The Blacklist is coming out swinging this season. They debuted another great episode in “Marvin Gerard.†The actual Blacklist is starting to becoming much more gray. It used to be very black and white. These men and women on the blacklist were terrible people; they were the worst of the worst criminals. We actually got to see a side of the Blacklist where the criminals aren’t necessarily terrible people. In this case, maybe they just got dealt a bad hand and didn’t know how to dig themselves out.
We start this episode at the Russian Embassy. Liz is still being questioned about her affiliation with the Russian KGB. She claims to be a deep cover spy, but the chief intelligence officer is not buying it. He knows all of their operatives, and she isn’t one of them. She reasons with him saying that they have a similar goal. If you remember Karakurt is in the wind. He’s the real culprit of the crimes on US soil, and the Cabal organized it all. The Embassy decides that Liz should be debriefed in Moscow.
Back on US soil outside of the Russian Embassy, Ressler and Samar are with a SWAT team ready to move should Liz come out. Thankfully, Reddington is always a step ahead. He bombards the Russian Ambassador in his hotel room during his weekly tryst with a married woman. Red needs up to date information on Liz’s whereabouts. When he learns that they will take her to Moscow, he knows that it’s just a ploy from the Cabal.
While they are given orders to stand down, that is exactly what Ressler does not want to do. Samar reminds him that they are doing everything in their legal power to bring down Liz. Ressler gives up until he gets a call from Red himself. Red reveals that the Cabal set up Liz’s transfer to Moscow, and Ressler must stop the convoy. Even though Ressler doesn’t believe that Liz is innocent, he doesn’t want her dead.
The showdown with the convoy resulted in a nasty car crash as well as Liz saving Ressler’s life and escaping. She meets Red at a diner where she is still constantly looking over her shoulder. Of course, she needn’t worry; Red always has a plan. Police cars show up at the diner after a tip was called in. Red and Liz take the entire place hostage. He asks for three demands, but the only one that stuck out was his request for a lawyer. Red asks for a disbarred lawyer, Marvin Gerard, to be brought from his prison cell to the diner.
In the diner, Liz becomes restless. A man tries for her gun, and she beats him close to death. He can barely breath after the altercation. Liz probably broke some of his ribs. She tries to help, but his wife refuses and looks at her with utter fear. Thankfully, Marvin has found something. Red had him look through the Fulcrum. When Red reads the section that Marvin pointed out, he says, “this isn’t right.†Marvin replies that it was “all kinds of wrong.â€
Ressler is starting to get the hang of just how deep Reddington’s plans run. When he hears that the tip came in on Reddington, he gets suspicious. There have only been a handful of true Reddington sightings ever. By the time they figure out that Red planned this whole hostage situation, it was too late. Red and Liz were gone, and Marvin is now free and clear.
We get to see little snippets of how other characters are progressing so far this season. Harold Cooper is given a pleas deal. All he has to do is resign, and he gets full pension and benefits and charges dropped. If he doesn’t take this deal, he ends up at a tiny desk working for the Criminal Justice Information Systems, CJIS. Guess which one he chose? Sadly, Denbe is having the worst time this season. Mr. Solomon is still torturing him for answers on Red’s whereabouts. I can only hope that Denbe gets out of this alive.
Lastly, we leave Red and Liz in a room having a drink and relaxing. Liz tries to talk with Red about why the Cabal believes he did something that Red swears isn’t true. Red only changes the subject on her. She asks how he can handle people looking at him with such fear in their eyes. Red tells Liz that he hopes she can find solace in the way he looks at her. When Red opens the door to their “room,†he reveals that they were in a storage container on a ship in the middle of the ocean. It’s still a mystery as to where they are or where they are going.
