Thursday, May 12, 2016

Blindspot 1.21: “Of Whose Uneasy Route”

“This drill is a smokescreen. We’re being hacked. Someone’s attacking the FBI.”
- Patterson

Well, I guess I can add another bottle episode to my list. Sure this episode had room we hadn’t seen before but it was all connected to the FBI set which we’ve been hanging out in all season. And as bottle episodes go, it was decent. Not nearly the level of say “Leverage” but hey, we can’t all be brilliant. The set up finds our characters paired off in various parts of the building after Mayfair gets to work (after Alexandra her sort-of girlfriend is taken away by the ME). The US Attorney who has been gunning for her is boxing up her office and interestingly, he gets out of the building before hell breaks loose. But when lockdown hits, Sarah and Reade are stuck in an elevator with a really annoying lawyer, Jane and Patterson are in the training room, Borden and Weller are in a session (chatting sports) and Mayfair and Zapata are stuck in a hallway.

Before long, Patterson figures out that the lockdown isn’t a drill like was announced and that they’ve been hacked. So she and Jane get to go climbing through ventilation and end up finding Borden and Weller. They need to get out of the room and to Patterson’s lab. She might be able to do some counter-hacking from there. And thus begins Weller’s ability to smash the shit out of stuff along the way. First up is a window into the lab. Patterson quickly figures out that whoever is hacking them is blocking all communications. So they need to cut off the internal comms anyway to try and boot them out of the system.

While Weller and Jane get to do most of the action stuff, we have some emotional stuff happening with Reade and Sarah and Mayfair and Zapata (but mostly the latter pair). Reade is trying to keep everyone in the elevator calm while also trying to apologize to Sarah. She’s not having any of it (later deciding to move to Portland to be near her ex so that Sawyer can get to know his dad). The more interesting heart-to-heart came with Mayfair and Zapata. AS they sit in the hallway waiting for something to happen, Mayfair admits that she made some bad choices in her early career (without saying what but the viewers knew what she was talking about). This prompts Tasha to admit what she’s been doing with the attorney and why he’s after her. At least they finally got things out in the open. I wish Weller and Jane could have had that kind of moment but alas, that wasn’t to be had this week.

Jane and Weller make it to the room that has all the wires that need to be cut to halt communications from outside. Weller gets to take an ax to the cables which he clearly enjoys but the when that doesn’t kill the download of sensitive information (undercover FBI agents) Patterson realizes that the hackers are in the building and probably locked in the server room. We see the hackers briefly. They’re speaking in Spanish and it looks like they are going to sell the information to the highest bidder, be it drug cartel or someone else. But they also know that the team is aware of their presence. They turn on the Carbon Dioxide system and Weller and Jane barely make it out of the wire room alive. But they do make it and after some more climbing and agility they get to the evidence room and load up on weapons and grab a blowtorch to cut through the metal barriers in the hallways. Time to take down some hackers.

Lucky for Weller and Jane, one of their hallway barriers leads them to Mayfair and Zapata. So the four of them (plus some random agent red shirt) head into the server room. A massive shootout ensued where one of the hackers gets taken out but the other escapes. And of course, agent red shirt dies (duh). But the hacker that got away is giving the team an ultimatum: deliver his partner or he drops all 30 elevators from the top floor (including of course Reade and Sarah). Because this has to add to the drama, Patterson is able to lock him out of all the elevators except the one they are in because it runs on a secure circuit or something. So Weller and Jane have to make a daring rescue. This of course leaves Reade hanging by a fire hose as the elevator shoots to the bottom floor far below him.

Of course this can’t be where the episode ends. No, the attorney has to come back and charge Mayfair with first degree murder. The team watches as he lays out his case: she killed a whole bunch of people to cover up her dirty dealings of the past. Of course, it’s all wrong. We do learn that Alexandra was actually a high level fixer that the Feds had been building a case against for a decade but Mayfair clearly didn’t know. I knew I didn’t trust her for a reason! But more importantly, as the attorney lays out evidence that makes it look like Mayfair is guilty, Jane realizes that the tasks Oscar was making her do were to frame Mayfair for murder. We don’t see the fall out of this realization yet but I have a feeling she is going to be more than a little pissed at her former fiancé for putting her in this position. I highly doubt any amount of makeup sex will make up for what he’s done now. I just hope we get answers to why they are doing this before the end of the season (aka 2 episodes). I am also intrigued by small comment Patterson made to Jane at the start of the episode about getting her tattoos removed. I know the writers have said that the tattoos won’t play as big a part in season 2 but I really hope she doesn’t get rid of them. Or at least not all of them.

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