinion; I don’t believe the woman was MI-6. I think that’s just something Tasha made up to cover her tracks, and start working alone again.
It didn’t take long for Claudia to understand the past between Reade and Tasha, and use it against him. It’s a gun to Tasha’s head that does the trick, and gets Reade to talk. My hunch is that Tasha killed Claudia because of this, because she had figured out how close Reade and Tasha were, and would be using it against her. Claudia had figured out her weakness.
I had Reade’s same reading on her. She is in over her head. She was with Blake because she could be controlled, but with Madelyn it’s different, she’s vicious, and dangerous. I just can’t figure out her endgame. Which is a good thing.
“Who was protecting me? My sacred oath clearly meant nothing to the CIA, to my country.” –Tasha
Their exchanges were harsh, mostly on Tasha’s end; I choose to believe that it was all an act. Their back and forth was great. I have to applaud Audrey Esparza’s performance in this episode, she was incredible. She went through an intense range of emotion, always spot on. She played with Reade, and she played with me. Brava.
Once again, I believe this was a solid episode for Blindspot.
What is your take on Tasha? Good, or bad?
Also, has Remi become softer, or is it just me?
