The Blacklist - Recap: Mr. and Mrs. Smith

While some of these milestone plot points have borne more fruit than others (how quickly we forget the murder of Diane Fowler and the seedy business with Fitch), I'd argue the show has done a great job with the slow burn of the mystery surrounding Tom Keen (Ryan Eggold). It's a difficult balancing act (hell, Eggold says as much about Tom in a Ford commercial during the episode), but The Blacklist has found a way to make Tom equal parts homely and menacing. And "The Pavlovich Brothers" brings that characterization to its inevitable apex, with Tom and Liz (Megan Boone) finally letting it all hang out in the open. It's a peculiar take on the old Mr. & Mrs. Smith story of a husband and wife who both know each other's secrets, and know the other person knows. It'd almost be fun if it weren't so heavy, but even with all of its dour seriousness, there's something unmistakably compelling about what happens here. We don't get nearly as many answers as we'd probably like, but we get enough of a tease that it serves as an impetus to come back for more, as is the case in just about any serialized drama. Granted, The Blacklist has lighter serialization than many shows of its ilk, but the series is engrossing with the plot elements that do carry over from one week to the next. While I couldn't possibly have cared any less about a "Case of the Week" than I did the case that anchors "The Pavlovich Brothers," I found the Tom/Liz story to be more than enough to make up the difference. So I'd call it a win for The Blacklist this week.

Credit: NBC

The aforementioned case this week centers on a Chinese scientist who intended to defect to the United States to prevent her country's new germ warfare program. However, the woman was jailed for treason, prompting a U.S. reconnaissance team to stage a brazen prison break by injecting the scientist with a serum that mimicked cardiac arrest. With the scientist safe in Washington, the Chinese government hires the Pavlovich Brothers, four Blacklisters who specialize in the abduction of high value targets. While this seems like a quartet that's new to the fray, we learn that these are four guys we're more familiar with than we might have realized. It turns out they were behind the abduction of the general's daughter in the pilot, and now is the FBI's opportunity to put these men away for good, with the help of Red (James Spader), who continues to steer the FBI in the right direction with such frequency that I wonder if they'd ever get anything done without his help.

Credit: NBC

I wonder if perhaps part of the reason the case has no real feeling of dramatic weight is because we spend so little time with it. More than any other case this season, it feels like the hunt for the Pavlovich Brothers and the increasing peril of the Chinese scientist is given hardly any screentime. Hell, after a while, the Pavlovich Brothers start getting used for more interesting pursuits; namely, capturing Tom. Continuing his habit of staying a step ahead of the FBI, he tracks down the Pavlovich Brothers and hires them to drop everything and track down Tom. This leads to the episode's best action sequence, a high-speed chase in which Tom flees from his compound with his handlers while the Pavlovich Brothers remain hot on his tale. Tom had been biding his time, waiting for extraction by his team once he let "Berlin" know that his identity had been compromised, and that Liz knew the truth. After the Pavlovich Brothers catch him, he's delivered to Liz, handcuffed and with his mouth duct-taped shut. It's an interesting route for the story to take, yet we keep cutting back to finish things up with the Pavlovich Brothers, all of whom perish in a hail of gunfire once the FBI tracks them down to the docks where they intend to ship the scientist back to China. It all just feels like an obligation by this point, and I'm not sure I've ever seen any two agents more nonplussed to be involved in a shootout than Ressler (Diego Klattenhoff) and Malik (Parminder Nagra). There's just such a sense of having been there and done that with this sort of story. Yes, they save the scientist and win the day, but I would imagine I wasn't alone in hoping the show would just get back to the Tom/Liz story.

And so it was, as Liz finally has Tom as a captive audience, with no choice but to answer her questions. Megan Boone shows more fire here than at any point in the series, and it's quite impressive. On both her end and Eggold's, who is blithely chilling for much of this. Some of it is even heartbreaking: when Tom proves evasive with his answers, Liz demands, "Answer your wife who is dying in front of you." It's a line that's shattering in its delivery, and it's rebutted with a moment that's every bit as devastating, as Tom recalls the first night they made love. Apparently, the morning after their first night together, Tom awoke to find a little heart drawn in the dust around his shoe, and he notes that this was the point where he actually started to feel sorry for Liz, because it's the moment when he knew he had her. As Tom admits, part of him had hoped his plan to seduce Liz wouldn't work. In this lament, there's the kernel of a good guy buried deep down. But it's hard to know just to what extent Tom was ever real with Liz. He's a dark character, and he brings out that darkness in others, such as when Liz opts to torture him to get the info she wants. In breaking his thumb with a wrench, she foolishly fails to realize that she's giving Tom the means to escape his handcuffs, leading to an awkward, over-choreographed fight scene that ends with Tom forcing Liz to handcuff herself to the railing while he escapes. However, he doesn't leave without first telling her that he's with the good guys, and that Red isn't what he seems. He even tells her to use his key -- the one she found under the lamp -- to open his safe deposit box in a bank downtown. Then, with a simple "Goodbye, Liz," Tom vanishes. Although, hopefully, he's not gone from the narrative altogether.

Credit: NBC

It seems unlikely that Tom will disappear entirely, since Liz deduces from Red that his men are following him, and have been for longer than even she has realized. Red once again plays the paternal role in reassuring Liz that while things went haywire with Tom, she's still deserving of a better life. He even argues that the reason Tom had to try so hard to be kind and perfect to her was because he realized this was what she deserved, which -- I mean, it's a sweet sentiment, but that's some circuitous reasoning there. But it's exactly the kind of overly complicated palliative Liz needs to hear in that moment, as she seems a bit more at ease than she did before. At least until she checks out the safe deposit box and finds a bunch of photos in an envelope. We don't see what the photos contain (because of course we don't. Serialized TV, and all), but Liz's reaction implies the pics aren't of kittens and corgis.

Credit: NBC

Maybe an answer instead of another tease would have been nice, but for some reason, The Blacklist's lack of follow-up on certain mysteries just doesn't bother me in the way it might in another series. Maybe it's that I just love James Spader, or maybe it's that the show simply paces itself better than most in how it doles out the exposition of its mythology. Either way, The Blacklist still works on a fundamental level, even as the DNA of the show appears to be changing. Yes, we still have weekly cases, but there's a greater emphasis on serialization and character. And that more or less sums up "The Pavlovich Brothers," an episode that brings character to the fore, and cracks open a wider array of mysteries that need solving. Not that I mind, really. I enjoy The Blacklist, even while there are shows that better manifest its individual elements. There's just something about Raymond Reddington that makes this a world worth investing in, and Liz Keen is becoming quite compelling in her own right, too. It's becoming a series with more to offer than just a list of colorful bad guys or the question of what the connection is between our two leads. There's more here, and it's good.