Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Blindspot 1.20: “Swift Hardhearted Stone”

“This isn’t about a news piece. This is about a child.”
- Jane

So I’m not sure how I really felt about this episode. It wasn’t bad (although the FBI did seem a tiny bit inept during the course of the episode) but it wasn’t the best episode of the season either. I did like that we got a little background on Oscar. According to him, his mother died when he was young and all he had of her were her jazz albums so he fell in love with music, which Jane then learned to love when they were together. Kind of sweet although she can’t fully trust what he’s saying is true. I really wish she would accept what he’s saying. I like her with Oscar a lot more than with Weller.

This episode we did also get a little bit more on Dr. Borden (like I learned his name…first name Robert). He apparently only does some consulting work with the FBI because when a young girl shows up at a local hospital with injuries and isn’t speaking, he gets called in to do a consult. He immediately brings the case to the team when one of the drawings the girl did matches a tattoo on Jane’s body. It is the symbol of a Middle Eastern terror organization. It seems like a few of the members may have come into the US on false papers and are planning a terrorist attack. Through some non-traditional therapy, Borden and Jane discover that the girl (Maya) is the daughter of the leader of the organization but she’s been shunned, along with her mother, due to the girl’s autism. I can see that happening.

Thanks to Maya’s drawing skills and photographic memory, they find her mother in an apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. She’s been tortured and the team fears that Maya might be next. After all, according to her grandmother (who is on her way from a refugee camp in Germany), Maya’s drawings can identify all the members of the organization. After all, the team was able to find a somewhat disgraced American journalist who ends up admitting to getting Maya and her mother into the country in exchange for an interview.

Borden suggests that since Maya might be a target, they take her to a safe house: namely the house he just inherited in the country. A State Department rep is not happy about this, wanting to set her up in a safe house of his own but Mayfair manages to overrule him. Of course, things get complicated when the gang realizes that the bad guys have found the house and Weller and Jane are a half hour away on a grocery run (the kid likes chocolate). So that leaves Borden and Patterson to protect Maya and the house. That’s going to be easier said than done, especially when Maya wanders outside. But thanks to some quick thinking on Patterson’s end, and Borden utilizing a nail gun as a weapon, they manage to beat the first wave of assailants. But they’ve got more guys to contend with just as Jane and Weller show up. Reade and Zapata aren’t far behind.

Maya gets to safety and Patterson blows the bad guys up thanks to the gas fireplace in the house and some rose doused in lighter fluid. Now Borden has to rebuild the whole thing from scratch but he seems up for the task (after all, he was regaling Patterson with tales of how he’d fix one thing and something else would break). She offers to help paint and I see a budding friendship turned romance beginning to find its legs. Thanks to Maya’s drawings, the team also stops the State Department rep from taking Maya. He apparently had been funneling funds to her family to try and get them to topple some other organization. So with Maya reunited with her grandmother, it looks like she’ll be okay.

The rest of the team isn’t going to be so lucky. Reade notices that Tasha has been looking into Carter’s files and he warns her to stay away. But when she presses him for answers as to why, eh shuts down. Clearly he wants to tell her about the treats but can’t. And she eventually shares her concerns about Mayfair but won’t tell him that it’s coming from the AG’s office. These people to all stop lying to each other! At least Weller and Jane have a little fun playing board games with Weller’s nephew before she goes off to meet Oscar for the night. I wanted to know what he did with Carter’s body! Oh and he gave Jane another little mission to copy some files the organization needs from the FBI database.

But things are turning out very poorly for Mayfair. After she burns all reminders of Sophia, she ends up accepting a date with the woman she rescued from the bar. Unfortunately, just as Mayfair goes to get some ice for their drinks, someone slips in a slits the poor woman’s throat. At least Mayfair was smart enough not to touch anything (like the murder weapon lying on the carpet next to the body) but she does answer the phone where the same ominous voice tells her to stop looking into Carter or else she’ll be next on the hit list. I worry that it’s Oscar making these calls and things are going to get very complicated and uncomfortable with him and Jane. But maybe next week we will finally get some answers about the organization behind Jane being placed at the FBI and what Orion really is. And maybe the rest of the team can stop keeping secrets from each other. I realize for that to be a true exchange of information Jane would need to come clean, too, but I can’t imagine that happening just yet. Maybe at the very end of the season finale but not before then. After all, it would fundamentally change the show and the relationships between the characters. While that may not be a bad thing necessarily going into season 2, a betrayal of that magnitude might not be surmountable for the team.

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