In the action-packed style the show does best, the FBI clashes with the CIA when an escaped asset threatens to release a dirty bomb in New York. Here is a recap and review of the Blindspot episode “Split the Law.”
Recap:
A man hops inside a taxi, and poison gas knocks him out. This is Dodi; he’s having a bad day. Sarah Weller can barely contain her excitement that Jane’s joining them for dinner. Things get awkward quick, as they typically do when a kid asks questions about your long-lost childhood friend who randomly returned with complete amnesia. Jane flashes back to the night she was taken and bolts out of there. Mayfair confronts Weller about the isotope evidence, but Weller backs the DNA test. He hasn’t told Jane about the tooth test and doesn’t plan to. Patterson’s tattoo database gets a hit on the Municipal Workers Association’s address where two gunmen hold hostages. After being unjustly fired, they just want their pensions and a face-to-face with the boss.
With nineteen minutes until their deadline, the gunmen take the “troublemaker” hostages to the back. Patterson ran the gunmen’s faces; they never worked for the MWA. Something’s amiss. When the troublemakers return, the gunmen shoot hostages, so the FBI breaches the perimeter, guns blazing. Weller and Jane stumble upon a secret room with a few more dead guys. Carter shows up and tells them to leave in the interest of national security. This place doesn’t exist, so it’s definitely not a CIA black site.
One dead guy is Dodi, a man the CIA leveraged into becoming an intelligence asset, but he went rogue and became a bomb maker. The situation upstairs was a smokescreen, so the gunmen could whack him. Back in the van, Jane discovers from security footage that the gunmen traded a hostage for Dodi. It wasn’t a hit either; it was a rescue, so Dodi’s having a better day. Interrogating the gunmen’s cohorts, Weller gets nowhere until one demonstrates that she’s dying of radiation poisoning, specifically cesium-137. Dodi’s making a dirty bomb!
Patterson tracks hospitalized cases of radiation poisoning to narrow Dodi’s home base to a thirty-block radius. Waiting for the FBI teams to find something, Jane asks Weller what happened after she disappeared. In addition to the community imploding, he kept checking her favorite hiding spot, never giving up hope that she’d return. As a team raids the suspected apartment, Jane remembers being led into a dungeon with several other children. The team finds a list of names, all for people buried in the same cemetery.
At the cemetery, the bad guys pop a hill carrying an urn of cesium. A shootout with Weller’s team ensues. Jane seizes the urn, and Weller knocks out Dodi. Carter arrives just as the action winds down and puts Jane in his crosshairs. Mayfair cocks her Glock, so Carter stands down. He demands the FBI hand Dodi over, or better yet, they can question Dodi if he can question Jane. Mayfair breaks the standoff by surrendering Dodi.
In their wrap up meeting, Weller points out that Jane’s tattoos uncover government corruption. Looking directly at Mayfair, Patterson adds that they keep leading to the bad guys, so it’s worth sticking it out. Stopping by her new safe house, Weller apologizes to Jane for expecting her to be Taylor and for letting her be taken. He needs to understand it wasn’t his fault. Back home, Sarah’s forewarning about not getting mad is unsuccessful because as soon as Weller sees his father, he leaves. Zapata slides into the passenger side of a car … with Carter. He hands her a bundle of cash in return for info on Jane.
Review:
“Split the Law” split its time between one of the most high stakes cases to date and the emotional toll that Jane’s memories of her abduction are having on her and Weller. This episode exemplifies the fact that Blindspot is a character drama disguised as an action show. It seamlessly blends the two aspects to create a world that the television landscape desperately needs. A world that’s part heart-stopping, part heart-warming, and in all parts suitable for men and women alike. A world that’s filled with a message of hope, redemption, and new beginnings that knows no age.
This week, the team found themselves in the middle of a smoke screen – a creative way both in front of the camera and behind the scenes to divert attention away from the true motives of the bad guys. The case could have still been good if it only centered on a hostage situation or the potential of a dirty bomb, not to mention a quasi-prison break. Having both types of cases sounds as if it would cause the episode to feel fractured since they’re two high profile problems with radically different solutions, but it had the opposite effect. Step-by-step, they created a crescendo of danger. Because the hostage situation led to breaking Dodi out of the black site, which led to the threat of a dirty bomb, these different types of threats, these different M.O.s, naturally progressed the case instead of fracturing it. Nothing is simple with this series, and that’s what makes it great.
What amped up the tension in episode two, “A Stray Howl,” and somewhat in this episode as well, were the ramifications of the FBI not solving the case quick enough. The deaths of a few unfortunate hostages fall short of two drone strikes, but they serve the same purpose – to remind the audience that the stakes are real and nothing is set in stone. It’s necessary to keep the FBI from looking like an infallible entity in order to keep tension within the stories and further make the audience invest in the cases.
Jane asks a very good question when she wonders how the person who tattooed her could have known that this was going to happen. To be fair, the tattoo didn’t necessarily lead the FBI to this particular incident, but rather it led them to a CIA black site on American soil, which constitutes government corruption with or without an incident. I love the possibility that there’s a puppet master behind the scenes pulling the strings to cause these incidents to happen, and this episode did nothing to disprove that theory.
In comparison to previous episodes, some viewers may argue that “Split the Law” was too heavy-handed with Weller and Jane’s relationship, but I disagree for a few reasons. First, these scenes were short enough and motivated enough by Jane’s disturbing flashbacks that they didn’t feel disruptive or out of place. While he took a more personal approach than many colleagues would (or should), Weller trying to comfort Jane doubled as his way guide her back to focusing on the case. Due to Weller’s dedication to his work and his tendency to avoid the pain Taylor’s disappearance caused him, he didn’t indulge the situation more than was necessary.
Second, even if being in the field is the only place where Jane feels comfortable, she still can’t escape what happened to her, and that’s a realistic repercussion. The way this episode included her moments of panic demonstrated just how much she’s dealing with. Instead of weaving the emotional beats into the story by throwing them into downtime during the investigation and thus manufacturing a place for them, the story spawned them off to create a natural place for them. If her moments of panic weren’t set off in the middle of a case, they wouldn’t be nearly as interesting nor would they be much of a problem for her, which means they’d be exponentially less necessary to show. This might have been the most necessary episode for Dr. Borden to be in as Jane’s psychiatrist, yet he was noticeably absent. Perhaps availability or his contract factored into his absence, but it worked just as well with Weller stepping in.
Lastly, we can’t ignore the giant tattoo of his name on her back. The foundation of this series is essentially the connection between Weller and Jane. To not build on that is to not do the series’ idea justice. They’re growing closer, but they’re growing closer out of a sense of comfort and mutual understanding, a united sense of wanting to know the same details about her disappearance and not by way of a classic romantic attraction, not to say that day will never come.
I touched upon this idea in my review of the pilot, but it’s worth repeating here (and probably again sometime in the future). Jane is not a character commonly seen on television, and that’s part of what makes her as fascinating as she is. Most female leads who are FBI agents or detectives rarely, if ever, are allowed scenes of intense vulnerability or momentarily debilitating breakdowns. While Jane’s emotional struggle fell short of the latter, it was still a novel, raw, and beautiful performance by Jaimie Alexander that showed Jane as anything but typical and everything to admire. All of Jane’s confusion and fear regarding her identity has been building up and began to spew over in this episode, and yet she didn’t let it stop her from being the fighter, the team member that she needed to be. At some point it had to happen to keep the reality of the situation.
There were a few scenes this episode that lacked a follow up, but that’s not to say they aren’t coming. I would have liked to have seen another mention of the isotope test on Jane’s tooth, or at least recognition that Weller is hiding information from Jane. His scene with Mayfair in the beginning didn’t connect to anything else this episode. It came across as a confrontation the writers felt like they needed to throw in after the discovery last week, but didn’t truly want to do. On a similar note, the locker room scene between Zapata and Reade in which they joke about dinner at his and Weller’s apartments contained no significance to the plot. It was a wonderful scene to expand upon their friendship and banter, so I enjoyed watching it as with any character development for these two, but I kept waiting for something to happen as a result. Or, this same conversation could have been added into another scene that already carried greater significance to the plot.
Blindspot does an excellent job ending their episodes in a way that makes the audience want to come back for more, if only to get an explanation for what just happened. Even if Papa Weller didn’t kidnap Jane, whatever the lie was about his alibi must be devastating enough to justify Weller still hating him after all these years. Their tense relationship has been teased since the second episode, so perhaps it’s time to finally watch it play out. In addition, Zapata’s current dependence on Carter to pay off her gambling debt came as a shock. I think we should have seen her explore more options before she hopped in the car with him or seen some sort of a threat from Randy, her bookie, to understand her desperation. Regardless, it’s sure to bring more dissonance within the group once someone on the team discovers it, which I’m sure won’t be long given the show’s pace.
Odds and Ends:
– This title’s anagram is either “Will the Past” or “The Past Will…”
– I feel your pain, Jane. I hate it when the elevator doesn’t come fast enough for me to avoid talking to people.
– Last week Weller smiled, and this week Jane smiled. The world is coming to an end, and I love it.
– I’m not entirely sure how to react to Carter’s personality this week. While it was entertaining to see the Director of the CIA act much lighter than we’ve seen before, it also seemed inconsistent with the character that’s been established.
– “I see the way that you look at me, and I don’t know how to be this person that you lost.” – Jane
– “You told me Taylor was my starting point. I think you’re wrong. You. You’re my starting point.” – Jane
He is her new dream. He is her new dream! Excuse me, I need a moment …
Now that I think about it, Blindspot is down a chameleon and up some ink, but it’s more similar to Tangled than just this line. A girl is stolen as a child and finds her way back as an adult. She fights off ruffians and thugs and has a unique advantage. Also, hair. I’ve been trying to find a not-so-awkward way to bring up how amazing Jane’s hair looks, so clearly I haven’t found the right way to do that yet. Also (part two), I might be stretching this idea a bit too far.
