CMI on TV

What a night! Not one, but two fairly important thorns in Emily's plot reveal themselves AND a positive message??? Sacre bleu!

Bravo to Daniel for trying to do the right thing and marrying the girl he thinks is pregnant with his child. Him telling Sarah that he can't leave his pregnant fiancée for her because he didn't want his kid to grow up in a broken home was downright uplifting. Can a kid turn out alright from a broken home? Sure, but as one who's had significant years on both sides of the fence I can tell you that having a father and a mother who love each other in the same house is far and away better to any alternative.

Two Teases: What They Mean

1. Lydia finds another copy of the picture with Emily in the background....

Well, boys and girls, I should have known better.  You know what they say; don't count your chickens before they've hatched.

And what did I do? I counted them. I counted every dang one of 'em. Read my chicken counting yourself. Embarrassing.

Was the fall finale of The Blacklist awful? No. But was it as good as I had hoped (and unfortunately expected)? No.

There were certainly moments of brilliance for sure. The elegantly drawn out torture of Red stands out as one example. The slow meandering explanation of the serum Anslo gave Red was simply wonderful.

Sadly, those...

I'm convinced that, as a creative exercise before beginning work on this show, the writers lined up two dozen sharks and then waterskied over all of them. 

This week's "big reveal" is a doozie. Hope you're sitting down for this one: Duncan's wife is the president's daughter! The president raped her mom!! Duncan is in on the assassination plot because he needs the president's bone marrow to save his wife! It's the only way! 

Or maybe, perhaps, there's Duncan's wife's mom, who Ellen finds after exactly two seconds of searching.

I get it: the writers want to humanize Duncan, all while establishing the president is a total black-hat villian who deserves to die so we don't feel guilty about rooting for the would-be assassin...

What a relief. After a few weeks in a slump, it was as if the writers who had once stood at the helm of their boat with only the vast sea surrounding them, recalled that past magnificence.

Slumps happen to every show, and The Blacklist was no exception. Red's singular brilliance could only carry the show so far. The writing became predictable, and the plot lines lacked real drama. Was it Obamacare bad? No. But The Blacklist had slipped from the summit of its splendor.

In this episode, however, we witnessed a return to the thundering power of horses racing around the Piazza del Campo and the subtle graces of a good book under the shade of a cool tree that marked the early crafting of The Blacklist.

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