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Red arranges for the team to track down a DNA scrubber who substitutes regular people for very bad people who'd like to disappear. It's pretty cool: The opening sequence involves a regular old person waking up with a new identity and husband on a plane, which then crashes, killing them both. After the Post Office gets ahold of the husband, a Russian mobster, the wife goes to the Alchemist and he murders her, then appears at the FBI as the husband's attorney, and kills him too.
All of the women look like Jan Hooks in different wigs and at different ages, but none of them are Jan Hooks. That part really stood out to me, because how oddly specific.
After some tense meetings with Red in a local synagogue, Liz is able to make contact with the man's family and put together his history: After being discredited and tossed off the Human Genome Project, then eventually turning on his Mob buddies, he went underground and only rarely shows back up to menace his daughter and wife (who wants nothing to do with him) because at some point he lost his mind. Heat turned up, the Alchemist takes the logical step of substituting a random dead woman and child before taking off with his own. Before they get too far, though, the team traces them through the daughter's diabetes monitor, a standoff which results in the Alchemist's death.
Liz hands over the list of the Alchemist's former clients, realizing too late that Red was only using her team to get this list and track them down for his usual oblique reasons. Meanwhile, he gets a team of dorks to reconstruct a bunch of old government papers, including some memos that lead him to the second mole (the one in the FBI, not in Red's crew -- Grey -- who was dispatched last week). The episode ends with Red surprising the Mole in her house, and getting an immediate confession: It's Meera.
That's sad, but it makes sense given her status as an outside person and connected through Jane Alexander to Alan Alda, and thus to the raid on the PO that revealed the Moles in the first place. Maybe we can still make it work. Or, given week's Previouslies, maybe Meera will give up her life of service and head to the dark side. Or rather, the less-dark side I guess. The Red side, of doing evil shit that is always somehow just a tad more hilarious than it is evil. You know you would.
Meanwhile, Tom's marked by a mysterious spy lady who's planted herself in his school as a substitute teacher, and leverages Liz's dedication to her job to seduce him. They end the episode drunk and flirty (at an art exhibit about philanderer selfies!), even though the Keens' baby is only six weeks out from being born. And on a similar tip, Ressler spends the episode determining to tell his engaged ex-girlfriend to drop the dork, only to find out she's already done so and in fact wants to get back together. (Obviously evil. Everybody is always evil.) This part was exciting because you get to see how Tom Keen reacts to someone he actually shows interest in, as opposed to just bitching all the time about nothing, like he does with his wife.
So now we've got Liz, with her marriage suddenly on the rocks and her pet monster acting all monstrous, but at least her hair's looking normal again. Tom and Ressler are both in the grasp of presumably evil ladies that are a little hard to tell apart. And we've got Red, still looking out for the PO crew in the creepiest ways imaginable, and being a good deal snippier with his Lizzie than usual. (Which bums me out! Because without Red being so super sweet to her all the time, like, what is even her life?)
So. Now that the PO Mole has been revealed, which way do you think he's gonna jump? I'd imagine having a person on the inside -- as well as his grateful puppet/champion Liz, of course -- his path seems clear: Ressler obsessively hates him, Aram doesn't seem to spark his interest, and the higher-ups are always having meetings about how evil he is, so if this was the play all along, Meera makes the most sense anyway. Not that there's much profit in speculation, when it comes to this show. At least how I do it, which is reliably: Badly.
Week: Although we're most anticipating Red's showdown with good ol' Meera, the story of the week seems cool too: Campbell Scott heads an organization of black-bag adoptions that could involve Liz, Red's own daughter if somehow they are not the same person, and even this upcoming adoption. And presumably, Tom Keen almost cheats on Liz but then doesn't, and then gets kidnapped, while Ressler worries over his reunion with Audrey for a while before also getting kidnapped, and then Red says some nonsense which helps Liz find both of them awfully quickly. Cooper spends the whole time cockblocking her from doing this, but at the last second changes his mind. Stolen babies! Global agencies! Taking shit way too personally, because have you met Liz Keen? That's practically her entire résumé: "Special Skills include: Solving crimes based on how intensely I can make them all about myself." God love her.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Red uncovered his own Mole, but is still tracking the one on the Post Office side. Ressler's ex and one true love is possibly a secret agent? Tom ran off to "Nebraska" with no notice, but whatever: All Liz cared about was solving an old case and bringing Red back into the fold, and in the end she accomplished both.
THEN (NOW)
Red: "Okay, I got a new name for you. He's called the Alchemist, because what he does is turn innocent people -- up to and including actual infants -- into other people, and then into dead people, to protect the paying guilty."
Liz: "This is with science he does this?"
Red: "Of a sort. He's up because he just got a contract to scrub the ex-Serbian Mob informants Pytor and Catherine Madrczyk. So when they turn up dead, you should know they actually aren't. Because of the alchemy."
In fact just this very moment a good-looking beardy blond is making out with a chick and laughing in a weird sex way, even as she slowly roofies onto the floor and falls asleep. When she wakes up, she has brown hair and her makeup game is on point, which horrifies her. She's on a plane, kind of an entirely different person all of a sudden, and across from her is a man whose passport calls him "Pytor." It isn't him, though, because guess what? That dude has no idea what is going on either.
The Alchemist -- for that is the sex-laugher man we met above -- says what's up to them and then peaces with a parachute, and then the camera -- Horribly! But also amazingly! -- shows us what it is like to be in a plane that is pointed at the ground and moving very quickly toward it. Pretty immediately, they are dead as hell.
THE PO
Meera: "Well they've been identified as the Madrczyks..."
Liz: "Which means they aren't. Red knows his shit."
Cooper: "Why do you always get to hear vague things from that man who loves you? Why won't he ever hang out with me and act all weird at me? Make him come here!"
Liz: "He says no, because there is still a Mole. Newton Grey Phillips was only half."
Meera: "Ridiculous. The DOJ says it's okay now, and they are always right."
Ressler: "As much as I love disagreeing with literally anything anybody says, I agree this one time. We are no longer under surveillance by anybody in the PO."
Meera: "I am so sick of talking about this Mole, like, can we please find something new to talk about besides Mole This, Mole That, Mole Mole Mole. I mean, what even does that word mean, once you say it enough times?"
Cooper: "Shut up then and just find the Alchemist like we do on this show we're on."
Meera: "I mean come on, who could possibly believe there is still a Mole? I mean really. Seriously, guys."
BORAKOVE
Red has an entire warehouse of pet nerds that I don't remember if we've seen them before, but they are adorable. They work in what seems to be a bombed-out t-shirt factory, and what they mainly do is: Nerd stuff. For example, tracking down the internal Mole.
Borakove, the young leader: "Government employees texted each other a lot around the time the Black Site was breached, because tragedy spurs that kind of thing, so we're sifting."
Red: "Meanwhile, how is Julian Assange doing? Please send him this Tibetan singing bowl, jackfruit, vitamin D, kola nuts. And get him to eat more protein, he looks like hell. What is he, vegan? I've also included a couple of my favorite Richard Pryor records, in case he somehow develops a sense of humor."
Nerd: "House arrest can be grueling, even at the no-doubt fabulous Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Didn't you spend four months in Phonthong?"
Red: "It was seven. I survived only through frequent naps and less-frequent calisthenics. Tell me how much money we've collected for his defense fund, and what you've done for me with this other thing in return."
They take Red outside to a huge pile of shredded documents, which he waves his hand at and tells them to reassemble by hand, which will involve tons more little interns at little tables, doing it manually. Or something that would include the word "algorithm." Doesn't this seem like a conversation that would have that word in the middle of it?
TEMPLE
Red's looking at the obituary listing for Lucy Brooks, 28 -- who I guess is Wujing's #that Red needed to look up on ViCAP, that time they got so mad at him? -- when Liz arrives. He's wearing a kippah, because he's in a synagogue, because he doesn't trust the FBI.
Liz: "Bad news is, I was followed."
Red: "Good news is, it was my people following you."
Liz: "Even though you just explained it to me a minute ago, I'm still fuzzy on the details of this Blacklister. You said he would fake somebody's death, but then they died."
Red: "Fakely. How are you not getting this?"
Liz: "So Catherine and Pytor Madrczyk are alive?"
Red: "Yep. Hoo's on first, Ben is Glory, etc."
Liz: "But they're dead! You can't change DNA."
Red, verbatim: "Lizzy, this man is a forensic virtuoso. He's an artist, who paints in blood and saliva samples. Human tissue is his canvas. He's even better than me... Which is why they hired him instead."
Liz: "That's how you knew? Because they came to you first. So you would then know where he's going..."
Red: "Budapest, but I'm only telling you this on the condition that you eat fertilized duck eggs while you're there. It's a quote 'daring and unique dining experience.'"
"You'll think you've died and gone to hell."
BUDAPEST
Liz and Ressler chill at a bar, with Meera hidden away in a booth, cracking darkly wise on comms: "Target's dead. Hold tight while I look for his ghost."
Ressler wants to talk about Audrey, who recently visited him in the hospital and who is marrying a hedge-fund douche he calls only by the codename "Tassles," thanks to his loafers. What is he going to do? One thing or the other, he supposes. Either act happy, or act pathetic and try to stop it/win her back. Liz doesn't even have a chance to slap some sense into him before the target shows up, all blue Russian Eastern Promises tattoos, glad-handing everybody and without his also-dead wife. Various punches are thrown and so on, and eventually he's in custody.
KEEN
Liz: "How was your interview?"
Tom: "I didn't go. I mean, I flew there and was unreachable for almost an entire episode, but once I got there I thought, why even pursue this opportunity? Liz'll just bitch about it anyway, considering I didn't once discuss it with her first. Guess I better just waste this entire trip and plane ticket by doing nothing for a couple days, then back to DC."
Liz: "That sounds like a Tom move for sure."
Tom: "It's because of your dead dad."
Liz: "Do go on."
Tom: "Well, he's so dead! And then I'm just adding to your stress by constantly making you choose between your career and your whiny husband, and pushing you on the baby issue, and I realized that six weeks before our adoptive mother's due date is maybe not the best time to start a bunch of melodrama for literally no reason."
Liz: "I feel like there's a but coming."
Tom: "Quite the opposite! I am specifically not saying that you should quit your job, take your own safety more seriously, be more present for me and my endless black hole of need, or keep any secrets. Even though you are a spy and that is literally your job."
Liz: "Whatever you say, buddy."
Tom: "I have secrets too!"
Liz: "Awesome, finally. Am I gonna need my gun for the rest of this..."
Tom: "My secret is that I watched Real Housewives without you!"
Liz: "I already knew that, because we share a Netflix queue. Or wait, I mean, because I am a spy."
Tom: "Then I guess I don't have any secrets! At all! Wait, I do actually."
Liz: "Is it that you are gay, or that you have passé taste in reality shows, or both?"
Tom: "It is that a fellow teacher is throwing a baby shower, and it is at our house, so technically we are hosting it. So I guess the whole secret is, you are throwing a baby shower. Surprise!"
THE PO / TEMPLE
Cooper: "It was his teeth, but only just like almost his teeth. They'd been filed to be his teeth."
Liz: "But what about the DNA? I am still not getting this episode."
Red: "Oh my God we just talked about this. Nobody knows how. Trading different kinds of blood cells? Clone DNA left at the scene? Maybe putting synthetic DNA into genuine human tissue..."
Liz: "That goes beyond evidence tampering, into genetic manipulation."
Red: "Now you're getting it. Allow me to explain in a poetic, but still very crazy way."
"It's a trade in death. The guilty give their blood and genetic identity, the innocent give their life for the guilty to live. If you find the Alchemist, you have a chance to resurrect the dead. To bring to justice some of the most vile creatures who ever lived."
THE PO
Liz: "We got a Ponzi guy in 2009, a seven-person Mob hit in 2011, a bunch of molesting Brooklyn priests in 2012..."
Meera: "How many people got alchematized? Like what is the ballpark of this? It's starting to sound like the Blacklist times two."
Aram: "The lady on the plane was originally named Sarah Jenkins. I got it from her bone marrow, which ordinarily would be redundant. She was single, lived alone... But got on a dating site that I have used in the past -- to date women, thanks for asking -- and maybe one of her dudes she met is the Alchemist. We've subpoenaed the site."
BOLTHOLE
Catherine: "Hey, are you Trettel?"
Alchemist: "That's me. What the fuck are you doing here?"
Catherine: "My husband was taken into custody in Budapest, so I feel like I need a refund. Your job did not do the job."
Alchemist: "Then you must have told somebody."
Catherine: "Is this crazy scary mad-scientist lab where you do your work?"
Alchemist: "Shut up, stand directly on that tarp in the middle of the room, and tell me everybody who could have blown your spot."
Catherine: "I guess our lawyer? [Nope! It was Red! Nobody would ever suspect!] If you want I can call him right now and..."
Needless to say, the Alchemist drops her ass where she stands, then empties a couple more into her just for fucking up his day. What I like about the Alchemist is, he has no sense of scale. He has that kind of excellence/hubris where he's like, "And now I gotta fucking break into the FBI and kill a guy under their noses? Thanks for nothing, you dumb dead lady I already killed."
FBI
Ressler: "You were already under an immunity agreement as a CI, so you're screwed unless you tell me all about this Alchemist."
Pytor: "Who? I just want a cigarette."
Ressler: "I have cigarettes but you can't have a cigarette. Deal with that."
Pytor: "Okay but seriously, it was all done through couriers, much like in the episode about the Courier, or when Red got kidnapped. We never saw him, just went down the checklist of all our medical information and samples and stuff."
Ressler: "Give us a money trail, then, and we can..."
Knock-knock. Guess who?
Ressler: "Who are you?"
The Alchemist: "I am a lawyer!"
Pytor: "I don't know you but can I have some of that nicotine gum?"
The Alchemist: "Sure! PS, it is poison."
Then he dies just like his wife, with very little fanfare. I kind of love the Alchemist.
Meanwhile, Ressler is just dicking around like he does, chatting with Liz about things they have both already discussed -- like Sarah Jenkins's online dating profile -- and then Liz shows him a picture of her last online date, and it is... The lawyer from a second ago! Ressler springs into action, but it's too late: One more dead body, no lawyer, and now the happy couple are both dead two times over, and we're left holding the bag.
THE PO
The unsub's dating photo matches this rental-car surveillance footage, so we have the info. Eric Trettel, flunked out of med school, faked a Harvard degree to get on the Human Genome Project. Moved on to being a DNA expert witness, which is when he crossed the D'Angelo crime family, falsifying exculpatory DNA evidence and getting caught. Disgraced and clearly in danger, he vanished/was killed. There's a wife and daughter still in Bethesda that need Liz to get all up in their heads, while Meera sends Ressler to find the car the Alchemist rented after killing those same people two times.
BETHESDA
His wife is lovely, like a sane Claire Forlani. She says she hasn't seen him in six years, but then -- once the daughter Annie is sent to the kitchen for food, having been recently diagnosed with diabetes and fitted with an insulin monitor -- mom comes clean: "That dude is crazy as hell. You need to get out of here before he finds out you're this close. He is going to kidnap us, probably immediately. He considers my disinterest in being his wife as a sort of challenge, not unlike the boundaries of science."
THE RENTAL CAR
Has been set on fire, with the dead but not entirely burnt-up body of Catherine Madrczyk in it. The braintrust of Ressler and Meera deduces that the Alchemist is probably trying to "hide his tracks," since he just set an entire carload of lady's dead body on fire. Then they find a random part of a bar code that I don't know what it is yet, but seems important.
BORAKOVE
Nerds: "We borrowed an algorithm [See?] from the Germans, ironically, given how much they hate us for Edward Snowden."
Red: "Tell me exactly how this piecing-together of the strips of paper works, in a very long and unnecessary fashion."
Borakove: "Done."
Liz enters, to Red's delight and the nerds' discomfort, and Red can't wait to show her their highly treasonous activities: "I really don't understand how any of it works, but I just love that smell the machines make!"
Liz: "Whose garbage are you combing through this time?"
Red: "Yours! Well, communications from private contractors working with the DOJ, NSA, CIA, FBI, alphabet soup."
Liz: "This is about the incursion."
Red: "Yeah, there is not ever going to be a point where I like talking about that, so let's just keep moving, shall we?"
Liz: "Okay, we traced that bar code sticker to a paper company, which led us to a Zurich bank, which means the number is part of his bank accounts..."
Red: "Nope, you're taking too long. Let me just get good and Red on you real quick by asking the same question a million times. Who is he?"
Liz: "A scientist that does DNA stuff and..."
Red: "Who is he?"
Liz: "A paid underworld scrubber who..."
Red: "Who is he?"
Liz: "Oh! It's a sticker from a DNA sequencer. Thanks for asking me the same question over and over so I would randomly figure out the thing."
THE PO
Ressler: "[Audrey talk.]"
Liz: "Okay, meanwhile I traced this number -- enhance, enhance -- to a DNA sequencer that will lead us to companies, for some reason, that will help us do something."
THE ALCHEMIST
Puts on a happy smile and, rifling through headshots, calls a girl named Mandy for an audition, because she looks like the client (which is his wife, because he has finally lost his marbles for good). Guess what, it is not really an acting job. Or should I say, it is the acting job of her life! (She is going to die from it.)
When Mandy arrives to the spooky location, he pretends to also be an aspiring actor who is also stymied by the lack of casting agents at the spooky location. He offers to split a cab with her, but what he really means is "knock her out and turn her into his wife and then murder her."
JOLENE
Some chick whose name is not Jolene practices saying her name is Jolene, and then heads out to be a big honkin' problem in Tom Keen's marriage. Is she the Lucy person from before? Is Audrey a spy also? Is everybody spies? I am so confused by this show and everything that happens on it. Anyway, we're going to call her Jolene either way. She has got the crazy eyes.
KEEN BABY SHOWER
Tom takes on a diaper changing competition with the other daddies, women laughing knowingly. (Men doing such pathetic women's work? Hilarious!) It's all very patronizing and heterosexual and you really feel the weight of being in that room with everybody acting hysterical and/or barren and/or trying to hold their own experiences of parenthood over the heads of the people without children, as though the fact of their children make them more righteous or wiser individuals.
Which may or may not be true, but I can only say that a person who is passionate about parenthood and doesn't have a kid yet -- or a person who doesn't want a kid and thinks you're all robots -- needs nothing less than they need your bullshit on top of it, any more than your kid deserves to be treated as an extension, or in fact a signifier at all, of you. Later on -- this is why we drink at these things -- everybody is even more shrieking and hysterical as Liz tastes jar baby food and tries to figure out what she is tasting.
Finally it's time for just chilling and relaxing instead of making strange diaper sculptures and a million "traditional" games nobody actually wants to play except the controlling/giddy chick in the kitty-cat sweater who should have been a grade-school teacher, of which there is always exactly one.
Lady: "I wish I could take maternity leave! Maybe I should have another baby."
Tom: "Thanks for giving me the opportunity to start shit in front of guests! Because Liz isn't taking leave."
Liz: "Nope, not interested."
Lady: "But you'll ruin your baby!"
Tom: "That's what I said!"
Liz: "What the fuck is happening here exactly?"
BEDROOM, SECONDS LATER
Liz: "What the hell was that?"
Tom: "Stop acting like I'm setting you up for humiliation and sabotaging your career!"
Liz: "Except that's like, exactly what you're doing."
Tom: "Because I am right and you are selfish!"
Liz: "Wow. You have no idea how hard I just checked out of this conversation."
Suddenly a lady named Jolene who is not actually named Jolene bursts out of the master bath, hilariously explaining that she got stuck in there while they were yelling and finally couldn't take it anymore because they were being so weird. (Awful.)
Tom: "No problem, just my life unraveling. Liz, this is Jolene, she's a sub."
Liz: "Hi, why are you in my bathroom slash my house? Who cares. I didn't want this bullshit party anyway... Oh, and now I've got a lead to chase. Saved by the unsub. Guess what, fuckos? Lizzy out."
Jolene: "Girl, you did not just call your wife selfish."
Tom: "I heard myself say it and I knew I would be paying for it, but I'm still not entirely clear on what exactly was wrong about it. Or my whole pissy stupid attitude. Or my fantasy life that my wife keeps stubbornly not conforming to, or reading telepathically in my mind."
Jolene: "Well, know that at least one coworker, temporary though she may be, is more than willing enough to make an inappropriate alliance with you, a husband, against his wife. I got your back, bro."
Tom: "Thanks, bro. I still don't know who you are or why you're in my bathroom."
Jolene: "I am Jolene! The rest doesn't matter."
ALCHEMY
Is done to the aspiring actress. Now she is a brunette. When she wakes up, all hostage-y like she is, the Alchemist is very tender to her with words of comfort like, "This will all be over very, very soon." She does not take these comforting words well.
KITCHEN
Jolene: "Has your bitch wife called since our last scene a second ago? No? you shouldn't have called her selfish. Now it's you're the bad guy..."
Tom: "I'm not saying I'm abused, I'm just saying... She's really nice to me, sometimes."
Jolene: "You should take her out on the town! If she ever comes home or decides to pay attention to you, I mean."
Tom: "Do you have any suggestions on how I can be a spouse in the most basic ways?"
Jolene: "You should come to this photography exhibit tomorrow night where this lady seduces married men, sleeps with them, and then takes a photo mid-act, and then calls it art, because she has no self-esteem and because her frame of reference is woefully small and self-absorbed."
Tom: "I've read about this in one of my magazines! She took a photo of my friend!"
Jolene: "You ... know a philanderer?"
Tom: "No, just kidding. What a fucking whore she is, right?"
Jolene: "Actually, she is me. She is Jolene."
Tom: "I cannot win for losing today."
Jolene: "Just kidding! She is not Jolene, she is just a prisoner of her art student mentality and the commodification of her body as a woman."
Tom: "It's so fun how we just keep lying to each other as 'jokes.' And discussing adultery and licking our lips and batting our eyes at each other."
Jolene: "Honestly, the mere notion that I, Jolene who is not wearing panties at this baby shower, would have sex with a married man such as yourself! Preposterous!"
Tom: "I know, how funny. Like what are we gonna do, just raw-dog it right here in this kitchen among the potluck dishes and casseroles? Knock over a diaper cake with our animalistic lovemaking?"
Jolene: "Haha, right? Like I would just snake one hand down your pants right over there by the kitchen sink, glass of wine in my other hand, making casual conversation while all of our coworkers were in the other room -- mere feet away! -- with no idea what we were really doing!"
Tom: "Wouldn't that be funny? Wouldn't that just be a gas."
MEDTECH HORIZONS
After a quick drop by the PO so Meera can trace the sale of a centrifuge to a DNA sequencing lab called that, we head over there. It seems to be just the Alchemist's secret front and not really a business-business, based on the millions of cubicles each containing a different dramatically lit kind of science: There's a lightboard all about teeth, and pictures of faces with points of interest illustrated on them graphically, all kinds of things you would need to paint with DNA on the human canvas or whatever he said. The place is pretty packed up, otherwise.
Liz: "So I guess he's closing up shop. That makes sense, given that he was reckless enough to come into the field office in order to snip the last threads... Oh shit his wife that hates him and talked to the Feds. We need to get to Bethesda."
BETHESDA
Dead bodies! One small, one smaller. Dumbass Ressler calling up Meera to tell her Molly and Annie Trettel are dead, like he forgot what is happening. Everybody being like, "It's so sad that specifically Molly and Annie Trettel, and not just people who have been Alchemizzled into being somewhat like them, have died. Guess we just chalk this up to a case of people definitely getting murdered in their own bodies like who they say they are."
KEEN
Liz: "We should talk about our rapidly failing marriage."
Tom: "Do I ever want to talk about anything else? Ever?"
Liz: "Whoa, whoa. I didn't mean right now. I meant in the hazy future."
Tom: "You wanna go to this art exhibit about men cheating on their wives? Not that I'm being gross and passive-aggressive by suggesting that, at all."
Liz: "I can't hear you, don't care. Why don't you make me dinner instead?"
Tom: "That sounds like a fair compromise."
Liz: (Has already hung up the phone.)
THE PO
Aram: "On the hard drives at Trettel's lab, among nothing very interesting, I also found DNA information. Which makes sense, if you think about it, because that's what kind of scientist he was. But the interesting thing is that we now have all of the plane victims' real information, not just the lady one. And not just that, but a slew of other clients, with complete breakdowns before and after. A slew, Liz Keen."
Literally, this now happens: Liz suddenly figures out that Molly and Annie Trettel are alive, and have just been kidnapped and not murdered. By a man whose entire thing is doing that. Who is obsessed with them, with reconstructing his family, and has everything at his disposal to create a witness protection program of the dead, which nobody will ever crack -- that this man possibly did not murder his beloved wife and child in cold blood, but possibly, just possibly, did the thing that he is always doing. I mean she just got there. "Doublecheck their marrows! Amber Alert the girl! Put pictures of them all on the media and the news!"
BORAKOVE
Borakove: "Remember how you wanted us to find the Mole through garbage?"
THE PO
Red: "Just out of curiosity, what number am I on your speed dial?"
Liz: "Seven."
Red: "Who's six?"
Liz: "Chinese takeout."
But of all the times to pressure Liz Keen about her emotional reticence, today is not the day! She needs to solve a mystery of some dead folks who are driving around in a minivan.
Liz: "I was thinking of using regular investigative principles..."
Red: "There's no time for that! Weird Red stuff and random questions!"
Liz: "You're right, we can track the daughter through her diabetes thing."
They immediately do. Thanks, weird Red stuff! You always come through.
Meanwhile, the Alchemist strong-arms his family around a gas station, explaining once again how the dead people are not actually Molly and Annie, because they are very much alive -- but that the cops will never know the difference, due to alchemy. He offers the kid a candy bar, because he is a deadbeat, and the mom freaks on him due to diabetes, of which he wasn't aware until now. Immediately, he rips open the daughter's shirt to reveal her diabetes thing...
Just as a normal American citizen notices the Amber Alert on the gas station TV, and pulls a gun on their asses because the only thing that can stop an Alchemist with a gun is another guy standing around with nothing better to do, and another gun. The SWAT cars arrive outside, and everybody starts taking everybody hostage.
Outside, Liz yells at the cops to not shoot the dangerous lunatic inside the gas station, and the cop gives her total attitude about it, so hard that you know the Alchemist is going to die. Liz won't stand for it, for some reason, even though they have already solved all of the situations involved in this episode and now the Alchemist is just a crazed weirdo with nothing to lose. (To be fair, he is shouting that he knows the names of hundreds of bad guys, but then what was the point of his hard drive?)
However, because this show is never content with Liz just being her natural, actual amount of awesome, she decides to drop her guns and walk in there unarmed so she can yammer the Alchemist into submission. What results then is a shootout that kills the Alchemist instantly, but also gravely wounds the little girl, who is having -- it must be said -- quite an alarming day.
KEEN
Tom is sad when Liz calls in, but not so sad that he can't get it up for more pissy-pants dramatics.
Liz: "Please tell me you didn't cook! I would have to inconvenience you by getting stuck in a four-way shootout with a SWAT team, an evil super-scientist, a concealed-carry gun nut, and several innocents and witnesses!"
Tom: "No, I didn't cook, because I knew you would fuck it up. (PS, he totally did, but why give up the emotional match point that easily?)"
Liz: "Well, isn't that flattering."
Tom: "I have so many feelings!"
Liz: "I will bring home Chinese. It's #6 on my speed dial so it will be no trouble."
Tom: "You do whatever the hell you want. I am going to an art exhibition about adultery with a hot-to-trot single lady named Jolene."
THE PO
Ressler: "Well, I decided what I'm gonna do about Audrey."
Liz: "I'm dying to find out what you've decided because I am such a good friend."
Ressler: "I am going to tell her it's a huge mistake! Because of love."
Liz: "I'm impressed. I wish either person in my marriage were that invested."
Aram: "Hey, I found that list of criminals that I already found."
TEMPLE
Liz: "Here's that list of criminals the Alchemist disappeared."
Red: "Thanks, bye!"
Liz: "Did you really just do this so you could get more names?"
Red: "No, I did it to help you feel better about yourself as an FBI agent. Don't be an asshole, Lizzy."
Liz: "Are you looking for anybody in particular? Can you give me like one interesting detail to make me feel less like I possibly just sacrificed my marriage for no real reason?"
Red: (Already bailed while she was talking. The reason is that he has to go to the Mole's house and sit in the dark, for maximum drama when they get home.)
RESTAURANT
Ressler: "This is me choking. Good luck on your marriage."
Audrey: "Actually I called it off because you got your leg shot that time and now we are back in love."
Ressler: "Actually that is exactly what I was going to say, but then I choked though."
I like Audrey. She has a very appealing smile. I hope that she doesn't murder anybody. They go walking in the snow, and it's so romantic and cute. A second chance at love! Which just goes to show you once again that the best way to requite your shit is: Get yourself shot in the leg by some ninjas.
Meanwhile, Tom throws out the passive-aggressive Caesar salad of the century and calls up Jolene to see if he can come to the adultery party without his wife, or would that be weird. Guess what, it isn't. Liz brings home Chinese takeout to a not-very-thorough attempt at hiding the dinner he spitefully made and threw away, while at the adultery party Tom and Jolene get crunk. She dazzles him with her intensely crazy eyes; he dazzles her with his feral rage and constant beauty. They are a pair of who knows what.
MEERA
Comes home to a dark room, and guess who is there? Red, reading a book and none too impressed with her this evening.
Red: "I guess you know why I'm here?"
Meera: "Presumably to kill me for being the Mole?"
Actual tears in her eyes. That is so sad. But also so interesting, because she's Fowler's person, so does that means she was spying on Fowler for Finch before the Post Office, or does it mean that Fowler's relationship with Finch is not as simple as she acted last year? What if everybody is spies? What if nobody is spies? What if Tom is just a goober and Jolene is just a crazy person and Audrey is just a lady, and Meera has totally valid reasons for being a Mole and getting Red tortured and Luli murdered?
Just kidding. The last one alone is reason enough for him to do her in, regardless of her intentions. Although it would make more sense for him to turn her -- making her at least a triple agent, if not many more levels of agent than that -- so he won't always have the threat of Liz acting like a human being when it's most likely to annoy him. I just want to see a long conversation between Red and Meera week at least, because those are some heavyweights -- first of all -- and second of all, because Meera is a lot more fascinating than the show's been able to give us so far. Which, of course, now also makes sense: If she's the Mole, then the Meera we've barely gotten to know is exactly the amount of Meera we'd be able to, before now. You know?
WEEK
Meera and Red hopefully come to some kind of equilibrium that keeps her on the show, and not dead in a million pieces like everybody else involved in the Raid. Also, a skeevy adoption agency manages to tie the case of the week to any number of other plot threads, including but not necessarily limited to: Liz's own incoming Hail-Mary baby, Liz's complicated childhood stuff, and possibly even Red's mysterious daughter from the yard that one very sad, very explody time.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, True Detective, The Blacklist, Ravenswood, and Pretty Little Liars for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, Twitter, and Facebook.