Inspector Fischer leads the hunt for the NYO’s mole, uncovering just about everyone’s secrets in the process. Here is a recap and review of the Blindspot episode “Erase Weary Youth.”
Recap:
The morning after her date with Reade, Sarah returns home on the walk of no shame and refuses to clue Weller in on her mystery man. Before her arraignment, Olivia Delidio, the Russian spy, bargains with the name of an intelligence source, but makes it as far as the restroom before her lawyer kills her and gets killed herself. The source’s location is in the NYO. The FBI has a mole! Mayfair tells Weller to handle this discretely, even within his own team. Agent Sloan from Counterintelligence arrives, connecting the investigation to a smuggling ring by Russian diplomats. Weller asks Sloan to bring in her contact at the embassy, but she insists he’s not ready. Do it anyway.
Inspector Fischer spills the mole beans to Weller’s team and prepares to tear everyone’s life apart. Zapata freaks because she routinely bombs polygraphs, but Reade insists he should be more worried if Weller learns who he’s in bed with. Fischer makes his rounds. Are you a Russian spy? Have you ever directly or indirectly assisted a terrorist organization? Have you ever removed government property from the building?
Fischer locks Jane, Zapata, and Mayfair in a conference room to get to the bottom of their inconsistencies as Agents tear their homes apart. Finding a CIA bug at Zapata’s, Fischer questions her about Carter. She says he wanted intel on Jane. She said no. That’s all. Lying about Reade’s words, Fischer tricks Patterson into letting it slip that Jane ditches her detail. No one can account for her whereabouts when Carter went missing and her polygraph was straighter than most sociopaths. Something’s up.
Weller orders Sloan to bring her contact in NOW. His name is Roman, and he wants a written deal. Instead, Weller snaps a selfie with him and threatens to make it public. Roman’s just a driver. He doesn’t hear much, but he does see faces. Having arrived with Roman, Allison Knight, U.S. Marshall, gets stuck in the building’s lockdown. One on one with Weller, she suggests the mole could be Jane. Her entire past is a question mark, and she’s just looking out for him. Patterson shows Roman photos of Agents until Fischer suggests showing photos of consultants. Roman identifies Jane. Fischer arrests her.
Interrogating Roman alone, Weller recognizes his coat brand. It’s the same one Fischer wears and piece it all together. Fischer’s the mole! Rushing to the detention facility, Weller and Co. inform Jane. She fights the Guards, steals a gun, and chases Fischer into a corner where she kills him.
Back in her apartment, Zapata tells whoever’s spying on her to stop wasting time and start talking. The phone rings. Weller asks Reade if he and Sarah are serious. They are, so Weller orders him to end it, then yells at Sarah about the fact that he can’t protect everybody. Reade has a dangerous job, and he doesn’t want her and Sawyer to get hurt. Jane meets Oscar on their rooftop. She doesn’t trust him, and she’s furious. She’s responsible for Carter’s death, and she is a mole. Regardless, Oscar mentions a time-sensitive tattoo she needs to investigate. She runs off. She’s done. Out. Reade drops by Mayfair’s office to talk about Carter. Fischer’s case against Jane wasn’t all that crazy.
Review:
“Erase Weary Youth” was a different type of Blindspot episode that still effortlessly managed to make itself feel just like all of the others. Without a new tattoo clue to kick off a case, this episode relied on a previously established cast of guest characters and their lingering drama to keep the tension high and carry the conflict through the hour. Since it worked so well, this could very well have been a trial run for the future of the series. At some point, the structure of Blindspot will inevitably take on a new shape to keep the stories fresh and exciting. I don’t imagine it will lose sight of the tattoo premise soon, if at all, but it might distance itself from tattoo/case-of-the-week formula in favor of stories more directly related to Jane and the team.
While “Erase Weary Youth” never ceased to hold my attention and impressed with its constant intensity, my opinion of the episode shifts once I begin thinking about what I hoped to gain from this week’s story. In an episode all about Inspector Jonas Fischer uncovering each team member’s secrets, we did not receive much or any new dirt on the characters. Unlike Fischer, we already knew that Reade is dating Sarah. Zapata was entangled with Carter. Jane slipped her detail. Patterson took files home. Weller dated Allie. And Mayfair was involved in Daylight. The tension of the situation was still present because the characters were still nervous about one another learning these secrets, but it was a missed opportunity to throw the audience a surprise or take us on an unexpected ride.
At this point, there weren’t a whole lot of suspects that could have been the mole and even fewer who could have surprised us as being the mole. Between the conveniently timed reemergence of Inspector Fischer, Agent Sloan, and Allison Knight, one of them was bound to be the culprit. As much as I look forward to seeing more of Allie, I’m not entirely clear on why she showed up during this episode since suspicion was never thrown onto her. Jonas Fischer made a nice villain because his role at first came across as an entirely different threat and he was so focused, determined, narrow-minded, and one-dimensional that I believed he lived on the dark side. However, that makes him a poor villain as well because there was no room for justification on his behalf. He appeared to be a mole for the sake of being a bad guy. Whether he did it for money, glory, or a bit of excitement, we may never know.
The budding friendship between Jane and Patterson subtly provided a dose of heart to this otherwise rather strict episode. Typing “everything will be okay” on an iPad may have been more cute than effective, but the camaraderie it entails is only the beginning of what I hope are many more bar scenes and female friendships on the series. On a similar note, the platonic friendship between Reade and Zapata is one of Blindspot’s underutilized gems. It gives both characters a bit of depth and levity, whether they’re discussing the Bachelor or punching one another for their boneheaded decisions. The only problem with these moments is that they isolate Weller. They highlight the lack of openness and honesty between them and their team leader and bring up questions about how long and how well these associates truly know one another.
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Weller’s final scene, in contrast to Jane’s final scene, felt emotionally off kilter. Not only was the character of Weller overstepping his bounds by dictating who his sister could and could not date, but Sullivan Stapleton played the scene with an intensity too rage-filled for the content he spouted. It’s understandable that Weller wants to protect Sarah given everything that’s happened to them in their lives, so the idea behind the scene worked, but the execution negated it. In addition, the scene felt incomplete. I wanted Sarah to have her moment within the scene – to show Weller that this isn’t his decision, that she can stand up for herself and live the life she wants.
Odds and Ends:
– This title’s anagram is “Stay Where You Are.”
– Given that both Joe Dinicol’s David and John Hodgman’s Fischer wound up dead, it might not be a good thing when Martin Gero invites you to work with him again.
– The forward roll that Jane did to slip her handcuffed hands from behind her back to in front of her was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen!
– Sarah: All it took was a terminal illness and the return of a murdered girl to bring the Weller family back together again.
Weller: That’s not funny.
Sarah: I mean, it’s a little funny.
– Fischer: Every closet has its skeleton. I look forward to meeting all of yours.
1 Comment
Wonder how much will be in deleted scenes.