Well, maybe the stakes just weren’t high enough. Intercepting coded messages and selling them to the highest bidder is so very Cold War that it feels like we’ve seen this story a few times already. A surprisingly tension-free infiltration of the baddie’s subterranean lair never really gave any real indication of danger, and Elizabeth Keen just seemed, not only unconvincing in her undercover role as a rogue encryption expert, but neither competent enough to fool anybody or scared enough to worry us about her mistakes. The subplot of “is he/isn’t he secretly a master criminal” involving Elizabeth’s husband did take a bit of a turn for the interesting, thanks to an improvised home ballistics collection unit and some “classified” results. The same can’t be said of the nature of Elizabeth’s relationship with Red, the clues to which are really kinda tiresome. They can’t be telegraphing things this badly, can they? I’ll say this for The Blacklist, there’s just enough talent involved to keep even a mediocre piece of TV like tonight’s episode from ever being boring. The fact that we’re always dealing with, not just the criminal element, but the extraordinary criminal element means that there’s always the potential for a real swerve. But if The Blacklist is ever going to fulfill the promise of that extraordinary first episode, it’s gonna have to try a little harder to subvert our expectations, and not just rely on a charismatic anti-hero.
