Protecting her team from danger, Jane goes on the run with Oscar to take down a former associate out for revenge. Here is a recap and review of the Blindspot episode “Older Cutthroat Canyon.”
Recap:
Up on the rooftop, Oscar asks Jane to install a tracker in her team’s SUV. She hates the idea, but does it anyway. Reade gets a rude awakening by someone in the back of his car. The masked man hands him a photo of Sarah and Sawyer and orders him to stop investigating Carter or they die. Reade confesses to Mayfair that he’s had it out for Jane since day one. He overreacted. She had nothing to do with Carter’s disappearance. A painting of Jane’s burning rose tattoo was stolen from a gallery dedicated to the artist Zomo, a Bansky-type. At the gallery, the team meets Kristy, Zomo’s assistant. Weller notices that a sculpture’s been moved. Get down! Bomb! Weller’s caught in the explosion and bleeds all over the floor.
Checking in, Sarah drops the “L Bomb” on Reade, who avoids saying it back. With Weller in the hospital, Jane takes charge of the team. They locate Zomo’s studio, but since the FBI was targeted, Jane and Reade go undercover as a hipster couple with a bomb-sniffing dog. Zomo’s dead, and Jane receives two sniper shots to the vest. Down on the street, the sniper switches to dual pistols and pursues Jane. She recognizes him from a campfire with Oscar and the Ruggedly Handsome Man and flees, leaving her FBI friends behind. From a payphone, she calls a man in an RV and cancels her order for “Joey’s Pizza.” It’s her way to contact Oscar.
Ignoring his doctor’s orders to avoid strenuous activities, Weller goes back to work. He knows Jane’s protecting them, and he’s not going to lose her again. The FBI picks up Kristy trying to flee to a country with no extradition. Turns out, she’s Zomo, and the dead man they thought was Zomo was her boyfriend. She was blackmailed into painting the burning rose and never meant for any of this to happen.
Jane demands answers. The sniper, Cade, was one of their founding members. They should have heeded the warning signs, but his strengths outweighed his flaws… until they didn’t. He snapped, shot the Ruggedly Handsome Man, and will stop at nothing to kill Jane. To gear up, Jane and Oscar visit Danny, another campfire friend. Before they escape with their car of supplies, Cade kills Danny and escapes. The “Joey’s Pizza” man puts Jane and Oscar back on Cade’s trail.
Patterson traces the bomb’s shrapnel to a power plant, where a nearby ship proves a more likely candidate for a hideout. Cade locks Weller, Reade, and Zapata inside a room. Realizing the door is hollow, Weller shoots a hole in it. They fill the door with gas and blow it away. Jane and Cade throw down on the open deck until Jane shoots his gut, and Oscar tackles him overboard.
Reade drops by the Weller residence and breaks up with Sarah. It’s him, not her. He just doesn’t feel the same way and he’s got problems. Jane almost seems happy to see Oscar this time. She learns that Cade lost someone close to him and holds Oscar responsible. But it’s not over yet. Unbeknownst to Jane and Oscar, Cade’s alive!
Review:
Like last week’s episode, “Older Cutthroat Canyon” broke the traditional formula of the series in favor of creating a high-octane episode that shifted focus from the team to a team member. The result was an engaging hour of Jane taking charge in the way she was meant to since the beginning. Moving out from under the shadow of Weller and the FBI allowed the opportunity for Jane’s own leadership strength, ingenuity, and selflessness to shine. While the substance of the tattoo case wasn’t remarkable, the determination and motivations of the characters more than made up for it.
In an hour whose premise promised answers, it simultaneously felt as if the story took major strides forward while also standing still. Jane’s flashbacks, as well as Oscar’s vague explanations about Cade, provided the audience with information without providing the audience with an equal amount of answers. We know Cade was one of the founding members. But of what, exactly? What is this organization they’re a part of? We now know that the Joey’s Pizza man exists. But who is he? And what’s his role in all of this?
The way the series keeps bringing up information only to cut away to another scene before it brings up real answers makes the story feel fragmented in an unnecessary way. I understand that this is television, and we can’t learn everything at once, but it’d serve the show well to occasionally spend and extra thirty seconds or so building an important exchange into an important conversation – to actually spend time with characters speaking with one another instead of speaking to one another. I don’t buy that Jane would stop asking questions after she learned that Orion is where she died. I don’t buy that Jane would just accept that the people she worked for would kill Weller when his name is the one tattooed on her back.
In addition, the series has fallen into an abnormal rhythm where so much of the episode’s beginning is actually the ending of what happened the previous episode. The result is twofold. One, it means the episode’s unique story takes an extra few beats to begin, thereby shortchanging the amount of time that can be devoted to it. And two, all of the episodes are starting to run together in my head. The first ten episodes are so clear, so distinct, but since the return from winter hiatus, it’s mostly a blur. Same goes for the rooftop scenes. I love watching them, but it seems like Jane and Oscar have had the same discussion about trust and lack thereof two or three times now.
As fun as it was to see Jane and Oscar go all Bonnie and Clyde, it’s become increasingly difficult to get a read on Oscar. It’s clear he cares about Jane and the mission, but how that mission stands up with the greater good is unclear and whether he has an alternate agenda is unclear. Right now, he comes across more as a plot device, as a man who can convenient expel information when Jane needs it, than a integrated piece of the puzzle, which is unfortunate, because he is an integrated piece of the puzzle.
It’s worth noting that this episode didn’t seem to involve a legit case, so there’s the very real possibility that the burning rose tattoo’s true intention will be revealed at some point in the future. Because the tattoo was used to lure Jane into a public explosion, we received another example to justify why everybody is always saying these tattoos would be more dangerous if word got out.
The relationship between Reade and Sarah ended about as quickly as it began, and it really didn’t need to. Even though Reade broke up with Sarah to protect her from the masked man and the Carter danger, he had already ended his investigation… or did he? Perhaps he broke up with Sarah so that he could continue investigating without feeling guilty about putting her in danger; however, if he thinks the bad guys will honor an insincere breakup, he has something to learn. And now I’m starting to wonder if Sawyer’s father will ever enter the picture.
Odds and Ends:
– This title’s anagram is “to contact your handler.”
