Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Blindspot 1.23: “Why Await Life’s End”

“Let me make this right. I’ve already hurt too many people.”
- Jane

Well, we’ve reached the finale and what a way to come into it. Jane may not be Taylor and Mayfair is dead! It can only get crazier from here. It seems our characters are on their own little journeys searching for answers. Weller needs to find out if his father actually killed Taylor and Jane is on the hunt for Oscar. Meanwhile, the rest of the team is trying to track down an MIA Mayfair without drawing the US Marshals’ attention too noticeably. Pretty quickly, Weller realizes that his father was just really drugged out of his mind as he was dying. But he did drag his sister back to their childhood home to dig up the ground under their old fort. He seems both relieved and still kind of confused by the whole situation. There are unanswered questions about how Jane really is, what with the isotope test saying she was born and raised in Africa but the DNA matching Taylor Shaw from when she went missing. I do hope we get the answers to this question by the episode’s end. Also Weller leaves Jane a rather hysterical voicemail.

Jane’s search for Oscar leads her to his apartment (where we get a flashback to him telling her he doesn’t want her to go undercover and wipe her memory) and finds a photo of them under his mattress. I did like the juxtaposition of Jane searching Oscar’s place while Weller searched hers. She then pays our hacker kid a visit to trace the number for the go-between. Jane keeps him on the line long enough to get a location but when she shows up to try and get a location on Oscar, things go sideways. She may be lying about the one former member being alive and after Oscar (although we the viewers know he’s alive) but it motivates the guy to give her an address to an apartment. She also overheard him making a confirmation call about fifty pounds of lye (needed to dissolve a body I’m guessing). She ends up finding out where the pickup is happening and tails Oscar. I’m torn about whether she’s going to just pummel the crap out of him or just be happy to be back with him.

Speaking of bodies, Reade, Zapata and Patterson (who is not happy to have been kept in the dark. I think she is still a little leery over David) check out the address that Mayfair was checking out and find lots of blood that was cleaned up with bleach. Patterson covertly tests the blood and of course determines that it belongs to their former boss. Clearly there is no way that Mayfair can still be alive! Well, they actually debate that for a hot minute before they decide to commit some further criminal acts by breaking into Mayfair’s house to find out what she might be hiding there. After some fun guesswork, they get into her safe and find a flash drive that they take back to Patterson’s lab. It’s encrypted and after puzzling out the solution, they manage to get into the data, which has files on Orion and Daylight.

While the rest of the team tries to grapple with whatever they’ve just stumbled upon, Weller and Jane’s worlds are flying off the rails. Jane thinks she gets the drop on Oscar but he knocks her out and when she wakes up, she’s tied to a chair and he’s going on about how he needs to wipe her memory again. We get some exposition as Jane tries to stall him. They switched out her DNA for Taylor’s in advance of the memory wipe so that they could get Weller into Mayfair’s position as part of Phase 1 of Orion. So clearly, she was never Taylor Shaw. The whole operation is also run by a guy named Shepard who Oscar seems afraid of. Oh, and Oscar also killed Marcos (the bearded guy from the start of the season). And not surprisingly, the pair get into a fight and ultimately Jane impales Oscar. Man, I didn’t want him to die! I thought maybe they could work through their issues. Besides, where is Jane going to get her information from now?

It turns out she may not be a part of Orion for much longer. Weller, after going to find more beer in the garage, remembers camping with his family and he takes off to the camp ground to start digging there. It starts raining but he keeps digging anyway and ultimately finds Taylor’s body. So his father was telling the truth. We still don’t know why he killed her or what really happened but I suppose that is one mystery we won’t solve. But it spurs him to go wait for Jane. He confronts her with the evidence he’s found and he refuses to listen when she tries to explain what’s happened. Instead, he arrests her. I’m not sure what charges he’s bringing against her (he doesn’t say). And that’s where it cuts to black. Everyone is kind of left in the lurch about where they go from here. I must admit I am a little disappointed that they killed Oscar and I’m not sure how the tattoos are going to figure in next season since the Jane Doe project is shut down. And now that Weller knows she’s not Taylor, they won’t be letting her near the cases if they do pick them back up.

I’ve enjoyed the season as it unfolded and think whatever the writers decide to do next season will be interesting. The tattoos were definitely a big draw for the first season and provided a fun way to link cases together and explore things. I am interested to find out more about Phase 2 of Orion (burning the country to the ground) and how everyone will factor into that now that the team is so fractured.

No comments:

Post a Comment