The Blacklist, season 3 *Spoilers!*

[auntiehill]

OK, gang, we're off and running in the season premiere. It felt very different from the last two--not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

And....ohmygodRONPEARLMANohmygod! I was kinda hoping he'd have more to do but perhaps he will show up again later. Not quite sure how he could've survived a missile attack, but if Red and just jump up and start running after his heart stopped, well, anything goes.

They are showing the next episode on Thursday, which will be it's regular timeslot now. The next one looks like we will get some more info on Lizzie's "fire memory," but they've tricked us into thinking that before.

Any thoughts?

 

[Masiral]

This isn't a new season - it's still season 2, just the second half.

 

[auntiehill]

Doh! You're right.

 

[Tom Hendricks]

It feels like it could be season 3 with how long we have gone without Red.

 

[auntiehill]

It DOES. It seems like it's been off the air for a long time.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

NBC renews The Blacklist

 

[bigdaddy]

It DOES. It seems like it's been off the air for a long time.

It was what three months? I've been like 8-9 for Orphan Black and still have to wait over two more!

 

[CorporalClegg]

The only thing we learned in this episode is what a waste of money F-22s are.

 

[Captain Shaw]

I found myself getting bored with the flash backs.
Also the USA needs to train their fighter pilots better.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

This two-parter was the first time I had ever watched the show and it was pretty entertaining. I felt like I was getting the gist of it, do you guys think this is a show that works OK without having to have watched the whole thing in order from the beginning?

 

[Locutus of Bored]

This two-parter was the first time I had ever watched the show and it was pretty entertaining. I felt like I was getting the gist of it, do you guys think this is a show that works OK without having to have watched the whole thing in order from the beginning?

Most episodes follow a pretty standard bad guy of the week format with some serialized subplot thrown in, but it's nothing you can't catch up on by reading a Wiki summary or something. Like if Liz's husband ever pops back up again you might be lost, since he was a large focus of the first season and to a lesser extent half of this season. But the conspiracy villains get killed off and escalate up the chain each time, so that shouldn't be too hard to follow with the recaps they do at the top of the episode. David Strathairn's character is completely new to the show, for instance, essentially replacing Alan Alda's departed character. And Ron Pearlman never appeared before this episode, but they've had some other high profile actors play villains of the week when they want to do a big two-parter.

 

[Borgminister]

Without Spader this show is decidedly average... the flashback direction was not very effective at all imo.

Even 60-year old Twilight Zone episodes did better in conveying the weird, along with hallucinogenic Fringe scenes.

As the baddie, thought Alan Alda was better than the Mr. Bourne villain actor.

 

[Procutus]

I greatly enjoyed the second half, though I was a bit disappointed that Lizzie STILL hasn't figured out just who Red is, though maybe with the revelation that her memories were tampered with in the first place, she'll dig a bit deeper into it.

Good thing she never tired of that stuffed rabbit and threw it away!

 

[Lonemagpie]

Hm, I just picked up season 1 in a charity shop for £1, so it's good to know there's more to look forward to if I like it.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Without Spader this show is decidedly average...

That's being generous. Let's face it, without Spader the show is shit.

But that voice transcends all.

 

[auntiehill]

Well.......yeah. It's Spader, with a bunch of dumbasses running around in the background. When they put Spader in the background, it's painfully obvious that he's the only reason anyone watches the show.

Of course, if they wrote really good characters throughout the program, it wouldn't be so painfully obvious. But they don't.....so it is.

 

[Procutus]

But that voice transcends all.

That it does. I can't wait to see Ultron in action in few months.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

So, the writers would have us believe that Lizzie is an expert criminal profiler and psychologist who holds lectures on the subject, yet in the span of a single episode was upstaged by a man who --while a genius-- has zero interest in serial killer mentality, and a sleazy tabloid "journalist," both of whom made insightful observations that massively contradicted her profile of the killer. She was wrong about the gender and motive of the killer and failed to account for a fundamental change in the killer's M.O. that pointed to it being a different person, and then they all failed to put in the due diligence on researching the victims to find more commonalities between them. The abuser/stalker angle should have come across in their research even without convictions.

I get that no one is going to overshadow Red's intellect on the show, and I'm fine with that, but do they have to make the rest of them grossly incompetent even at the very field of study they have been acknowledged as being experts in?

 

[auntiehill]

^ A complaint that has been made multiple times in this thread. The powers that be, who create this program, seem to have forgotten that we really need to like and care about the main characters in some sort of fashion, or we need to find them interesting. To have a main cast of characters all in the FBI, and yet make them all seem so irrevocably incompetent at every turn, makes us not care, not be interested, and just be basically irritated that Reddington is not on screen.

Really, if they wanted that to be the case, why not make Red the central character and not Lizzie? Frankly, I don't even like her at this point. Her moronic, irrational behavior got an innocent man--the harbormaster--killed. I think the only FBI character I like is Aram; he at least is good at his job. The others? I really don't care.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Really, if they wanted that to be the case, why not make Red the central character and not Lizzie? Frankly, I don't even like her at this point. Her moronic, irrational behavior got an innocent man--the harbormaster--killed. I think the only FBI character I like is Aram; he at least is good at his job. The others? I really don't care.

I agree 100%.