Plotlines

Tom was completely absent in the last third of the fourth season, as he was searching for his parents or relatives. Now we’re presented with him in a rather meaningless cliffhanger. He practically receives the suitcase from Mr. Kaplan, which is initially treated similarly to the suitcase in Pulp Fiction (1994), but it quickly turns out that it contains a human skeleton.

Regarding continuity: It starts with the skeleton, which suddenly looks completely different in color than it did just one episode before. Add to that other small details that might not even be noticeable if they didn’t occur so frequently. Yes, I know this can happen, and I wouldn’t say anything about a one-time occurrence, but someone should notice this, and not just in the editing room when it’s too late. I find it a bit sad that such project blindness has crept in.

Reddington, of course, lives through his extravagant style and the lifestyle associated with it. Seeing him now in such a hotel complex at the beginning of the fifth season, after he’s completely broke, is an interesting scene change. His new followers he recruits are also anything but the criminals he usually surrounds himself with. But in a strange way, it all fits together wonderfully. I mean, sure, James Spader can play anything, but he has just as little trouble with this incarnation of Reddington as with the one we’ve seen for the last four seasons.

Everything feels loose and unstructured, and on top of that, Tom is now dead. We did get to see a scene, I believe relatively at the beginning, that showed us Tom lying on the floor covered in blood and being shot by Reddington. Either I had a blackout somewhere, or the scene really didn’t exist. Because Tom was stabbed by the new villain of this season, Ian Garvey, and dies at the scene. And this much can be said, this time Tom is really no longer with us.

However, all of this has also ensured that Liz suffers such severe injuries that she’s in a coma for ten months. But instead of thinking about revenge, she first has to find herself again and disappears into the wilderness of Alaska. However, it rarely happens in series that the characters, after such a retreat, simply pack their bags again, return, and everything is shiny again. No, there’s always an event that ensures they go back, as is the case here with The Blacklist.

This return, and also the events in Alaska, show that the tone in general is becoming a bit rougher and more unpolished, which suits the series quite well. By that, I mean that Ressler is no longer the only one who deviates a bit from the track, by now you can count them all, which turns the often slightly silly-looking clean FBI into a task force that can also crack down properly. I find this, in combination with the increased use of various music, a very pleasant change.

But just when you think that a few changes have occurred that are quite good, the series manages to drop a clanger that once again makes you doubt a lot. Because Liz can, apart from a few tests and examinations mentioned on the sidelines, return to the FBI as a full-fledged agent. If you review everything that has happened, that’s somehow quite intense. I mean, yes, it makes things less complicated, and looking at it soberly, I can understand it, but I was still surprised.

Seeing John Noble in S5E14 was really fun, and the role as someone who provides alibis for others really fits very well. I really liked him in Fringe back then, but not so much in Elementary, where he often seemed a bit stiff, probably due to the role.

In S5E19, Liz’s sister is finally seen, very good. I can still rely on my memory a little.

Rarely does something go smoothly, something always happens or goes wrong. I can understand why this is done, because anything else would eventually become boring. However, it’s important to find a healthy balance here, which the series rarely manages. I’d like to cite The Martian (2015) here, because the film manages perfectly to create this balance between accidents/bad events and success. It’s different in the book, but that suits the book, in the film you would be completely overwhelmed with everything that happens in the book. This balance, and yes, I’m spoiled because I’ve seen the film too often, is what I would wish for a series like The Blacklist.

This part of the fifth season has shown me that I was sometimes a bit too detached and therefore didn’t appreciate some events. The escape of Liz and Sutton Ross, or rather the revelation that it was intended to bring some truth to light, wasn’t new to me. But that’s exactly where I thought that if I had seen this for the first time, I can’t remember back then when I first saw it, it would have been pretty wild. I mean, looking at it soberly, it’s also a pretty cool action, plus everything that comes after.

We change and that’s a good thing. Now I find this twist, not all of them, quite good, back then it drove me up the wall and annoyed me terribly, as in some previous posts, especially since there’s also the secretive behavior, which wasn’t quite so intense now because I still knew some things.

Another treat for my ears, the previously mentioned black list is now finally called Blacklist, just like the series title. Yes, you can use English words in the German dubbing, dear dialogue book directors.