Weller and Jane’s simple undercover mission quickly turns into a dangerous dark web auction. Meanwhile, Zapata and Reade take care of the stolen evidence against Freddy. Here is a recap, followed by a review of the Blindspot episode “We Fight Deaths on Thick Lone Waters.”
RECAP:
While the FBI stakes out a political summit, Zapata informs Reade about the knife she stole from evidence. She can’t figure out how to return it, but Reade doesn’t want Freddy convicted. An explosion interrupts, making Weller and Jane MIA. Assistant US Attorney Weitz arrives at the FBI, so Nas explains the case from the beginning. Patterson’s post on the Ashwell Creek Kennel site got a hit. Someone hired Weller and Jane for a job, along with a hacker named Lynn and a career criminal named Clive, both of which the FBI arrested at the summit.
In interrogation, Lynn connects the case to Nico Marconi, the FBI’s eighth most wanted. Clive adds that he, Weller, and Jane weren’t hired to steal an item; they were hired to be the distraction. Lynn and Emile, the man who hired them, left the scene with what they came to steal. Having tracked Emile to his boat, the FBI finds Jane wandering the woods and realizes the theft was actually a kidnapping of Dr. Chen, an earthquake scientist who developed a tsunami bomb. Emile has her and Weller captive.
Comparing Jane’s story to Clive’s, the FBI learns that Lynn knew about Chen the whole time because she and Emile have worked together before. She designed Marconi’s money transfer site and is impeding their investigation because she still has money at stake when Emile auctions off Dr. Chen on the dark web. The sale goes live, and Weller’s the second auction. Since there’s no way to shut down the auction, the FBI will have to win. Weitz refuses to negotiate with terrorists, so Nas keeps the plan private, and it works. Nas, Reade, and Zapata arrive at the coordinates to retrieve Chen and Weller.
After realizing Emile is Nico Marconi, Weller formulates a plan to escape with Chen. She fakes a seizure, and he takes out the guards. A brief firefight ensues before Marconi is arrested. Weitz is furious that Nas stole $20 million from the government to use in the auction and threatens to fire her, or at least find someone with the authority to make sure she never works for the government again. In private, Nas compliments Patterson’s work with the tattoo cases and grants her access to everything the NSA has on Sandstorm.
Weller invites Jane to his baby’s gender reveal party and takes a big step in mending the bond between them. It’s cake time, and it’s a girl! Zapata takes care of the knife, and Reade secretly helps Freddy leave town. Jane returns home to find a furious Roman begging her to stand beside him when phase two happens in just a few hours.
REVIEW:
“We Fight Deaths on Thick Lone Waters” sprinkled in a few lovely, memorable scenes in an otherwise convoluted, forgettable episode. While this episode worked well enough as a (seemingly) standalone installment, it did not provide much hype for next week’s episode. Branching so far away from the Sandstorm drama this close to the midseason finale is an odd choice from both the characters’ perspective and the writing perspective. “We Fight Deaths on Thick Lone Waters” did try to leave us with one imminent threat from Sandstorm, but we pretty much already knew that Phase Two was rapidly approaching. Upon seeing next week’s promo trailer, I am excited for what’s to come and just hope that this episode didn’t deter too many people from checking it out.
After last episode’s ending with Roman discovering that his sister’s loyalty lies with the FBI, I expected this to produce significantly more conflict than it actually did. In a TV series that routinely spends the teaser of most episodes resolving all the cliffhangers from the previous week, this departure was noticeable and suspicious, like they were reminding us what had happened without wanting to dive deeper into the issue just yet. The scene itself felt unfulfilled and awkward, and I usually thoroughly enjoy any and all of the interactions between Jane and Roman. I wish we could have seen some of Roman’s fear if he knew he almost lost Jane while she was undercover on her mission or we could have seen Jane realize that her brother would be someone who would miss her if she didn’t make it out of the mission alive. There were missed opportunities throughout the episode to infuse the sibling relationship, which would have made the cliffhanger between them feel more organic.
“We Fight Deaths on Thick Lone Waters” took a different approach to the flashbacks that didn’t entirely pay off. While it was interesting to see a flashback story told from characters who were not our series regulars, thus allowing us to see their unique interpretations of Weller and Jane in situations we would otherwise never see them in, these scenes created moments of disbelief. The source being an unreliable narrator coupled with the scenes themselves made me momentarily tune out because they lacked validity in the story. They allowed a one-off character to have a moment of fantasy that was deemed more important and entertaining than the strength and honor that Weller and Jane have always exhibited. In addition, these flashback scenes in the first half of the episode did not match the tone of the second half, fracturing the episode. It’s a shame because the second half really grew into its own and reminded us of the intensity and exhibitions that the series is known for.
If I never have to see Assistant US Attorney Matthew Weitz after next week’s episode, I would be one hundred percent okay with that. He reminds me of Chief Inspector Jonas Fischer, just with a little less of a grating personality. His main function is to cause conflict with the team in a bureaucratic way, and even though his reasons may be perfectly valid within the context of his job and the government’s rules, his actions will always feel like an attack against the people doing the right thing. We spend all of our time with the series regulars he goes after, so it’s difficult to see his intrusiveness as anything other than him being on the wrong side of the situation.
Having spent much of these first eight episode with Weller hating Jane for her involvement with Mayfair’s death and betraying his trust in her, Weller finally made a point to put the past in the past. By inviting Jane back into his family gatherings, he’s given us hope to see their relationship make its way back to instinctively trusting place it lived in last year. Jane’s relationship with Weller, whether platonic or otherwise, created the foundation for the series, so it has been odd to see the two of them so distant this year. I just wish we had the opportunity to see more of their fractured relationship play out over the course of these past episodes, so we had a stronger sense of how big of a step this was for Weller to take.
As much as I love the “I would go to jail for you” friendship between Zapata and Reade, I would not complain if the Freddy/Jones/murder drama was about to wrap up. The past couple episodes have been hitting the same beat over and over again to the point where we’re well aware of the lengths Zapata would go to for her best friend. What was nice about the storyline in this episode in particular was that we saw Reade exhibit the same care and concern for Freddy that Zapata have been exhibiting toward Reade. Knowingly letting a murderer go free is not an admirable trait, but understanding your friend’s pain and resulting decisions and having his back in a difficult situation is admirable.
ODDS AND ENDS:
– This title’s anagram is “when the soldiers attack, we fight on.”
– Shout out to Rich DotCom! That will never not make me smile.
– Are we placing bets on whether Weller and Allie name their daughter Taylor… given that Allie and the baby make it out of next episode’s car crash alive.
