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Our villain of the week is a group called General Ludd. Think of them as what would happen if you took Anonymous and the Occupy movement, stuffed it all into a blender, and pushed the Frappé button. They want to bring down the U.S. economy, and while the initial phase of that plan involves blowing airplanes out of the sky, what the group's leader is really after is a hard drive containing the design for the new $100 bill. The plan, apparently, is to swap in a phony design, meaning that the U.S. Treasury would inadvertently flood its own economy with counterfeit bills, thus causing the economy to collapse. Such a straightforward plan, too, and they would have gotten away with it, had it not been for Reddington and his FBI chums. Well, Reddington, mostly. The FBI is kind of useless when it comes to cracking this caper.
The more salient point of this episode involves Lizzie's "father." I'm not putting "father" in quotes because I'm being an ironical jerk—this gentleman took her in when she was four years old and raised her as his own, but he's certainly not her biological dad. So who is? The producers would clearly like you to conclude that it is Reddington, going so far as to have Reddington pay a visit to the bedside of Lizzie's cancer-ridden old man so that these two long-lost pals can reminisce about old times. And when Lizzie's Dad announces that it's time his daughter knows the truth, that's when Reddington decides the doctors' six-weeks-to-live diagnosis is a tad optimistic. But it's nothing smothering this apparent loose end with a pillow can't fix. Anyhow, Lizzie is very sad to learn that her father died. Imagine how she'd feel if she found out exactly how he died, huh?
Anyway, between all that, we get a scene between Tom Keen and Reddington (the former doesn't know who the latter is), an Andrew Dice Clay sighting, and more evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is staffed by, like, five people. Seriously, no wonder they need Reddington to continually save their bacon—they are ridiculously understaffed.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!A father and son are playing catch in a park. Don’t get too attached to them -- their hopes, their dreams, their relevance to anything that happens in the post-credit sequence -- because they are about to get crushed by plane debris raining down from the sky. It’s supposed to be sad, of course, because… you know, dead people, but it’s not like we’ve been properly introduced to these people or the charred remains of the pilot so the whole thing is fairly numbing. If it’s any consolation, the CGI plane debris looks pretty fake and phony so I doubt anyone suffered all that much. The group taking credit for this blown-up plane is called General Ludd, whom we’re introduced to in a propaganda video that looks like the fever dream Rupert Murdoch has when he thinks about the Occupy movement after one too many scotches.
But before we can get to the bottom of General Ludd and its "Capitalism bad, government worse" feel-good message, let’s head over to the Keen home where Lizzie is joining Tom in his morning show. Even sexy time between these two is drab and uninspiring. At least, the dudes who’ve bugged the Keen house finally get to watch these two getting it on. But there is more going on here than unwanted surveillance and perfunctory love-making: As Tom and Lizzie get ready for their day, news reports about that cargo plane crash blaring in the background, Lizzie gets a call from her father. No, not Reddington, because that would be obvious. No, this is her father…you know, the dude that raised her. He’s in the hospital, getting a series of tests done, and while he’s putting on a brave front over the phone for Lizzie, he’s not exactly the picture of health he’s making himself out to be. Put it this way: William Sadler is playing the role of the father, and he looked more hale and hearty when he took on the role of the Grim Reaper in the Bill & Ted sequel.
There are some tense negotiations going on at FBI headquarters, where Deputy Director Cooper would very much appreciate Reddington’s cooperation in figuring out who bombed that cargo plane, and Reddington is just as adamant about the terms of his relationship with the bureau. Namely, that he brings names to them and not the other way around. But for a peek at the FBI’s ViCAP system -- that’s the largest investigative repository of major violent crime cases in the U.S. for those of you who don’t feel like copying and pasting the FBI’s website on your own -- Reddington’s willing to pitch in on this case. Anyhow, Cooper yields, and it’s time for us to get a crash course on General Ludd. Inspired by the Luddites of the 19th Century, they’re on a mission to give the ol’ Anonymous-style treatment to the pillars of capitalism. What we learn here is that General Ludd has bombed many things and that Ressler has a deep-seated resentment of Wall Street fat cats. But Reddington says he can ID the group’s leader, a fairly puffy-faced fellow named Nathaniel Wolf if the only known picture of him is anything to go by. "Nobody sleeps until we have him," Cooper tells Keen, Ressler, and Malik, who are apparently the only three people employed by the FBI these days.