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Red Reddington? Still stuck in an FBI sweat box. Elizabeth Keen? Still the only FBI profiler Reddington will agree to talk to. Elizabeth Keen's husband? Still on a ventilator with a secret box filled with passports and cash and guns known only to Keen (and quite possibly Reddington). So we're all caught up, yes? That's good because there's a train wreck, and it turns out it's the work of someone on Reddington's Blacklist, who's specialty is going around assassinating people and making it look like an accident. They call him The Freelancer, because The Independent Contract Hired For Occasional Work During Peak Periods doesn't sound nearly as menacing.
Anyhow, Keen and Reddington take a road trip up to Montreal to ferret out the name of The Freelancer's victim. They neither bond nor do they sample the local poutine, but they do find out that the freelancer is planning to target noted humanitarian Floriana Campo, who helps free girls from sex slave traders. Of course, that's rather easy to do when you're the head of the cartel that's running the sex slave trade in the business. Yes, it's the old switcheroo—Campo is actually the person on the blacklist. And she would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't of been for that meddling Reddington. And the flute of poisoned champagne he served her.
In the meantime, we get to meet the rest of the gang that will be joining Keen and Reddington on their assorted adventures – a taciturn South Sudanese rebel fighter, a Stanford MBA who handles Reddington's finances, and the distrustful CIA plant who's keeping a suspicious eye on them all when she's not manhandling perps suffering from compound fractures. Oh, and Keen has decided to put that box full of passports back under the floorboards where she found it, just as her husband is getting released from the hospital. Because every marriage needs some mystery, if only for a few more episodes.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!I hate to tell the producers of The Blacklist their business, but starting any episode that follows your shadowy figure of mystery around while "Sympathy for the Devil" blares in the background? It’s been done. Quite a bit. And frankly, after watching Hugh Jackman croon it in Viva Laughlin, I should think that this particular cliché should be pronounced dead on arrival. C’mon, guys, Mick Jagger owns enough jet skis.
Anyhow, we pick up pretty much pick up where we left off last week. Reddington is still in custody (your federal government apparently stashes highly sought after fugitives on container ships floating off the Atlantic coast) and the FBI is trying to figure out just what the relationship is between him and Keen. They’re being interviewed separately, and there’s a lot of clever cross-cutting with Keen answering the questions an interrogator has just put to Reddington and vice versa. (It’s actually a very cleverly shot scene, especially for establishing a new show’s basic premise. I’m still not ready to overlook that "Sympathy for the Devil" nonsense, though). Anyhow, Keen says she doesn’t know Reddington and Reddington’s still being cagey about just what his game is, other than his willingness to cooperate with the FBI by handing over a list of names… a blacklist, if you will. Oh, and Keen’s husband is still in a coma after being used a pincushion for some terrorist’s buck knife last week.
There! You’re all caught up on the show, and you didn’t even have to read my recap to get to that point, though I admit I’m kind of hurt you didn’t.
At any rate, during his interrogation, Reddington dropped one of those little tips of his: there’s going to be a problem down at the Decatur Industrial Park, and that the FBI may want to deploy ambulances to the scene. Agent Ressler, he of the perma-scowl, has drawn the plum assignment of checking things out and after casing the scene with a number of other law enforcement personnel, he can’t help but conclude that Reddington is pulling their collective leg. The runaway train hurtling down the track toward him says differently, however, and before you can say "Soul Asylum was never fully appreciated in its time," that runaway train is never going back, wrong way on a one-way track.
Which is a fancy way of saying it derailed, killing 15 people and injuring dozens. (Sorry about quoting Soul Asylum: we all grieve in our own way). The FBI would like to know how Reddington knew what was going to happen, and the truth is, he didn’t other than the time and the place. "The train was a big surprise," he says. Particularly if you were a passenger, I’d say. Among the casualties was a councilwoman from Albany who’s apparently been rubbing people the wrong way. Reddington surmises this particular train wreck was intended specifically to make sure she made it to the big railway crossing in the sky. But if the FBI is expecting Reddington to do any more talking, it better be Elizabeth Keen who’s doing the questioning.
So the train accident was no accident, Reddington tells Keen and several dozen of her closest friends in the FBI. It was the work of a guy who goes around killing people in what looks like your run-of-the-mill tragedies that just happen to kill a bunch of civilians in the process. Reddington has heard through the grapevine that the killer’s assignment is in New York, so it’s in the FBI’s best interest to put the pedal to the investigative metal. Oh, and the killer is known as The Freelancer, because The Part-Time Hire Who Works Off the Books For Tax Purposes looks less impressive on a business card. If the FBI wants to find The Freelancer, they’ll have to use Reddington who once laid eyes on the guy and also knows one of his intermediaries.
And you know what that means? Road trip! Just Reddington and Keen, hitting the road up to Montreal, with Ressler and a bunch of Mounties following at a safe, unobservable distance.
The dinner that Reddington and Keen go off to in order to meet this contact is awkward. Keen suspects that Reddington planted those passports featuring her husband and that gun which she discovered in the floorboards at the end of last week’s episode, and Reddington is enjoying the situation a little too much. "If anyone asks, you’re my girlfriend from Ann Arbor," Reddington tells Keen, who thinks that idea is terrible. "Then you can be my daughter," he says, perhaps a bit too pointedly.
While we’re waiting for the contact to show up, Reddington wants Keen to tell him about this profiling business. Say, maybe she could profile him! Keen concludes that Reddington is a loner who keeps his distance and can travel freely through foreign lands. He’s as comfortable with a glass of scotch in a fancy Montreal restaurant as he is pitched up with a bunch of rebels in some far-off land. He has no close friends or tight bonds with anyone, and he’s very conflicted about his relationship with Keen. So… accurate? Just a little bit, if Reddington’s expression is anything to go by. "Tell me about your husband," Reddington says, adding, "Does he know you as well you know him?" Specifically, Reddington’s interested if Keen’s husband knows about her rather thorny childhood and just how she got that scar on her right hand. See, this is why I keep most dinnertime conversations to sports.
At any rate, this contact has not shown up, and Reddington excuses himself sending Ressler -- safely ensconced in le van banalisé outside the restaurant -- into a blind panic. Reddington exits through the kitchen, pulling the fire alarm on his way out of the joint to create that extra layer of confusion. And Ressler roughs up the guy he suspects is Reddington’s contact. Turns out it’s just the Sommelier, and whatever it was that Reddington slipped him was just an extra c-note for a good bottle of vino. Monsieur, your strong-arm tactics will not pair well with this Bordeaux!
Later, Ressler is in the process of reading Keen the riot act for letting Reddington slip away. One suspects that the riot act is Ressler’s favorite nighttime reading. At any rate he needn’t have bothered: Reddington hasn’t escaped at all, but is merely waiting for them in the unmarked surveillance van. Turns out the contact was the first person Reddington and Keen ran into at the restaurant. (Never trust the coat-check attendant, everyone). Reddington left payment in his hat, and in exchange, his contact left a photo of the victim: human rights activist Floriana Campo, though you might know her better as Isabella Rossellini.
Now, let us leave behind this city of poutine and bagels and Guy Lafleur for New York. It’s there that we meet Floriana Campo, who has been quite the crusader against human trafficking, which is probably why someone wants her dead. That or the series of nature films she made about animal mating rituals. I WILL NEVER LOOK AT ANCHOVIES THE SAME WAY WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT THE HORROR SHOW OF REPRODUCTION THANKS TO YOU, ROSSELLINI. Anyway, Campo’s not going to cancel her fundraiser, but she will let the FBI move around her event, if it helps disrupt The Freelancer’s nefarious plot to commit murder-for-hire without enjoying the benefits of being a full-time worker. Only one problem: no one knows what The Freelancer looks like. Well, except for Reddington. Sounds like someone’s about to do some horse-trading with the heretofore reticent-to-deal Justice Department.
Reddington’s demands are as follows: he gets a DARPA-tested, fully-encrypted tracking device implanted into his shoulder…just like you would for a pet that is harboring international secrets. He also gets two hand-picked members for a security detail: a South Sudanese freedom fighter named Dembe and Luli Zeng, an economics PhD who seems to handle Reddington’s finances and occasionally runs into a spot of trouble with the likes of the SEC and Interpol. In exchange, Justice wants their own person on Reddington’s security detail, a CIA agent named Margot Malik. Reddington is less than enthused about this addition to the group. "You took the CIA," Reddington tells Malik, adding, "Attractive but treacherous." Watching The Blacklist at home, Leon Panetta blushes. It’s off to the Campo fundraiser for this ragtag band. We’re all agreed we’re going to call them Agents of S.P.A.D.E.R., aren’t we? Good.
We’re at the fundraiser and a freed sex slave is bringing the mood down about how she escaped from the villainous cartel that’s likely out to assassinate Floriana Campo and how that cartel branded her and whatnot. Keen and Ressler and the rest are keeping their eyes peeled for The Freelancer. Reddington seems to be more interested in the trays of canapés. (Hey, scenery, while chewy, doesn’t really fill you up). There's a particularly twitchy waiter serving flutes of champagne that eventually catches Reddington’s eye. Notice how he’s looking at Craigslist ads for additional part-time work…it can only be The Freelancer! There’s a lot of commotion and a chase ensues, with Ressler pursuing The Freelancer on foot and Keen eventually apprehending him by running him over with a cab she’s commandeered. Ah yes, the old Run the Guy Over With a Cab gambit. That’s Policing 101, people!
In the bowels of some hotel in midtown Manhattan, The Freelancer is being uncooperative with Ressler’s line of questioning. Compound fractures do tend to make a guy less than talkative. The Freelancer will not be responding to any of your queries about any cartels that may or may not be trying to wax Floriana Campo, who Keen is currently moving to a secured hotel room. Agent Malik decides to speed up the interrogation by taking The Freelancer’s fractured leg and bending it like Beckham, if you catch my drift. As it turns out, the hiring agent for this particular freelance assignment was… Raymond Reddington. Well, at least everybody knows everybody, right?
While Ressler explains to Keen via phone call how Reddington set up this whole business, Reddington has let himself into Campo’s hotel room. She’s not as shocked to seem him as you might imagine. "This is because of you," Campo hisses at Reddington, adding, "The threats, the FBI." He corrects her, "The FBI works for me now." So it appears the Freelancer has become the Freelancee. (I… have no idea what that means either).
As it turns out -- for someone who claims to fight traffickers -- Campo has been doing an awful lot of trafficking herself, and she apparently once tried to bring Reddington in on the business. He turned her down, though, because he doesn’t much care for her, what with that whole pretending to be a humanitarian act she’s been putting on. Keen has arrived by this point, fully aware that Reddington was the one who hired the Freelancer. "What’s the headline going to read?" she demands. "Humanitarian Exposed as Fraud Commits Suicide," Reddington says. (It’s no "Headless Body Found in Topless Bar," honestly). At any rate, Campo probably shouldn’t have had any of that champagne at the fundraiser, as someone slipped her a lethal dose of the same barbiturate she’s been using to drug the girls she traffics in her sex ring operation.
At this point, Isabella Rossellini looks like I did after watching that video about anchovy sex she made. THERE ARE THINGS I CAN’T UN-SEE, ROSSELLINI. In her panic, Campo reveals that she knows who Reddington is and the jig is up… just as she passes out. Turns out, Reddington has an antidote but he’s not giving it up unless Campo admits she’s a no good, dirty smuggler. That’ll be hard for her to do, what with the dying, so Keen tries to perform an emergency tracheotomy with a pen. "What is it about you with hotel rooms and pens and people’s necks?" Reddington wonders as Campo gives up the ghost.
So Keen’s all bummed out about getting suckered by Campo and being too late with antidote, but she needn’t fret about that second thing, because Reddington didn’t actually have any anti-dote with him. That is cold-blooded, friends. Anyhow, enough about Campo running a cartel and the FBI rescuing a shipment of girls that Campo was trafficking and that whole MURDER that Keen and company helped facilitate. Let’s talk about Keen’s home life, specifically, what she’s going to do about her sudden knowledge that her husband isn’t all that he seems. "Either you turn him or confront him," Reddington concludes. “Or perhaps there’s a third option.”
That third option, by the way, is a musical montage in which Keen sticks the box full of passports back where she found it, replaces the floorboards, puts down some new carpet, and makes like she never saw a thing. Other things that happen in that montage: husband Tom wakes up from his coma and gets released from the hospital, Ressler happens to notice that Dembe is adorned with the same scar that Campo’s cartel branded on its other victims, and Reddington has an uncanny ability to predict newspaper headlines about Campo’s untimely demise. Oh, and Keen discovers an envelope that someone, probably Reddington, slipped in the pocket of the pants her husband was wearing when he was attacked. It’s labeled "Background Profile: Elizabeth Keen," and it features a thumb drive.
On that thumb drive is Tom Keen talking all lovingly about what a great mother his wife will be to someone from an adoption agency. Keen gets all teary-eyed: her husband may be a mysterious fraud with a secret past he has yet to reveal to her, but he’s her mysterious fraud, damnit.