Weller and company have got to put together the pieces faster before they all crack up.
The stress of being on the run was getting to them all on Blindspot Season 5 Episode 3, except maybe Rich.
And if Rich is the most stable member of a team, that squad is in big trouble.
They certainly can’t wait for Weitz to save them.
He’s showing no sign of growing a spine, and Madeline got even further inside his head in this episode.
It kinds of makes you wonder why she needed all those mercenaries she brought in.
At headquarters, she’s up against plucky computer whiz Afreen and maybe the weaselly Weitz, whose loyalty seems to shift in the wind.
Ivy Sands and her mercenaries are supposed to be hunting down the team. But why bother, since the squad seemed determined to come to them, or at least the gang with whom Madeline had aligned.
Of course, the idea is for Weller’s team to determine Madeline’s evil plan to expose her and come home as heroes.
The only problem is that Patterson doesn’t have the computational power to which she’s accustomed, so it’s not like she can just hack into the server at headquarters anymore.
This means, like on this episode, doing way too many things blind.
It would be helpful if they could figure out who is sending them obscure clues. So far, we’ve just eliminated suspects — Weitz, Afreen, Madeline (but then she lies so much that who knows?).
Another clue that only Patterson (and maybe Afreen) would understand gave them a way to find the gang that Madeline had recruited.
But they were hardly in the right head space to be going on any raid.
Kurt just wanted to reach their goal of bringing down Madeline so he can get back to see his daughter. He treated everything else like details.
Jane was having nightmares about death when they return to New York. I know her daughter Avery is an adult, but shouldn’t her name at least come up in passing?
Zapata was skittish because she didn’t know how to operate without Reade covering her six. That was definitely one reason the German raid blew up in their faces.
Patterson largely had her head in the game, although she was still worried about her father, Bill Nye, even though she knew he could stay off the grid, probably with a potato clock and a lemon battery.
Rich had it most together, trying to make Archie feel homier with touches such as artwork and a high-end coffee machine. Those nerds love their coffee!
No wonder they argued about hopping over to Germany to check out the gang’s hiding place.
What wasn’t clear from the trio’s flashback was whether the failed op was because it was an ambush or because they were working with minimal intel.
It made for good tension as they trickled back one at a time, with Weller and Zapata blaming each other for the failed mission.
That is until Jane arrived with a prisoner in tow. That’s why it’s called a “secret” hideout.
Was Jane right to bring back a hostage to interrogate? Probably, since he was the only thing that they had to show for that messed-up recon effort.
Only Morris/Hayes was able to play Jane, winning her over with his tale of woe.
That enabled him to escape (briefly). Rich had to rally the troops because they were so busy pointing fingers at each other.
Then, when Jane put Hayes out of their misery, they were back to square one, until Patterson found the inevitable super, secret SD card.
So, as hinted on Blindspot Season 5 Episode 2, it’s about a chemical attack.
Is Madeline planning to thwart the attack she organized so that she can be labeled a hero?
Or is she going to pin the attack on Weitz, or the fugitives, or both working together?
Either way, Weitz won’t see it coming as she got his head all screwed up this episode.
First, he lied and lied and lied some more about what really happened in Helsinki. He does lie well.
Madeline let that exercise in futility go and tested his loyalty instead, assigning him to get rid of Susan Shah, an obstacle in Madeline’s ascent in power.
Weitz seemed to think he could just ask Shah to step down, and she would. After all, hadn’t he just saved her life from a bomb?
But that wasn’t the message that Madeline wanted to deliver to Weitz. Instead, she had an object lesson in mind, to prove how much she owned him.
At the heart of that lesson was poor Brianna.
For those wondering what was going to happen to Brianna, it was inevitable.
After she got snubbed as a field agent, she went over to the dark side, then found out it wasn’t simple to cross back.
She attempted to redeem herself by uploading the contents of Dominic’s phone for Afreen, but she got caught and paid the ultimate price.
Now Weitz knows that he’s equally expendable when he know longer has any value to Madeline.
At least he had the decency to warn off Afreen, although she’s likely to carry on as a one-woman resistance force.
Hopefully, the fugitives’ helper can come through with something other than nebulous clues, and soon.
To follow the Madeline saga, watch Blindspot online.
Can the team pull it together in time to thwart the chemical attack?
What’s Madeline’s ultimate goal?
Will Weitz die a noble death?
Comment below.
Dale McGarrigle is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.