The Blacklist continues to thrill while they round out their second season with “Quon Zhang.†As we get closer to figuring out The Cabal’s master plan and the true relationship between Liz and Red, the cases become less and less important; I don’t seem to mind.
Our case of the week starts out with two men digging up a body in a graveyard. They bring the body of a young Chinese American girl to a man who examines her. He makes note of her age, 24, and that she is unmarried. He pays the two men for her, and she is smuggled into China as a fake foreign national. The FBI task force gets wind of the case by this point, after seven bodies have already been smuggled out of the country.
These men just happen to be an asset of The Cabal. They have provided explosives that have caused catastrophic damage. It is in both the interest of the FBI and Raymond Reddington to hurt The Cabal in any way they can. When they find the next woman who is about to be smuggled to China, the FBI intercepts the casket. They have a robot scan the casket for explosives. When the robot opens the casket, they can’t find any explosives inside. Next, they send in the medical examiner to open the girl up to make sure she isn’t carrying anything inside of her. When they can’t find anything that she is smuggling, the FBI is momentarily baffled.
Leave it Aram to find the connection to an ancient Chinese myth and ritual. When a man or woman in China dies unmarried, it is said that their soul haunts the family until they are laid to rest with a spouse to be with in the afterlife. The Chinese man, Quon Zhang, is smuggling the women to be buried next to unmarried Chinese nationals as a spouse in the afterlife. Since criminals are often too confident, we know they will mess up eventually.
Quon Zhang got caught after he tried to go after the living, specifically the woman who broke his brother’s heart leading to his suicide. Quon Zhang was convinced that his brother had haunted his family following his suicide. Ever since then, he has smuggled bodies to multiple cities in China to be laid to rest with unmarried men and women. He did reveal that he smuggled in an agent for the Cabal. I’m sure in the final two episodes this season, the task force will be dealing with this new asset. It was a very interesting case that didn’t overpower everything else and didn’t bore while it got screen time.
Reddington is still after The Cabal, and he lost his inside man when Hobbs
disappeared. Red knows that they are planning another attack, and he is determined to foil their plan. Knowing that Jasper is the weak link, Red develops a plan to lure him out. Jasper went into hiding after he refused to turn on the Cabal for Red. Red promised to cut out his tongue and send it to the Director.
Red devised a plan to fake Jaspers death. He had Dembe take his multi million dollar yacht out to the middle of the ocean and blow it up. After rumors of Jasper’s supposed death surfaced, so did Jasper. He conducted multiple interviews to prove that he is still alive, which led Reddington straight to him. The best move Red makes with Jasper’s interrogation is bringing in Mossad trained, Samar.
Samar gives Jasper novacane before beginning her interrogation. Red leaves after remarking that dental work makes him squeamish. Samar tells Jasper that the Director sent her to get him out of there. As they are running to the car, Dembe tries to stop them. Samar shoots him and yells at Jasper to run to the car. In the car, Samar tells Jasper that she just blew her cover for him. He reveals that he didn’t tell Red any of the details of the plan. All he knows is that they are targeting a defense installation, but the Director won’t make the final call until next week.
After learning all that Jasper knew, Samar turns the car around and heads back to Red and Dembe, alive and well. After watching the way Reddington operates, it wasn’t much of a stretch to see that this was all a ruse, but watching Samar play it out was incredible. Even Red commented on how he would love to see her in action. Reddington is not one to go back on his word, so he does as he promised. The Director was brought Jasper’s tongue.
When she was busy with the case, Liz was looking for any information about her mother. She knows that even if she asked for the truth from Reddington, he wouldn’t ablige. She goes to Tom Keen for help. He links her mother’s ring to Berlin and goes for answers from an old contact. When the contact won’t reveal anything, Liz goes back to Red’s apartment. She knows that the threatened Tom’s contact and finds a camera hidden in the apartment. Reddington knew the whole time that she had found the photo of her and her mother.
Red confirms that it is her mother in the picture with her. He also reveals her mother’s KGB past. Both of her parents were in foreign intelligence. Liz tells Red that she needs to know what happens. He replies that she wants to know and that there is a difference. Red finally confirms that he is the one who blocked Liz’s memory of the night of the fire. Liz then wonders if Red loved her mother and if that’s what got her father killed. Red won’t divulge Liz any more answers about her parents, and I, for one, have a feeling that it is more complicated than Liz wants to think.
