I have railed against this before in various reviews of other television shows, and I will do so again here. It is time for TV writers to take a stand against what I call “magic hacking.” Magic hacking is practiced by any number of utterly forgettable villains of the week on an infinite number of network procedurals (and also, sadly, by the otherwise cool Felicity Smoak on a show that I’m sometimes guilty of being a bit of an apologist for, Arrow). For those who haven’t been so unfortunate as to read my rantings about this elsewhere, “Magic Hacking” (TM) involves folks simply doing whatever the hell they please under the guise of “hacking” (in what would otherwise be non futurist/sci-fi environments) in such reality bending fashion that it would be easier to accept (and less insulting to the intelligence) if the showrunners would simply give the characters in question a robe, a pointy wizard hat, a long beard, and a collection of hocus-pocus magic words. Such was the fate of “Ivan.” I’d like to apologize to any magicians, hackers, or my few remaining readers for that last paragraph. I would try and get into the plot of “Ivan” and the title bad guy’s place on the Blacklist, but ultimately, Ivan’s presence is a secondary piece of misdirection. Red uses the FBI (surprise!) to get himself another chess piece…something which could have been accomplished in the background of any number of other Blacklist episodes. What we’re then left with for the second half of the episode (somewhat inexplicably) is a creepy teenage loner story…albeit a creepy teenage loner with a magic wand. Sorry…I mean, a “skeleton key” which is the computer equivalent of a magic wand, and this week’s technological doomsday device. The problem with even the much more interesting half of this episode, dealing with the recent revelations that Tom Keen is, indeed, every bit the monster that Red warned us he was, and perhaps moreso, is that all of this really makes Liz look bad. Extraordinarily bad, actually. Elizabeth Keen has to be the least observant, most dense FBI agent, if not in history, at least currently on TV. Her cat and mouse act at the site of Jolene’s murder was less tense than giggle-worthy, and her later “Thank God for Tom” outburst really just made me feel bad for her. What happened to this character? Don’t worry. She puts it all together by episode’s end…thanks to a toy hippo. That isn’t a euphemism for anything more interesting, sadly. There is a funny moment (and I do hope it’s intentional humor) when Tom has a full-blown, “Hi honey, what’s up?” bit on the phone while he’s destroying evidence at a murder scene, though. While not as altogether unwatchable as “The Cyprus Agency” this one doesn’t exactly do The Blacklist any favors. I do hope that now that its continued success seems assured that next year the writers can take a little more time to plan out the season, and give viewers more payoffs and fewer episodes like “Ivan.” Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for all news updates related to the world of geek. And Google+, if that’s your thing!
