When a vial filled with an infectious disease goes missing from the CDC, the FBI races to stop a deadly outbreak in a milder episode than its predecessors. Here is a recap and review of the Blindspot episode “Bone May Rot.”
Recap:
Two years ago. Center for Disease Control. A man in a ripped hazmat suit hacks up some blood and meets his end. No! Waaaalt! Now. Breakfast at Patterson’s. She scolds her boyfriend, David, for rummaging through her tattoo file, until he says he solved one. Joining Jane’s session with Borden, Weller reveals that Taylor was an only child raised by a wonderful single mom who’s since passed away. Approaching the office, Reade passes Zapata talking to a mystery man, who she swears she’s not dating. Patterson briefs the team on the new clue. Two overlapping leaves form the CDC’s symbol. Off to their lab on the corner of Oak and Maple Street.
Before entering the lab, the team must be decontaminated. The UV lights switch on, revealing a site-specific tattoo. Glowing numbers on Jane’s face! The numbers correspond to incurable infectious diseases last accessed by dead Walter. Weller, Jane, and a lab assistant enter a BHL4 lab, i.e. somewhere you don’t want to go without a hazmat suit, but that’s the least of their worries. Ten vials are missing, and a lockdown takes effect. Perturbed by Weller’s pacing, Jane asks about the night she disappeared. When her mom worked, Weller was responsible for checking on her. He went to check on her that night, but she was gone. No signs of forced entry. No evidence tied his dad to the case other than a false alibi. Memory flash: little Taylor follows a man down her hallway.
Reade and Zapata discover that the Director of Epidemiology, Rebecca Fine, remotely initiated the lockdown. Also, Rebecca visited nine cities right before outbreaks of the missing diseases. Can’t be a coincidence. The police pursue Rebecca on her way out of town, but she kills her husband, then herself. Evidence on her body sends the FBI to the cruise ship terminal. Two hours before the virus explodes! They find a suspicious suitcase, which video footage confirms Rebecca left behind. A believer that duct tape fixes everything, Patterson helps the team MacGyver a containment system around the suitcase. Three. Two. One. Poof.
With his team in a quarantine tent, Weller refuses to let the virus out of his sight. Dr. Surrey from the CDC brings him a hazmat suit. Patterson taps into Weller’s earpiece after finding something very not good. Surrey worked closely with Rebecca and plans to infect himself and spread the virus. They believed these diseases weren’t meant to be cured so the planet could protect itself from overpopulation. Walter died because he discovered their plan. Weller tries to stop him in what looks like a minion tussle. Coming out of nowhere, Jane leaps over a bench and ends it.
After complimenting her work, Reade explains to Jane that his problem with her isn’t really about her. It frightens him that Weller doesn’t act like the levelheaded leader when she’s around. Chilling in Mayfair’s office, Carter demands to speak with Jane about Daylight. Mayfair refuses to hand Jane over to the CIA to wind up in an interrogation hole. Zapata’s mystery man, Randy, tracks her down. She has three days to pay $40,000 from her subpar bet on the Jets and other gambling debts. Finding Jane looking into Taylor, Weller tells her more about their childhood. As a tomboy, she’d always join him outdoors, fishing or playing in a wooden fort. Patterson interrupts with news for Weller. Isotopes in the tooth the Ruggedly Handsome man knocked out indicate that Jane was born in Sub-Saharan Africa, not Pennsylvania as Weller recalls.
Review:
Still a far cry from a “weak” episode, “Bone May Rot” did not quite live up to the exceptionally solid quality of the first three episodes due to the nature of the case, but it did surpass previous hours in its effort to develop the supporting characters. It provided payoffs, even for moments we didn’t realize we were being set up for, and it set up new predicaments that will certainly blow up down the line. All the more reason to keep watching. Overall, “Bone May Rot” worked better as a propellant for future stories than it did as a standalone case.
Many people argue that shows on cable and premium cable channels contain better content because they have much looser restrictions on what they’re allowed to show. They’re not forced into the family-friendly or young adult-friendly boxes that network series must live within. Award shows certainly favor series with adult subject matter, even if audiences gravitate toward the series that aren’t getting nominated. I’m not a firm believer that darker, grittier content makes for better content, but there are exceptions to every rule. So where am I going with this?
“Bone May Rot” suffered from being the first Blindspot episode to earn a TV-PG rating instead of TV-14. It isn’t about wanting to see something more shocking; it’s about needing to see something more shocking. The threat of the virus being released didn’t give the audience enough anxiety because we barely saw what the virus was capable of. To fully understand the threat, we needed events comparable to “A Stray Howl’s” two drone strikes. We needed to see how the virus infects and spreads – all the gruesome, bloody, mucusy details, so when the FBI stopped the virus from infecting the city, we felt as if lives were truly saved. Walter’s death in the teaser attempted to satisfy this need, but it was too quick and too concealed to make enough of an impact to last the entire episode. The steps in which Rebecca’s plan unfolded didn’t allow for an opportunity to show isolated infections, so the case should have been reworked in the writing stage for maximum impact. The thought of an incurable viral outbreak is terrifying and fitting to this series. I love that they included it and the potential was there; I just wish the thought was as terrifying as the storyline.
In addition, the antagonists’ motivations decreased the believability of their actions. Unlike the team’s past antagonists, Rebecca and Surrey possessed no personal motivations (at least, none that were mentioned) for unleashing several deadly viruses around the world. Simply the death of a family member from one of these incurable diseases would have sufficed. An oh-so-common motivation, but a strong, sympathetic, and understandable (not necessarily justifiable) one. The idea that they acted for the good of the planet was difficult to believe when they were not established as this type of extremist throughout the episode. Once again, the story didn’t reach the full potential of the concept.
In light of these flaws and the unusual story structure of “Bone May Rot,” it’s impressive how the episode managed to create and sustain momentum. The death of the episode’s antagonist typically signifies the end of the threat, but the fact that they were able to kill Rebecca off at the end of the second act provides an interesting case study. I know I constantly talk about the mysteries within the series being the most intriguing part, so this might not come as a surprise, but the mystery of whether or not the FBI could stop a plan already in motion revitalized the energy that was lost when Rebecca died. Having the characters search for a needle in a New York-sized haystack certainly worked in their favor. A minimal amount of this mystery fell on Surrey, as he became an antagonist as quickly as he was neutralized. He did provide a fun, momentary twist.
At the time, the moment in which Jane gets her tooth knocked out by the Ruggedly Handsome Man comes across as insignificant in the midst of their brutal throw down, but what this show has grown into is a puzzle where nothing is insignificant. In this week’s “Who is Jane Doe?” cliffhanger, Patterson discovered evidence that supposedly contradicts the DNA tests she ran in the previous episode. As she stated, both test are conclusive, but both can’t be true. However, both tests can be true if Weller is wrong. The isotope test didn’t truly contradict the DNA test; it only contradicted Weller’s memory of where Taylor Shaw came from. Not only was Weller five years old when the memory takes place, but thirty years have since then passed during which the memory could have been distorted and affected. They played this off as a conflict when the scene merely added new information that needs context to be fully understood.
The memory flash of little Taylor leaving her room with the man who apparently kidnapped her created a bit of suspicion regarding what we think we know. Perhaps it’s the lack of context for this clue, but it looked as if she easily followed her abductor, making it a disappearance that was more a result of luring her away than traditionally abducting her. My first thought was that she knew the man who took her, but is that too easy? Was it actually Weller’s father? Or Taylor’s own absentee father back from wherever he was?
Patterson dealt with two problems this week and stood out as the most interesting of the supporting characters. First, her boyfriend finds himself as caught up in the tattoo mystery as we all are. Not to get sidetracked with shipping since this series doesn’t play to that aspect, but Patterson and David were pretty cute together, and more importantly, a strong intellectual match. He appears as innocent as he can be and believes it’s a good thing to help her solve the puzzles faster. While he has a point and there’s no justification for alarm at the present time, he has the potential to be swept up in a conspiracy with highly dangerous killers. I’m not sure what it is, but I’m sure something else is going on here, and it’s not going to end well for the lovebirds.
Speaking of dangerous folks, the plot thickens around Guerrero and Daylight. Mayfair confirming that Thomas Carter works for the CIA did not surprise the audience as much as they might have meant it to since the assistant director of the FBI can’t be threatened by very many people. The important implication of this information is the international reach that the case now spans. Telling Patterson not to look into the file seems like it’s going to have the opposite effect on her, and here’s hoping it does. It would be interesting to see how Patterson’s investigation into the matter confirms or contradicts what Mayfair and Carter discuss about the operation.
The reveal that Zapata has $40,000 in gambling debt, which she swears she’s good for, gives me mixed feelings. On the one hand, a character with a gambling debt is an interesting departure from a straight-laced FBI agent, and I applaud their effort to show that even the best among us have flaws. Plus, either she’s lying about her current wealth or there’s more to her socioeconomic backstory that should be explored. On the other hand, there’s a concern about it being derivative of Booth on Bones or not handled as well as addiction storylines should be. That being said, I don’t want to fault Blindspot before it even has a chance to try. They’re developing a supporting character, and that’s what I’ve been asking for.
On the front of a more internal character development, Reade’s attitude took a positive step forward. He again expressed his disapproval over Jane being armed and in the field, which is a conversation Weller’s tired of, and quite frankly, so am I. That story beat has run its course. The positive result of it being brought up again was that it was seemingly brought up to shut it down. It culminated in the moment in which Reade has an open, honest conversation with Jane regarding his concerns about her presence on the team. Reade lightened up ever so slightly around her without compromising the character he’s been established as. A lot of feelings of guilt are floating around between Jane and Weller, so it was nice that Reade attempted to lighten hers by saying his problem with her is not really her fault, even if that didn’t comfort her.
Earlier in the episode, Jane attempted to do the same for Weller, assuring him that her disappearance wasn’t his fault. Because of this, Weller took a major step by opening up to Jane about his past, even though he stuck to the facts of what happened instead of his emotions surrounding them. His feelings on the matter did manage to peek through his performance, turning their nice scenes into beautiful ones. For someone with no memory of the man, Jane is rather skilled at reading him, which deepens their bond and strengthens their chemistry.
Odds and Ends:
– This title’s anagram is “Or Maybe Not.”
– I want to join Patterson on game night! She has quite an impressive shelf of board games in her apartment.
– Joe Dinicol, who played Patterson’s boyfriend, was a series regular on The L.A. Complex, which Martin Gero also created.
– Has no one thought to buy Jane clothes other than a tank top and one pair of pants?
– Reade: No judgment. I’m just glad to see you with a skinny dude for once … Your usual type’s a mix between gladiator and Viking.
Zapata: I do not have a type.
Reade: I catch bad guys for a living, right. The last two dudes you dated scared me.
Zapata: Then you scare easily because they were a loan officer and a soccer coach.
– Patterson: I just kind of, you know, came up with it this morning when we were … um, I was alone, and I was just eating uh … uh … a breakfast.
– Weller: You were very brave today. Stupid, but brave.
Jane: I think there was a compliment in there somewhere.
