The Blacklist - Recap: The Undertaker's Streak

Yes, at its heart, it's a crime procedural involving a "case of the week" that our hero needs to solve. However, the lightly serialized elements are becoming more and more significant as the weeks roll on, even as I find myself wondering what happened to other mysteries the show had been building (such as the whole business with Fitch, or the shady coverup of Diane Fowler's murder). The show is putting all its eggs in the Tom Keen basket, asking us to ignore, for a moment, that Liz (Megan Boone) and Red (James Spader) share a connection that still has yet to be explained, since Tom (Ryan Eggold) is essentially a bigger fish to fry, at the moment. Whether or not you like this episode will largely depend on whether or not you're into the building tension of the Liz/Tom story, or if you're just kind of over all the teases. For my money, "Milton Bobbit" is much better for its one-off case than for its ongoing arc.

Credit: NBC

The case centers on the titular Milton Bobbit (Damian Young), an insurance claims adjuster known as "The Undertaker" due to his macabre fascination with death. This "Undertaker" comes to the attention of the FBI after a streak of unexplained murder-suicides. In essence, Bobbit is somehow talking these people into committing a murder-suicide, and it's up to the FBI to figure out how. With the help of Aram (Amir Arison), they're able to link the victims by one grim commonality: they're all terminally ill. From there, it doesn't take long to figure out that he's convincing his victims into doing his bidding by promising to take care of their families after they're gone. Agents Ressler (Diego Klattenhoff) and Malik (Parminder Nagra) also make a meaningful break in the case, as it's revealed that Bobbit is able to scout his potential "assassins" as a result of the life insurance claims he receives at the agency. And that's not all: turns out Bobbit is terminally ill himself, and has even lost body parts (his nose comes right off like Mr. Potato Head, in a scene that's exactly as gross as it sounds), all due to an experimental drug for type-II diabetes that resulted in several deaths. This is essentially Bobbit's revenge, as he's found a way to get anonymous people to take out those responsible for his predicament, after beginning his crusade as a mostly philanthropic endeavor, taking the money from clients who'd hire him to find them an anonymous "assassin," and using it to provide for the families of those "assassins". It's for this reason that Red wants to track Bobbit in the first place: to gain access to his client list. Which he does, although we don't know what he read on the list, or why he wanted it in the first place.

Credit: NBC

And this isn't even the most frustrating aspect of Red this week, who's 80% delightful, and about 20% infuriatingly obtuse. When Liz decides she's going to start piecing together the mystery surrounding Tom herself, she enlists Red to help her by actually providing some frigging answers for once. Yet, after all the warnings about Tom, he doesn't actually know much more than she does. All he knows is that somebody had been looking into his interests, and sought out Liz to get to him. So Tom inserting himself into Liz's life is essentially because Tom's handlers are after Red. And so this leads to the next logical question that any sane person would ask: "How are we connected?" Liz wants the answer, and really, the only reason Red could possibly have for not giving it is because he knows he's on a TV show, and it's not time for the audience to learn it yet. Of course, if the show comes up for a compelling reason for why he insists he can't tell her just yet, I'll happily eat my words (or eat crow, whichever is more palatable). But as it stands right now, his assurance that all answers will come in time sounds like an eye-rolling palliative. Seriously, thank God Red is delightful.

Credit: NBC

And even with all the teases, the serialized story surrounding it still mostly works. Tom asks Liz to renew their wedding vows as a measure to keep her in check, and Liz understandably snaps when in private. She can hardly stand to look at Tom any more, much less be around him. But his handlers need to suspect nothing is wrong, so she goes along with it. She even tolerates the presence of Tom's estranged "brother" Craig Keen (Peter Scanavino), whom she never really liked. Ultimately, this all culminates in Liz piecing together Craig's identity and enlisting Red to blackmail him into revealing what he knows. But because it's too early for us to know the truth of who Craig works for ("Berlin"), or what they want, Craig jumps out a window to his death rather than spill the beans. So basically, all we learn about Tom is that he might have a family member in Chicago, and possibly a woman named Nikki, and he also has a mysterious key that might be to a post office box, or maybe not. But all these tidbits are more than enough to keep the narrative taut and suspenseful, particularly when Tom stumbles upon Liz just moments after she's replaced the mysterious key in Tom's hiding place. It says a lot about Ryan Eggold's performance that he can be so disarming but also deeply unsettling in one fell swoop. His insistence that "We're newlyweds," which prompts Liz to start removing her clothes, comes across as a power play, if not an outright intimation that "I know you know." It's becoming a game of chicken, a broadcast version of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They're both daring the other to flinch first, to show their hand. To . And it makes for some interesting TV even though we aren't really getting answers. Really (and I know it's infuriatingly tiresome to say, but) I don't think this is a show that's about the answers.

And even if it were, we didn't get'em this week, which is all the more reason to reinvest in the case of the week, which ended up being pretty damn solid. I mean, the conclusion is wrapped up pretty succinctly, but I still found it exciting in its own way. Bobbit tracks down Dr. Frederick Osborn (Sam Freed), the doctor responsible for the medical trials that deformed him, and took the lives of countless others. He takes Dr. Osborn to the cemetery at which he volunteers (because of course a guy nicknamed "The Undertaker" volunteers at a cemetery). With a homemade bomb strapped to his body, he intends to bring the cycle to an end, but not before telling Dr. Osborn that he actually brought about a lot of good with his treachery, since now the loved ones of countless terminally ill patients will be provided for. Granted, Bobbit notes that this doesn't outweigh all the terrible stuff Dr. Osborn has done, and so he sets out to kill the man -- only to be stopped by the arrival of the FBI. Namely, Ressler, who arrests the doctor for the highly illegal medical trials, giving Bobbit a sense of peace. Or maybe it's anguish, since he actually detonates the bomb and kills himself. Either way, the world is short one Undertaker.

Credit: NBC

"Milton Bobbit" is a suspenseful episode that works more for its procedural story than for the serialized arc it continues to tell. But this isn't to say that the ongoing storyline with Tom Keen isn't compelling, or that James Spader isn't continuing to knock it out of the ballpark as Red. The Blacklist is heading into the endgame of its first season, and I feel the series has done a good job in setting us up for a big unraveling. Obviously, not everything is going to be answered. Hell, I'd be surprised if even half of the mysteries were resolved. But there are likely to be clues for attentive viewers, and new mysteries to chew on. And while the lack of answers can occasionally be frustrating, having the mystery alive can often be more fun. Speculation is one of the many fruits of discourse, so it wouldn't surprise me if The Blacklist wanted to keep its fans talking and, most importantly, theorizing.