Drama
Doctor Who
The good Doctor’s been flitting around time, space and the BBC since 1963. Now he’s also a fixture in the US, toting his curiously British brand of sci-fi in his highly mobile TARDIS. Just how safe is this contraption?
Raymond “Red” Reddington is one bad dude. He oozes felonious activity. His wardrobe (complete with black fedora) exudes fashionable evil. His I-know-ever-so-much-more-than-you attitude would make James Bond’s adversaries at Spectre prickle with jealousy. Even his nickname—Concierge of Crime—seems to channel comic book villainy.
So what, pray tell, is Red doing working with the FBI?
Turns out he has a list (that’d be The Blacklist, naturally) of the world’s most dangerous criminals—guys so good at being bad that the FBI doesn’t even know about them yet. The names on the list are criminal whales, Red says, and he wants to play at Ahab for a bit.
Reddington has played that Ahab for six seasons now. But it’s always dicey fishing for whales when you’re using the boat of The Man. The relationship was never an easy one: Do brilliant criminal masterminds really wake up one morning and say, “You know, I’m done with this black fedora. I want to be known as the Concierge of Conscientiousness from here on out”? He’s as duplicitous as they get, and now we know how duplicitous: Turns out Red isn’t Red at all. And Elizabeth Keen, the criminal profiler whom he’s treated like a daughter and, we “learned” in Season 4, was his own, biological flesh and blood? Yeah, not so much.
Now, Elizabeth’s determined to find out who fake-Red, her fake father, really is. Even if she has to send him to jail and whitewash the blacklist while she’s at it.
The Blacklist is both a clever and contrived crime thriller. It seems predicated on the predator-prey dynamic between Red and Liz—a relationship built on mutual respect and distrust. It has some serialized elements to it—a long-game mystery that will be doled out episode by episode, season by season, getting evermore convoluted as it goes. But it’s also something of a pedestrian episodic drama, with the FBI dutifully pursuing, each week, a new man on Red’s nefarious list. (Or at least it did before Red landed in the clink.)
Sexual material has included hookups and partial nudity. And our not-so-good-girl detective has gone so far as keeping her one-time husband illegally captive, hoping to use his intel to find—and perhaps kill—a notorious terrorist.
But if The Blacklist feels, at times, a little like The Silence of the Lambs, it does not indulge that movie’s depravity. The black-hatted Red, whoever he is really, is a wicked white-collar criminal and agent of global terrorism, but he’s no up-close-and-personal serial killer.
This is still a violent show, though, and sometimes extremely so. Extras die by the dozens. People are shot, spraying blood as they die. They’re beaten or tortured, with little of the resulting pain and gore hidden from viewers. And the lines the good guys are willing to cross to bring the bad guys to sometimes terminal justice seem to grow more gray by the day.
In the second part of the two-part Season 6 premiere, Red and Liz are after an assassin on the loose in New York City. They manage to foil the assassin’s nefarious scheme but lose the killer himself. More critical, it seems, is the fact that Red is accosted by a beat cop and arrested while buying a pretzel. It’s not long before the NYPD realizes that they have, in their custody, the most wanted man in America. Meanwhile, Liz wrestles with Red’s legacy, calling him a “very bad man capable of an incredible amount of good.”
The assassin (the Corsican of the episode’s title) shoots and kills a United Nations liaison: A bit of blood lands on the assassin’s cheek after he pulls the trigger, which he wipes away with a handkerchief. He later shoots a UN security guard in the gut (the shot takes place off camera, but we see the injured man clutch at the bloody torso wound as blood dribbles out his mouth) and an innocent bystander in the stomach (we see the exit wound). The bomb that the assassin was carrying, we learn, could’ve killed most of the folks in the United Nations building, and perhaps taken down the building itself. Red gets the man who designed it to defuse it, but the bomb expert drinks a great deal of alcohol (gin and tonic initially) to steady his nerves. (After the bomb’s defused, an FBI agent grabs the man’s flask and takes a swig himself.)
In the UN building, Red makes an odd speech about Cary Grant, referencing his numerous marriages (five) and affairs (“allegedly both male and female,” Red notes) and then notes the actor was a regular user of LSD—a drug that Red has a fondness for himself. We hear a great deal about the supposed benefits of that psychedelic drug, and Red relates that Grant once had an acid trip where he imagined he was a giant penis/spaceship.
Red tries to bribe a police officer. We hear a great deal about lies and betrayal. Liz and her half-sister drink whiskey together. Red asks Liz to find out who betrayed him, perhaps in order to kill them. There’s a reference to skinny dipping. Characters say “a–” twice, “d–n” once and “h—” once.
A vigilante group known as The Invisible Hand pursues their warped form of “justice” by burying people alive. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Keen searches for the man who killed her husband, Tom, and Reddington helps a friend to his own benefit, while getting caught up in a drug war.
The Invisible Hand, a nefarious group of five, leans heavily on violence. One of them hits a gun manufacturer over the head with a wine bottle, knocking him unconscious. They plot to bury another woman alive. The FBI finds that they’ve killed dozens of people, all who were involved in a toxic superfund site who the group holds responsible for killing members of The Hand’s families. Many corpses are uncovered and their decaying bodies are shown. Members of The Invisible Hand are killed by the FBI, and the last captive admits he feels no remorse, only that justice has been served.
In Reddington’s world, a friend of his illegally smuggles cocaine, needing money for a medical procedure (involving his genitals) that he hopes will impress his girlfriend. However, he has upset some drug lords and a man called “Big Willie” (who Reddington makes a sexualized reference to the man’s confidence in possessing such a name). Big Willie kills a cartel member “Mo-Mo” and his body is seen chopped to pieces (we see an arm and a leg and blood is on every surface, including the murder weapon: an electric saw). Multiple people are killed as gun shots fly and a drug war ensues.
Elizabeth looks for Tom’s killer, but a detective apparently suspects that Elizabeth’s a murderer. Elizabeth and another man are seen drinking hard liquor. She and Red learn the police force is corrupt.
The word “d–n” is used once.
Devious criminal kingpin Alexander Kirk has a hospital invaded to kidnap Elizabeth, whom he thinks is his daughter. Kirk, who’s dying, hopes for a nice family reunion … and a transfusion that might save his life. Reddington, Kirk’s nemesis, offers to exchange his life for Elizabeth’s.
Kirk’s men invade a hospital, shoot several people, kill others with grenades and hit Harold Cooper (Elizabeth’s boss) over the head to knock him out. Tom, Elizabeth’s husband, and other agents kill some of Kirk’s men, too. Elizabeth fights with Kirk’s assistant, Odette. They hit and kick, with Odette eventually jumping from a ship into the water below. Bloody bodies are seen. Blood spackles walls. People are threatened with guns.
One of Kirk’s men gets shot in the chest but survives to be interrogated: An agent stuffs a rod into an exposed bullet wound until the man tells him what he wants to know. Reddington is interrogated by Kirk: Kirk and his doctor use syringes filled with pain-fostering drugs to prompt Red to talk and to tell Kirk whose daughter Elizabeth really is. (He tells Kirk that Elizabeth is his daughter, but is it true? Or just the product of the torture?) We see needles inserted and sometimes glimpse bloody marks where the insertion was done. We hear Red’s drug-induced, painful answers. In a side story, a woman known only as Mr. Kaplan is chained to a bed by a captor (a man who also nursed her back to health in previous episodes after she was shot in the head.) She holds a fork to his throat, threatening him. He eventually releases her, revealing bruises around her ankles.
Red and Kirk were both once married to a spy named Katarina. Red tells Kirk that she likely was sexually involved with several men. “I was an assignment,” he tells Kirk. “I’m sure you were, too.” Red negotiates with a woman conducting shady medical research. “My research is illegal, not immoral,” she insists. Kirk doubts Red’s promise that he can be cured, saying that “I don’t believe in miracles.” Characters say “h—” twice and misuse God’s name once.
Red’s on the hunt for a matchmaker of sorts—a man known for bringing warring crime families together for mutual profit. He’s now working for two such families engaged in a lethal turf battle. Marriage, he insists, will bring them together … but that means the current fiancée of the prospective groom will have to “go away.” Meanwhile, Elizabeth tries to get someone to adopt her unborn baby.
Several people are beaten and/or shot to death, often sporting bloody stains on their clothes. In flashback, three people are executed via bullets to the head—each shot accompanied with a splash of blood. The fiancée is killed by the groom’s own family in a drive-by shooting. Someone is savagely beaten by her husband, leaving her brain damaged—along with her bloody and bruised face and. A DEA officer is shot in the neck, and blood squirts through his fingers.
Affairs and illegitimate children are talked about. A guy drinks champagne and shares it with his dogs. We learn that the two families are involved in heroin trafficking. A side plot revolves around an elaborate jewel heist. Characters say “h—” six or so times, misuse God’s name three or four times and abuse Jesus’ name once.
“The Scimitar”
Samar, an agent from the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad who teams up with Keen and Co., seduces and apparently kills an Iranian nuclear physicist. We see her and the guy share drinks in a hotel bar and make out in a hallway. A short time later he falls from a 12-story window. (We see his lifeless, bloodstained body on the top of a crushed car.) In retaliation, Iran sends an assassin codenamed Scimitar to kidnap and kill a U.S. nuclear scientist.
It’s an open question as to what Keen will do with her ex-husband (whom she’s holding captive to probe him for secret spy stuff) when his usefulness ends. “Just do me a favor,” he tells her. “Look me in the eyes when you do it.” Gunfire gives way to a tossed grenade that flips Keen’s SUV. She stabs a captor with a syringe filled with sedative. We see some hand-to-hand combat and gunplay. Red drugs and kidnaps a young woman. There’s an apparent revenge killing. (Red and Samar are involved.) We hear about previous killings, some of them gruesome. Keen pulls a pair of medical pins up through the skin of her arm.
Keen’s partner, Ressler, battles drug addiction; we see him dump pills down a drain. We hear “h—” and “d–n” three or four times each and “b–ch” once. God’s name is wrongfully interjected a few times.
“Pilot”
When a U.S. general’s daughter is kidnapped, a whole bunch of people are killed, and the kid is wired up with chemical explosives. Liz’s husband nearly dies at the hands of the terrorist who tapes him to a chair and is seen beating him and stabbing him in the leg and gut with a knife. (Blood is everywhere.) The terrorist is later shot twice and falls to his death from the top of a building.
We see Liz with blood streaking her face. She suffers through a smoke bomb/tear gas attack. She stabs a guy in the neck with a pen as a way of making him talk. (We see the blood stain the man’s neck and shirt, as well as a close-up of the pen.) Vehicles crash. People die in hails of bullets. Evildoers pour gasoline on a bridge and set it on fire. We see a picture of a supposed corpse.
Liz is shown in bed in her underwear. Characters say “h‑‑‑” (four or five times) and “b‑‑ch” (three or four). They misuse God’s name once or twice. They drink wine and champagne.
We hear that Red ran out on his own family, years before, at Christmastime. But Liz and her husband are in the process of adopting, and she’s elated when she learns that they might be bringing home a little girl. “Our family is the only thing that matters,” she tells her husband—though that may change, given her job and the big secret her hubby’s been keeping.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
Kristin Smith joined the Plugged In team in 2017. Formerly a Spanish and English teacher, Kristin loves reading literature and eating authentic Mexican tacos. She and her husband, Eddy, love raising their children Judah and Selah. Kristin also has a deep affection for coffee, music, her dog (Cali) and cat (Aslan).
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