Bizarro Post Television Bureau- NBC's The Blacklist, initially pitched as The African-American Ledger, is a remarkably bold show in a TV-land that yearns for nothing more than safety and predictability. A cynical examination of the promos would lead you to believe that this is a flagrant ripoff of Silence of the Lambs--made all the worse for NBC's remake of Hannibal--and a standard-issue police procedural. What we got instead was a brisk blend of satire and over-the-top violence. From start to finish, the pilot episode is a comedy delight.
International mega-criminal Red Reddington (James Spader) has turned himself in to the world's most incompetent FBI to see if they can do a little housecleaning on his behalf. After strolling into the Hoover Building with no disguise and telling a security guard his name, Reddington is forced to wait several minutes while the G-men's CSI face scanning machine confirms his identity. Did I mention there's a wanted poster of the man a few feet away? Because there is.
So anyway, get this, They put Red in the cell from Skyfall, and he offers them a list of super-duper-ultra criminals that he wants them to take out. However, he'll only help if he is allowed to work with rookie DEFINITELY NOT HIS LONG LOST DAUGHTER criminal profiler Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone, no relation to Daniel).
By the way, Elizabeth is a wacky sitcom wife who transforms into a no-nonsense FBI superbadass when duty calls. Agent Keen is brought to the CIA black site to meet with Reddington where, fuck it, they flagrantly rip off the first meeting between Hannibal and Starling. The FBI, in a rare moment of clarity, realizes there's something up with this new employee of theirs. How could Reddington demand her partnership if they didn't have a prior relationship (a relationship that is IN NO WAY PATERNAL)? That line of discussion gets dropped for some reason after Keen is interrogated by her new employers in what is one of my favorite bits of the episode. To paraphrase:
FBI Guy: "Mrs. Keen, please profile yourself for me as if you were a suspect."
Keen: "Well, I'm very stubborn, confident, and I take charge of any situation I find myself in. As a result, some refer to me as a 'bitch.'"
You see, you might think that this is a commentary on the way society judges strong women as opposed to strong male characters. Blacklist turns your expectations upside-down by using a blues-rock cover of Jay Z's 99 Problems to call her a bitch for standing up to Reddington mere minutes later. Dohohoho, Blacklist, you rogue!
The FBI assigns their newest profiler to guard the daughter of a brutal foreign general as she leaves ballet practice, because that's totally what profilers do when they're not writing reports on how mommy issues compel people to make masks out of human skin. Just as nature intended, terrorist Explodey McJihad (Some Guy) manages to overwhelm the entire FBI convoy and steal the girl. McJihad, naturally, is on Reddington's blacklist. Why did a member of this super secret society show up just as the FBI discovered his existence? Reasons.
The FBI is so desperate to catch this bad guy, they cater to Reddington's every whim in exchange for intelligence. The most dangerous criminal in the known universe is given a lightly guarded hotel suite, an unlimited supply of expensive wine and veal, and a vinyl copy of Sinister Classical Music for Scheming Masterminds Volume III.
Meanwhile, Explodey McJihad has just strolled into Keen's apartment, which evidently had no surveillance in place whatsoever. Keen enters and finds her husband taped to a chair and battered. Before she can produce her weapon, McJihad pulls a knife and threatens to stab her hubby if she doesn't help him release some pent-up exposition. In a bit that's right out of Kids in the Hall, McJihad punctuates every sentence by stabbing Mr. Keen in a new place with his paring knife. His job complete, the infamous terrorist is allowed to walk casually out of Keen's apartment while she makes no effort to draw her weapon, shoot him, and end the whole thing with a completely justifiable use of deadly force. Keen proceeds to render first aid to her husband by gesturing violently at his many wounds.
In the meantime, Reddington (giant mega ultra criminal under FBI custody) rappels out of the window of his hotel room using the courtesy rappelling kit. What, your hotel never gave you one? Sounds like you got suckered. Reddington proceeds to do all of the FBI's work for them, because they're all bigger idiots than he anticipated, and he goes on to move around downtown Washington D.C. with no intervention from the authorities who know damn well that he escaped. Mostly because he called them to gloat.
It turns out that McJihad has taped a dirty bomb to the general's daughter and left her in the zoo with strict instructions to wait for her father on a park bench far away from any populated areas. Evidently the FBI is in charge of zoo security as well, since nobody noticed the digital clock visible through the fabric of her backpack is counting down. Also, it beeps every single second and it has wires clumsily jutting out of it, and it's blatantly duct taped to the midsection of an unattended minor.
Reddington sends his finest explosive fetishist to disarm the bomb just in time, while Keen comforts the little girl by offering to let her stroke the giant lucky scar that "her daddy gave her." Hahaha, yeah, I know. Hey, you know how I mentioned the demolitions guy is a fetishist? I wasn't joking. His payment for disarming the thing is the backpack itself, which he gleefully clutches to his chest while skipping away; happier than the guy who finally found a kid who wanted free candy more than he distrusted strangers. To Keen's credit, she does tell the FBI backup that arrives to go catch the dude who just made off with a WMD clutched to his chest. They don't take her advice, but she tried.
Oh, and get this. At the very end of the show, Keen finds out that her husband is a foreign spy! You'd think a thing like that might be revealed during an intensive FBI background check! And if you did think about that, you're clearly not ready for what Blacklist is dishing out.
The Blacklist delights in thumbing its nose at FBI-show conventions. Viewers get an all-you-can-eat buffet of Spader smugness without the buzzkill of serious police work, because none of the FBI agents know what in the hell they're doing. I strongly suspect that each episode will pit the nincompoops at the FBI against another nefarious character from the blacklist, and the day will be saved by an escaped Reddington who will then turn himself back in to get ready for next week's adventure. It's an Inspector Gadget for a new age, and I'm all for it.
Final rating: A
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