Blacklist: Season 1

The Blacklist is another example of me being a little bit of a TV snob. I think because I think that Breaking Bad had the greatest finale that has ever been on TV, or that 24 was the last great show on prime time television before the start of Netflix and other phenomenal shows outside of primetime, that I close my mind to shows like the Blacklist, actually being good.

Fortunately, I did eventually try watching The Blacklist, and fortunately, I really did enjoy it.

The Blacklist stars James Spader as Raymond Reddington, a man on the FBI's most wanted list for being a lucrative aficionado of crime. He deals in almost all aspects of the crime world from art thievery to terrorism.

One day, Reddington walks into the FBI headquarters and just turns himself in. Brought to an FBI blacksite, he says that he will only talk to new FBI recruit, Elizabeth Keene.

So its not a totally original concept. I've seen this set up before, and I'll probably see it again. The master criminal working with the FBI, haven't we seen this before? White Collar, The Following, countless movies. How in the world is this different from any of those examples?

When Elizabeth Keene (played by Megan Boone) arrives, he says that he has a list of criminals that are so high value and so dangerous that they are not even on the FBI's most wanted list. Brokering a deal with the FBI, Reddington begins working with the FBI to take down these criminals all while his motives are clouded in mystery as he manipulates and influences Keene professionally and personally. Again, how is this different from anything we've seen before?

The answer is very simple. James Spader.

The man is terrifying, yet incredibly charming, he's hilarious, yet deathly intimidating. He'll court you with a smile and tell you everything is going to be alright, then throw a guy in a vat of acid.

Honestly, the rest of the show is mediocre at best, but its only made better by Spader's performance as Reddington. Something about his mannerisms, his shady motives, and his voice. By god, that voice. If there was anything that made me more excited about Age of Ultron, it was watching James Spader just killing it in this show. And for the first part of the season, Spader really carries the show. Honestly, at the beginning, I wasn't wild about Agent Keene or the supporting characters, but the real reason I continued to watch the show was for James Spader.

Honestly, the show just didn't have the feel to it that I had been used to. I had spent a lot of the past winter, watching Homeland and that has a definitely different feel to it than this show. I'll talk a little bit more about that later.

But first I want to talk about Megan Boone as Elizabeth Keene.

At the start of the show, Keene was set up as either a really interesting character, or an incredibly cliched and boring character. She's an FBI profiler. She wants to adopt a child with her really supportive husband. And of course, she is the only person Reddington will talk to. Why? Well you don't even totally figure that out in the first season, I'm sure it comes out in later seasons, this one, not so much. And I expected that, I didn't think I was going to figure out the entire mystery in the first episode, but to me it just seemed a little cliched.

And I'm sorry, they call her an excellent profiler, but to me, she was just an FBI agent. I think they were trying to throw too much on her and in the end, I never got the feeling she was this Criminal Minds profiler who gets into the minds of criminals, I think she was just an FBI agent, which is fine, she can be just an FBI agent, but don't try and tack on the psyche of criminals onto this show, there's already enough going on, it honestly doesn't need that. And I think they eventually dropped that idea. Her profiling skills really only come into play in the first episode and after that its really dropped.

And then you have the whole deal with her husband. And that, at the beginning, I was worried was going to to breach into the territory of annoying and forced. There was just so much introduced in the first few episodes, Reddington, Keene, the whole idea of her wanting children, her balancing her work and her family, the mystery of her childhood. All of it together and then throw on top of that a possible spy husband? I wasn't incredibly wild about that.

Luckily, I was happily surprised on how well it actually turned out.

His involvement in her life is still pretty ambiguous in order to leave more mystery for future seasons, and since it ties into the connection between Elizabeth and Reddington. And that's really a part I absolutely love about this show.

The villains of the show, mainly talking about Reddington and Keene's husband, ride this great line of saying one thing and having malicious intentions. Keene's husband does a great job at doing things as the bad guy that actually clash with what Elizabeth is doing and instead of not acting suspicious and not asking about it, he goes out of his way to get involved and just show the audience that this marriage is a sham.

There's a part where Elizabeth shows up at a hideout her husband has been using and she basically gets there while he's trashing the place. She never sees him but in order to escape, he attacks her from behind and runs away. Later that night, he asks about her day and acts concerned as if he knew nothing about it, something an actual husband would do. When it comes to the interactions between him and her prior to her discovering his evil intentions, he is very good at living that double life and I actually really enjoyed it.

There was a point where I thought it was getting kind of ridiculous that she hadn't figured out by this point, but either way, Tom Keene was a pretty great part to the show.

And this two facededness is done absolutely brilliantly with Reddington.

Apart of the show that was a little funny at the beginning of the season was how many steps ahead Reddington is at all times. Its almost like he knows the answer and refuses to share what he doesn't want them to know.

In fact, the show really makes the FBI look kind of silly in comparison with these brilliant criminals in the league of Reddington.

But like I said, Reddington has this two faced nature that is really brilliant and again solidifies James Spader as the shining star of this cast.

The supporting cast of the show is... okay. They definitely get better as the season moves on but for a long time I really didn't like characters like Keene's part in the FBI Donal Ressler (played by Diego Klattenhoff). I thought he was always so wooden. But the more they developed his character later int he season, the more I saw him as more than just the run of the mill FBI agent and more of an actual character. When they start delving into his connection with Reddington, when they bring in his wife, that's when things get good.

And that's really where the show had an advantage. I would have liked to see these characters as developed from the get go, I would have liked to see them actually be convincing characters in the pilot episode, but they weren't. The reason I stuck around was James Spader. And he really did carry it, all the way until the show caught on its stride and started making characters interesting and not just walking cliches. They're not Breaking Bad level characters, but the show is a procedural, they didn't have to be that level.

The show's story really clips along at a good pace. There were definitely your filler episodes, but I did feel the show was building up to something, even if that something wasn't always clear. Like I said before, the "filler episodes" were usually used later on in the season to develop the main and supporting cast. And throughout the season they introduced a slew of great bad guys. Some of them maybe were doing crime just to be creative instead of the pragmatic way, for example, you had a criminal who guaranteed anonymity and a second chance from your life of crime by putting an innocent in your place at the time of your reported death. The police would find your dental records and sometimes even DNA in these lookalikes and you'd be able to live your life free now having the authorities believing you're dead. Don't get me wrong, I actually like the idea and its creativity, but its examples like this that just make you think, maybe the criminals they're looking for are committing crimes to be creative instead of pragmatic reasons. It would be like if I was a bank robber and my calling card was that I came in with an apache helicopter to the bank and airlifted the vault right out of the bank. Its a clever idea and and works, but maybe its just too over the top for me to do that EVERY time I rob a bank. Again, they're really creative and entertaining, but if you think about it for a second, maybe there was another way to do all these crimes. And on top of all of that, all the criminals have super villain like names. The Courier, the Undertaker, the Kingmaker. Many of these names could be decent Batman villains. Again, in the context of the show its a lot of fun, but if you step back and really think about it, The Blacklist is doing a better job at creating villains for TV shows than Arrow.

In the end, I really feel The Blacklist struck a right chord and knew what to reveal in the end and what to keep a mystery for later seasons. Where I was maybe interested in seeing the next season of Arrow, I feel like I need to eventually watch the continuing seasons of the Blacklist, if anything for James Spader alone. The guy really is the show.

The show still feels a little bit like a prime time network show, despite it really pushing the limits at some points. I would have loved to see this show on a network like AMC, HBO, or maybe a Netflix Original. It would be just more interesting to see these characters not be restrained at all. I would love to see Raymond Reddington totally uncensored. It would be brilliant.

But for a network show, The Blacklist is very, VERY good.

I'm sure there's more I can talk about but I feel like I've been talking about this long enough. What do you think of The Blacklist? Do you agree with what's been said about it? Comment and Discuss below! Also shoot me a tweet @cmhaugen24 and follow me on Twitter to get updates on movie (and TV) news and reviews!