The Blacklist - Recap: Barnes and Noble

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The criminal in question this week is one Frederick Barnes (Robert Sean Leonard), a brilliant scientist who's made a career manufacturing biochemical agents for the world's most dangerous criminals. Yet he's inexplicably begun releasing his homemade chemical agents himself, which, as Red explains, is not Barnes's M.O. There must be a reason for why Barnes has suddenly decided to start creating chemical weapons for his own use, and it's not only the job of the FBI to discover why, but also to stop him from killing any more people than he has already: the episode kicks off with Barnes unleashing a toxic gas on a subway car, claiming 37 lives in gruesome fashion, as the gas that mimics Kurz disease, an extremely rare condition that gradually robs the body of oxygen by causing the veins and arteries to harden. Of course, Kurz disease is supposed to take years to kill its host, not minutes, so it's clear that Barnes has somehow managed to weaponize a version of the disease to carry out his attacks.

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Alhough Red is able to ascertain Barnes' location by meeting with his chemicals supplier in Cuba, Liz and Ressler (Diego Klattenhoff) are unable to make it in time to the courthouse where Barnes is carrying out his next attack. The incident claims another 26 lives...save for one survivor, who is largely unaffected by the chemical gas Barnes unleashes. Liz gives chase, culminating in a standoff in which Barnes holds a court officer at gunpoint and promises to shoot unless Liz drops her weapon and kicks it away. She makes a judgment call and obeys Barnes, and it's this decision that ultimately allows the serial killer to get away -- moreover, it's a choice that gets her in hot water with the bureau, as she ignored protocol by surrendering her weapon to suspect. It's this survivor that holds the key to the entire mystery of what Barnes is up to, as Ressler theorizes that he's attempting to draw attention to Kurz disease in able to draw lucrative investments in research towards a cure. Yet it's fairly clear early on that while this is a perfectly fine working theory, it's nowhere near the actual truth of the matter.

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Pretty early on, Liz tracks down Anne Forester, Barnes's former research partner. Her meeting with the woman seems like it's headed nowhere fast, as she seems to do little else but talk about what a genius Barnes was, and how she never understood why he left the laboratory. But everything changes when Anne's son comes into the living room, and it's immediately apparent, from the veins beneath his skin, that he's afflicted with Kurz disease. Liz confronts Anne privately about the paternity of Ethan, and she admits that Barnes is his father, though her husband doesn't know. Couple this with Agent Malik's (Parminder Nagra) theory that the attacks are actually experiments Barnes is conducting, and the motive suddenly falls into place. He's attempting to find a cure for Kurz disease by unleashing the illness on large clusters of random test subjects, with the hope of finding one person who will prove immune to the disease, as he would then be able to use this person's bone marrow to synthesize a cure, thus saving Ethan's life.

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The courthouse survivor proves to be the person Barnes has been searching for all this time, and he's able to draw her bone marrow and take his synthesized cure to Anne's house, where he pleads with Anne to be given a chance to see Ethan, leading to a huge fracas in which Barnes knocks Anne aside and then desperately gives chase to Ethan, cornering and chloroforming the boy in his bedroom before pulling out the syringe to give him the injection. Yet Liz is able to make it to the bedroom just in the nick of time, and aims her firearm at Barnes, who is convinced she isn't going to shoot. However, Liz took Agent Ressler's words to heart when he told her that one life isn't worth the lives of thousands, and even though Barnes is unquestionably a scientific genius, there's still the possibility his cure could have undue side effects that would ultimately kill Ethan. And so she takes her shot, killing Barnes in order to protect Ethan. Though she rationalizes that the cure will be vetted through the proper channels, there's a very real possibility that the cure won't see release before Ethan inevitably succumbs to the disease. Yet Liz now recognizes the cold pragmatism of allowing one person to die for the greater good, and it's this moment of justification that makes her an infinitely more interesting character than she'd been before, particularly because this realization didn't come from her time spent under Red's influence, but rather from her time working with Ressler and Director Cooper (Harry Lennix). The storyline raises genuinely interesting questions about morality within the field of law enforcement, and the impossible moral quandaries these agents face in their line of work.

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While the A-story works remarkably well, the B-story is just as compelling, as Red purchases double the asking price for a suburban house that's being held in Escrow. The episode doesn't really linger on the mystery, allowing instead to let it linger on the periphery of the story while the narrative concerns itself with the hunt for Barnes. But the conclusion of the episode circles back around to the house in wonderfully poignant fashion. As Red's female assistant asks him why he chose to buy this, of all houses, Red explains, "I raised my family here." It's a stunning line dryly delivered by Spader, and it's immediately followed up by another gutpunch of a line, as Red responds to the assistant's comment that the house is lovely by saying, "No it's not. But it used to be." Spader then goes on to exhibit why he's one of the finest performers in his craft, as he's basically tasked with emoting despite looking at nothing -- he rips out a panel in the house to reveal markers for a child's height over the years, before looking out the window and seeing the memory of a little girl playing in the backyard. Red's face is wracked with the pain of a man who once had everything but lost it all too suddenly. As he leaves the house, he makes mention of just how hard he's tried to put the past behind him, to "forget what happened here." He and his associates leave the house, as the bomb Red's colleague setup in the house explodes, burning Red's painful memories in effigy.

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"Frederick Barnes" is an episode that asks more questions than it answers, yet not in a way that is likely to frustrate the viewer, as these are all reasonable, organic questions to be asking at this point in the series. Is Tom (Ryan Eggold) really the bad guy Red swears he is? What happened in that tragic house? And who is the little girl Red is remembering? Again, it's far too easy to expect that Red is Liz's father, but it's not unfathomable that their connection might have something to do with Liz's father, just the same. Could Liz's father be a criminal on the Blacklist? Perhaps the same criminal responsible for whatever tragic business happened in that house? It's all guess work at this point, but it's one of the series strengths that it leaves itself open to this kind of interpretation. Red is far more interesting than Liz, but he, in turn, makes Liz more interesting by simply being in her orbit. She recognizes the necessity of their partnership, but she doesn't intend for this partnership to extend to her personal life. Fair enough, and probably wise. But it's hard to imagine he isn't already inextricably linked to the private life she's trying to keep him out of.