One of the TV shows that I loved watching since it started was The Blacklist starring James Spader and Megan Boone. I remember watching the first season in 2013 and following this crime series as much as I could. I think I watched the first season from start to finish, then for the next seasons, I would watch a few, enough to catch up on the storyline until the eighth season. I think at some point I was merely reading up episode recaps then deciding which episode to watch/catch up on (since we get the show on the same week as the original airing).
Recently, as a way to pass the time on the elliptical on my daily workouts, I have started binge-watching The Blacklist. I’m on the elliptical for more than an hour daily, so there are days when I watch the show when I’m on it, Since I work out daily, I have been able to finish catching up on all eight seasons available on Netflix. I think the current 9th season is being shown somewhere on cable, but I haven’t been able to figure out the time. I think I’ll catch up on it when it goes to Netflix later.
To those who are not familiar with the show, The Blacklist is about one of the FBI’s most wanted criminals Raymond Reddington, who voluntarily surrenders and strikes a deal with the US government to be able to capture criminals and terrorists that he works with on the condition that he only speaks to FBI agent and rookie profiler Elizabeth Keen.
For all the eight seasons that I have watched, the episodes revolved around criminals that not only help Reddington fulfill his obligation with the FBI but, sneakily enough, also help him to widen his own criminal empire, who in later seasons he said he wanted to leave to Elizabeth, which is another mystery in the show that has still been left unanswered.
Throughout the show, there have been speculations about who Elizabeth is to Reddington. At some point, he has either been the friend of her mother to her own father to simply a father figure who has obligated himself to protect her. The craziest theory of all has been that Reddington is actually her mother, who went under the knife to become Raymond Reddington as a way to protect her. In a way, it makes sense but also doesn’t at the same time. I mean, how to could a woman who merely decided to become a man to protect her child suddenly just become some sort of lothario when she was not even gay in the first place? The gender change meant a change in sexual preference all of a sudden? That was just weird for me.
I think that it’s disappointing that Megan Boone had left the show with the story left the way it was in season 8. With the pandemic and all, I don’t think the show had enough time to resolve things in a way that satisfied me. It just feels weird that the reason that Reddington was there in the first place was now gone and yet he continues on in the show when his sole purpose for it was no longer around. I’m curious as to how this will all make sense in season 9.
Another disappointing thing for me in the show was losing Ryan Eggold and the potential of the spinoff that they made called The Blacklist: Redemption. I thought that Ryan Eggold was an asset to the show and it was exciting to see his character in the spinoff. It’s too bad that it was canceled after only one season. I felt that there was potential in the show and if only they were given the opportunity to course-correct it would have been a good and even better show than the original. Oh well, The Blacklist’s loss was New Amsterdam’s gain.
One of the things that I have always enjoyed about this show was the writing, specifically for Raymond Reddington. The way he rambles on and on is very entertaining and lends to the eccentricity of the character, which James Spader portrays in such an amazing fashion. I don’t think any other actor could have pulled that off than him. He is Raymond Reddington (or the guy pretending to be Reddington, as the show later revealed). The various types of criminals they feature every week on the show have all been diverse and interesting as well, which only proves that they have a good team of writers on the show (why could they not have shared that talent to the spinoff so that it could have been saved?).
I’m not particularly excited about season 9, but I am curious about how this story will go from here now that Elizabeth Keen is dead. I’m not keeping my hopes up. I was really expecting this show to end with her death but let’s see how it goes from here.
Season 9 on Netflix soon, please!
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