Sunday, April 3, 2016

Blindspot 1.15: “Older Cutthroat Canyon”

“She’s not running, she’s protecting us.”
- Weller

Today is not a good day to be Jane Doe. For one thing, she’s still unhappy with Oscar for passing along the threat to Weller’s life if she doesn’t cooperate with the overall mission. So she begrudgingly meets him the next day and takes the GPS tracker he nee her to put in the team’s SUV. Elsewhere, someone is plotting a nasty surprise for our FBI team when we see a guy in a pig mask steal a painting. The painting theft catches our team’s eye because it was of one of Jane’ most prominent tattoos. The painting was done by some super reclusive artist called Zomo who started out as a graffiti artist before the media took a shine.

Just as the team starts their investigation, things go sideways. While Jane is planting the GPS tracker in the car (under the guise of forgetting her radio), Weller notices that a sculpture has been tampered with as well. And there’s a security camera that wasn’t there before. Justas Jane heads back inside, Weller realizes there’s a bomb and he takes the brunt of the blast. He’ll survive although his jugular vein was injured. Still, he thinks he needs to be involved in the case even though he should be resting. The rest of the team dos a little digging and tracks the loft that Zomo used as one of his paintings to a particular location. They head to check it out but just as Reade and Jane bust in, a sniper starts shooting. Jane would be dead if she weren’t wearing a vest. After quite the pursuit, Jane takes off because she’s remembered the shooter’s face and she wants answers.

While Weller and the rest of the team try to work on the bomb fragment angle, Jane is getting some information and teaming up with Oscar. She thinks that going off the grid for now will save the team some trouble and keep them out of danger. When she finally meets up with Oscar, he reveals that the man hunting Jane used to be on their team (one of the original founding members) but he went kind of nuts and had a split with the team. He blames Jane so now he’s trying to take her out. Oscar insists that the only way to end this is to kill the guy and they need weapons. So they head to a guy named Danny who is also on the team. But it seems their assassin is one step ahead of them because just as Jane and Oscar are about to gear up, the sniper starts shooting and this time Danny takes the fire. It is really just not a good day to be in Jane’s orbit.

Back at the FBI, Weller (against everyone’s suggestions) is working the case and we learn that the young woman we thought was the artist’s assistant is actually the artist. She was taking off because she was scared. Someone contacted the guy they found in the loft (who was her boyfriend) and threatened to expose Zomo if they didn’t show up and paint a particular piece (the tattoo on Jane’s body). Patterson does some more digging into the bomb fragments and finds they were cast off parts from old power plant material.

Weller charges ahead to the factory and he, Reade and Zapata end up on an old boat that the assassin is using as a hide out. Jane landed a shot when last they exchanged gun fire and the team interrupts his wound care. Still, he seems capable enough to lock the gang in the hold. Weller is doing way more physical exerting than his doctor recommended (aka none) to try and escape. But after Jane leaves Oscar in the dust (literally) to rescue the team, he doesn’t have to work quite as hard. She tries to free the team but it isn’t working and all she can do is lead the assassin away from the team. He wants to kill her (clearly) and for some reason he wants Oscar to watch. He mentions that Oscar killed someone named Marcos (lover maybe) and he wants payback. Oscar does show up and shoot the guy in the stomach. He tackles the bastard over the side of the boat before the rest of the team breaks free and can see him.

To cap Jane’s emotional day, she gets yelled at by both Weller and Mayfair about her actions. Of course, Weller admits he would do the same thing she did. And things are kind of interesting for Reade. At the top of the episode he was threatened to keep quiet and stop looking into Carter’s death. So he tells Mayfair he found nothing. And then, I guess in an attempt to keep people safe, he breaks up with Sarah. He claims he doesn’t love her (which I’m assuming really isn’t true). I suspect this is going to come back and bite him. And perhaps the most interesting ending of the night is that Jane goes to see if Oscar is all right and she almost runs into his arms when she sees him. Those feelings that she had for him are clearly still there somewhere. He says that the assassin is dead and they are back on track but we see him hijack a car. This isn’t going to be good for our team but I’m glad it wasn’t all wrapped up nice and neat. I’m kind of rooting for Oscar and Jane to mend fences and get back together. It’s not that I don’t like Jane and Weller but that kind of storytelling is old and overdone. You can have two opposite sex leads who aren’t in a relationship. I’d rather see Jane and Weller be friends than lovers. They kind of were thrown together by other forces, whereas Jane (as Taylor) was able to form a bond with Oscar of her own making. The only reason Jane and Weller are connected are because of her disappearance as a child and his curiosity about what happened.

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