This was a bag of mixed emotions.
First, there were the absolutely exhilarating events that had someone at the edge of their seat as another one of Red’s plans came to focus.
Then that feeling was muddled with sadness at the thought that this signals the beginning of the end.
Rarely does an episode invoke multiple feelings since the Elizabeth Keen days, and The Blacklist Season 10 Episode 19 was like a trip to a past you thought you might never experience again.
It was high energy and camp.
From the opening scene when Raymond called everyone to the Post Office to his carefully curated diction in pointing the Task Force in the right direction until he put the hat on and walked out majestically, it promised a great time.
There was a remarkable similarity between this episode and Morgan Logistics Corporation.
The main thing was that they were Raymond’s attempt at shutting down his empire.
On The Morgana Logistics Corporation, he offered up one of his biggest enterprises that made him the most money.
Now he had offered the only thing that made him so powerful. This vast intelligence network was possibly his greatest life’s work.
Things end. Sometimes despite our best efforts and best intentions, or sometimes because of those efforts and intentions … things end. So something else can begin.
Raymond
In flashbacks, we were reminded of the first time we got a taste of how he gathers information.
It was on The Blacklist Season 8 Episode 22, when he was preparing Liz to take over the empire.
While the Task Force remained in the dark during the taking down of Morgana Logistics, Raymond did not go to great depths to hide that this was his network.
As usual, Ressler was curious about why Raymond offered them a tip without asking for anything in return. He only needed to know how far they had gotten in their investigations so that he could get his people out in time.
There was a reason why he took Dembe with him the day Morgana Logistics went down. While Dembe doesn’t know much about Red’s operation, he knows enough about the man and can spot something amiss from far away.
He was suspicious about a family having just won security cameras a few days before breaking into the military official’s house.
He and Ressler would be a force to be reckoned with if they continued operating as partners.
Yet even the greatest of detectives have blindspots, and as we said on The Blacklist Season 10 Episode 18, Ressler fails to see the bigger picture regarding his addiction.
If the circumstances were any different, he would have seen the nervousness on Jonathan’s face when he called. Jonathan is usually jumpy, but that has lessened after he stopped using.
He would also not have given someone he knew little about his government-issued phone.
I wanted to sympathize with Jonathan, but it’s hard to do that with traitors. Despite being aware that Ressler was one of the reasons he was alive at that moment, he did not give Ressler the benefit of the doubt.
By helping you, I am betraying my friend. I would probably be dead were it not for Donald Ressler.
Jonathan
Or maybe Arthur was to blame.
Viewers who watch The Blacklist online know that Arthur had noble intentions when he started, but now it had turned into something quite ugly. He was like a dog with a bone; after gnawing all the flesh off of it, he was still holding on to it.
It should be like basic knowledge that you should not manipulate an addict to do your bidding because your actions can be the very thing that makes them relapse.
As a congressman, he must have been aware of that. Yet he was blinded by ambition such that he risked another person’s life.
This had nothing to do with the Task Force anymore. He was on the hunt.
He heard that the Task Force had been working with Raymond as their CI for a long time.
Was he willing to look at the number of bad people law enforcement has to work with for the greater good? They are almost always bottom-of-the-barrel human beings.
It is becoming an obsession, and that might be the thing that brings him down.
The Blacklist Season 10 has seen Raymond consider his future seriously.
From giving away his valuables to shutting down his most lucrative operations, he is planning something. We thought it might have to do with the fact that he might be dying, but also, there’s a fair chance he was planning on disappearing for good.
Fax machines … analog… entirely below the radar. The scale of this thing. Wheels within wheels. Don’t, you see? Donald, what you’re looking at is Raymond Readington’s intelligence empire.
Dembe
He has done it before.
These last ten years have been a chapter in his life and career. If he were to move on to something else, this would become a distant yet exciting past that he would recount to the next person he forms a bond with, as he does exploits from when he was a fugitive.
He would talk about when he surrendered himself to the government, worked with and against them to run the biggest criminal network ever seen, and how he tore it all down using a task force dedicated to him only.
A task force whose future remains uncertain currently.
Will Main Justice disband them, or will they be indicted and charged with crimes?
Arthur seemed hellbent on the treason part. Being convicted of treason carries a penalty as harsh as murder.
In a way, we’ve been his partners in treason. …partners in treason. … partners in treason. …partners in treason. …treason. …treason
Harold [from voice recording]
“Room 417” was one of the best episodes we have seen in a while.
Directed by The Blacklist veteran director and 80’s Brat Andrew McCarthy, the episode featured the signature McCarthy touch where the pacing is quick and intense, accompanied by suspenseful music.
The episode presented an interesting idea about beginning something new in The Blacklist universe.
NBC made a bet with this on The Blacklist: Redemption, but sadly things didn’t pan out, but that’s not a reason not to give this show another chance.
What do you think? Hit the comments section and let us know.
Denis Kimathi is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. He has watched more dramas and comedies than he cares to remember. Catch him on social media obsessing over [excellent] past, current, and upcoming shows or going off about the politics of representation on TV. Follow him on Twitter.