The Blacklist - Recap: Acid Wash Keen

Credit: NBC

The episode gets most of its momentum from placing Elizabeth in danger. She ends up on the radar of a drug dealer named Hector Lorca (Clifton Collins, Jr.) after proving instrumental in his downfall. However, Lorca has an ace up his sleeve, arranging the poisoning of one of the jurors in order to get a key witness in the trial isolated from police protection. Once captured, the witness is delivered to the titular Stewmaker (Tom Noonan), who makes the witness "disappear" by bathing him in a tub of acid, thereby dissolving his body via chemical disincorporation (Walter White style!). Liz blames herself for losing the witness, and pleads with Red to help her bring Lorca down. But he has no interest in getting involved with a low-level hood -- at least not until she lets slip that none of the "vanished" witnesses in any of Lorca's cases have ever been found. Red immediately deduces this to be the work of The Stewmaker. Having found a blacklist criminal worthy of his time, Red sets about helping Liz solve the case. However, things quickly take a turn when Liz and their law enforcement detail are ambushed while transporting Lorca to prison. Lorca's men not only attack law enforcement and recover their boss, they also take Liz hostage. Now Red is in a race against time to rescue Liz before Lorca decides to hand her over to The Stewmaker.

Credit: NBC

Again, this is an episode that works beautifully by sheer virtue of its strong pacing and the narrative momentum earned by placing Liz in harm's way. By making the decision to put her in peril, the episode essentially stops being about anything else, and it's a storyline choice that makes the episode feel far more focused than the standard outing. In addition, sidelining Elizabeth means that James Spader takes center stage as Red, and he absolutely makes the most of his increased screentime. In one key scene, Red sells out Agent Ressler (Diego Klattenhoff) to Lorca's men, but only as a ploy to gather intel on the location of The Stewmaker's hiding place. To this end, Red is able to procure a dog hair from The Stewmaker's dog, and is cleverly able to use that DNA evidence to pretend to be The Stewmaker himself, calling an animal tracking agency and getting them to give up the location of the dog. It all culminates in a race to the cabin where Elizabeth is being kept, bound at the mercy of The Stewmaker.

Credit: NBC

Boone does a great job here of truly communicating Liz's terror, and the desperation of her plight. She tries to keep a level head, using her profiler training to get inside The Stewmaker's head and prompt him to feel guilt or shame about his actions. But while he might be able to acknowledge that Elizabeth is, indeed, a human being with loved ones and everything, he plainly tells her that he's been paid to make certain she suffers. So she isn't going anywhere unless she can find a way out -- and she almost does, freeing herself from her restraints and making a run for it. But The Stewmaker's dog inevitably leads him right back to Liz, and she suddenly finds herself at his mercy once again. It seems pretty hopeless, even though we ultimately know the show isn't going to just kill her off. And right on cue, in comes Red to knock out The Stewmaker and save the day, but not before tossing the sinister man into a tub of his own acid. Liz, who felt she had been making some progress in dissuading The Stewmaker from his life of evil, proclaims Red the real "monster." But Red doesn't really seem to care. All that matters to him is that Liz is safe. (However, he does remove one artifact from among The Stewmaker's collection of trophies from his victims -- the picture of a young woman. Interesting) Outside, Liz falls into Agent Ressler's arms and breaks down into tears, in a quietly powerful moment that communicates the harrowing nature of her captivity. Anyone would be emotionally and psychologically exhausted from nearly being killed twice, even a well-trained FBI Agent.

Credit: NBC

Of course, Liz's emotional breakdown is also due, in some small part, to her knowledge that her life isn't really the same anymore. She can't just go home to Tom (Ryan Eggold) like she used to, since she isn't really sure she even knows him anymore. Early in the episode, Liz tries to sneak a peek at the classified ballistics report from Tom's gun, and all she sees are the words "Angel Station" and the date of "June 23, 2012." Liz writes the info down and tries to look it up online when she gets home, a decision that leads to Tom recognizing the writing on the pad. "June 23, 2012," he explains, was "the best day ever," as they took a trip up to Boston together. Liz continues to lie to Tom about what's bothering her, lacking enough information to really confront him yet with any confidence. However, in one of the more telling lines of the episode, Tom jokes that he loves how easily he can see through Liz, as he can always tell what she's thinking in any given moment. It's a line that could be cute or could be creepy. The strength of Ryan Eggold's performance is that we just can't tell yet. And the conclusion to the episode only deepens the mystery, as Tom announces he's taking Liz on a weekend vacation to the same Boston hotel they'd stayed in the year before...Angel Station. And the plot thickens...

Credit: NBC

"The Stewmaker" is The Blacklist's best episode yet, and it's thanks largely to the central performances of James Spader and Megan Boone, in addition to the carefully-constructed plotting that doesn't sacrifice pace for plot advancement. All in all, a really strong showing for one of the fall's best new shows.

Thanks for reading my recap and review of The Blacklist - Season 1 Episode 4, "The Stewmaker"!