The Blacklist - "Lord Baltimore" (2x01) NBC, Mondays, 10 p.m.
When "The Blacklist" premiered last year, a friend and I compared it to ABC's "Agents of SHIELD," both agreeing that it had better writing and more fleshed out characters than the comic book tie-in show. By the end of their respective seasons, however, my opinion had pretty much been flipped. Aside from Raymond "Red" Reddington (played spectacularly by James Spader), "The Blacklist" seemed populated by bland characters who would proceed each week to do so pretty stupid things to help service the plot.
Sadly it seemed like there was one writer tasked with Reddington, who wrote his dialogue in seclusion, while the rest of the staff created poorly thought out scenarios to throw our characters in. Without being too harsh, by the end of the season, I began referring to "The Blacklist" as the worst written show I liked to watch.
So suffice to say, I came into the season two premiere, "Lord Baltimore," with hopes for a brighter future. And while it seems like things are in motion for a compelling long-term storyline as Red and the FBI continue to search for the mysterious Berlin, the case of the week once again seemed a bit too outlandish and not terribly well thought out.
I'll still continue to follow the show for Spader's wonderful performances as well as a desire to see where this is all going, but it's going to need some additional improvement before it returns to my favorite list.
More important to the ongoing plot than anything else that happened in this episode is the introduction of Red's ex-wife Naomi Highland (Mary-Louise Parker), as well as her kidnapping by Berlin.
When the finale ended with Red making Berlin believe he and the FBI thought he was dead, I figured we would get some time until they brought the storyline back to the forefront. But not so, with Red spending his time since then tracking down bounty hunters and contract killers tied to Berlin. By the time we rejoin the action, Berlin is utilizing the specialized data-mining skills of Lord Baltimore to track down the ex-Mrs. Remmington.
I do want to touch briefly on Lord Baltimore. It's an interesting concept in theory, but once again the execution leaves a lot to be desired. There's really no explanation how a troubled young woman (with seemingly no inherit specialized skills) joins a military security firm only to disappear in Iraq and reappear as a world-class information hacker selling her trade to warlords and revenge-seeking psychopaths around the world. Please try harder writers.
Berlins threatening call to Red at the end confirms that the tale he told Keen in the series finale about his daughter is true, as well as the fact that he blames Red for it. How this ties into Keen's past is anyone's guess at this point. Rarely is there a show that does so well with the big-picture stuff and continuously muffs the details. It's actually kind of amazing.
When "The Blacklist" premiered last year, a friend and I compared it to ABC's "Agents of SHIELD," both agreeing that it had better writing and more fleshed out characters than the comic book tie-in show. By the end of their respective seasons, however, my opinion had pretty much been flipped. Aside from Raymond "Red" Reddington (played spectacularly by James Spader), "The Blacklist" seemed populated by bland characters who would proceed each week to do so pretty stupid things to help service the plot.
 |
| James Spader as Red. |
So suffice to say, I came into the season two premiere, "Lord Baltimore," with hopes for a brighter future. And while it seems like things are in motion for a compelling long-term storyline as Red and the FBI continue to search for the mysterious Berlin, the case of the week once again seemed a bit too outlandish and not terribly well thought out.
I'll still continue to follow the show for Spader's wonderful performances as well as a desire to see where this is all going, but it's going to need some additional improvement before it returns to my favorite list.
BEYOND HERE THERE BE SPOILERS
More important to the ongoing plot than anything else that happened in this episode is the introduction of Red's ex-wife Naomi Highland (Mary-Louise Parker), as well as her kidnapping by Berlin.
When the finale ended with Red making Berlin believe he and the FBI thought he was dead, I figured we would get some time until they brought the storyline back to the forefront. But not so, with Red spending his time since then tracking down bounty hunters and contract killers tied to Berlin. By the time we rejoin the action, Berlin is utilizing the specialized data-mining skills of Lord Baltimore to track down the ex-Mrs. Remmington.
I do want to touch briefly on Lord Baltimore. It's an interesting concept in theory, but once again the execution leaves a lot to be desired. There's really no explanation how a troubled young woman (with seemingly no inherit specialized skills) joins a military security firm only to disappear in Iraq and reappear as a world-class information hacker selling her trade to warlords and revenge-seeking psychopaths around the world. Please try harder writers.
Berlins threatening call to Red at the end confirms that the tale he told Keen in the series finale about his daughter is true, as well as the fact that he blames Red for it. How this ties into Keen's past is anyone's guess at this point. Rarely is there a show that does so well with the big-picture stuff and continuously muffs the details. It's actually kind of amazing.
No comments:
Post a Comment