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S08.E15: The Russian Knot

paigow

By paigow
in The Blacklist

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mxc90

mxc90

(edited)

There was a message at the beginning: "Viewer Discretion Advised". Then Liz appeared on my screen. Thank you for the warning NBC! Very thoughtful of you.

I would have worshipped the ground Neville stood on if he had offed Liz and the fool just let her go! Why torture me so early!!!!

Must be nice for Red to admit theft to Cooper and ask him to do the same.
Next scene Cooper and the team are plotting and only Park had some sense to question why are we doing this! 

Why is Ruddiger working with Liz? Last time we saw him he was being tortured by Neville (thinking Liz set him up) and his hand or some digits were cut off. Did they all just magically grow back? 

Ressler and Park must not have seen "The Italian Job".  They just stood there like dopes over the hole in the floor (hoping the commercial break would hurry up and arrive). Then Park goes down to the next level to chase and Ressler stayed up top as if Liz was going come up for a few minutes to mingle with the guests and have drinks.

What happened to the blood thirsty, beating men to a pulp with her tiny frame Agent Park? She spent way too much time fighting Liz. The match should have been over quick and Park standing truimphant over Liz's corpse. Of course! Liz esacpes! Felt like someone from the WWE wrote that scene!

That's twice Liz should have been finished and the satisfaction were taken away each time. What have I done to be mistreated by NBC?????!

Aram thinks Liz just needs a hug. Sigh! A big bear hug is more like it and keep squeezing her for an hour.

Ressler looked so pathetic sitting next to Liz, placing the machine to cover his boner, taking dictation from Liz, and even being suckered to buying a preztel for Esi.

Later he's thanking God: Liz is alive after she embarrased him for the millionth time

Did Liz need to hire the 50+ out of work actors to wear the same hat and jacket?!! She has Ressler and some scrub FBI agents chasing her. There was no need for the subterfuge. They can't catch anyone! She should know this. I think Reseler's balls were in the stroller.

Red is taking all the blame for Anne's death!!!? Anne's daughter never knew she died? Makes sense as there's no police force to go to the crime scene and notify next of kin. Red probably left the body still in the house on the floor (and made sure to wipe away all his prints). 

All this running around just for a messge decrypter! 

I was hoping the meesage came out: "Cooper you are an asshole. Please retire!"

At the end, the table is turned and it's now Liz punking/threatening Sleepy Neville. Next time, Neville should know: it's not wise to kill all your henchmen in front of Liz if you are going to let her live. Because she can now storm your castle knowing you have no security.

Paula has some dirt on Red (thanks to Glen) and she could only nicely "shake down" Red for $172? Offering to pay back, keep quiet and doing the favor were good moves. She's lucky Dembe didn't drive her to some nice secluded place deep in the woods and leave her there!

Paula likes to put her head on the window and feel the bumps on the road. After watching this episode, I wish I was the bump on the road for Dembe to drive over!  

Edited by mxc90
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milkyaqua

milkyaqua

Ugh!  Why is Liz still breathing?

Ressler is an idiot not to mention Cooper and his "agent Keen" nonsense.

Was sorry to hear about Anne.

All that running around and theft for vague messages and Lizzie thinking this proves her theory about Red...  And yes, the decoys in the park was overkill.  The FBI has proved its ineptness time after time.

Oh Aram, she needs a hug?  Really?  Bless your heart.

The less said about Townsend the better.

Gee, what are the odds that anything interesting is going to come of this whole, "mobilizing the assets" thing?

  • Love 4
Dowel Jones

Dowel Jones

Did Ressler go back and retrieve his cell phone from the trash can?  Or did some random dude find it and run up the FBI bill on PornHub?  Or at least more of Ressler's charges on PornHub?

After hours of tedious work, the clones in the FBI lab finally decoded the message:  "Be sure to always drink your Ovaltine."

It was kind of nice to see Anna's daughter unknowingly (we think) rake Reddington over the coals, and watch his discomfort.

So, at this museum in Minsk, Belarus, Cooper and Co. swoop in and threaten the museum director.  The response should have been "Your jurisdiction is...?  No diplomatic immunity?  Okay, call Interpol.  In the meantime you are all under arrest for espionage.  You may call your embassy tomorrow."

  • LOL 6
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Brian Cronin

Brian Cronin

I'll give Liz a bit of a mulligan here. Yes, this obviously doesn't prove that Reddington is a Russian spy, but if her mother's journals say that Reddington used the Russian knot to communicate with his Russian handler and Liz finds a communique between Reddington and someone via the Russian Knot, I don't think it is unreasonable to think that that is basically proof that her mother was telling the truth. 

It wouldn't hold up in court, but I think it would convince someone like Townsend. 

Liz's overall plot is still terrible, of course, I'm just saying that I don't think it's unreasonable to think that this break of the code did prove something.

NeenerNeener

NeenerNeener

Did anyone besides me think "Rochelle, Rochelle" when they heard the team was going to Minsk? Just me, then...ok. 

If I were Townsend's wife and children I would have faked my own death and gone into hiding. That mofo is psychotic. And so was Liz last week when she was hallucinating Mr. Kaplan and following all her bad advice. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend, Lizzie, and the carnage you caused last week was not justifiable. You're as big a monster as Red. I never thought I would trust Red over Liz, but here we are.

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ottoDbusdriver

ottoDbusdriver

Wow !! That episode was pretty dumb, even for this show.  Park should have kicked Lizzie's ass, no question.

Wasn't Lizzie afraid of damaging the machine by dropping it through that hole in the floor ? Because that would have been the end of the episode.  

Townsend killing most of his henchman was ridiculous.  What did they do that was so heinous -- did they stuff their talentless faces with his mother's crabcakes ?

Is it weird that on a show called 'The Blacklist' the last 3 episodes have had no numbered Blacklisters ?

Still no sign or mention of Agnes, the dogs or Robert Vesco's cat.

  • Love 4
edhopper

edhopper

Townsend, the weak, adlebrained psychotic can overcome anyone because reasons. He can even get his own men to kill his other men. But he can't stop Liz and her two sidekicks from storming in and throwing a plastic bag on his head.

And Liz, since you continue to team up with this serial killer, all those deaths, including the cops and Anne, are on your hands. Is outing Red really worth the costs in lives? You have become a worse villain than he ever was. All to avenge your terrible Mother?

And when did FBI profiler Liz accumulate the skills of a master criminal?

  • Love 6
LucidDreamer

LucidDreamer

So Liz basically caused Anne's death.  No redemption for Liz, then, in my mind. (Not that she hadn't already done horrible things, but that was the last straw).

Everyone on this show is a criminal of some type or another. Red doesn't even seem like the worst of them anymore . At least he's honest about it, while the task force and Liz pretend they still have some moral high ground to stand on. 

There was so much stupid in this episode, if it was water you could fill the tank for the shark it's been jumping for the last few years.

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Neiman

Neiman

The fight scene between Park and Liz was ridiculous. Aside from the obvious that there’s no way Lizzie could have walked away from that after the first punch was thrown, Park got hit in the head with a pool of blood not too different from the scene with Ann, yet Park is visibly fine a little while later with no injury, no need for time off, and not even a need for an ice pack.

Lizzie’s hair extensions are also kind of funny. Put a plastic bag over her head, almost suffocate her, and she will emerge like she’s in a shampoo commercial.

  • LOL 4
DaphneCat

DaphneCat

So, we're to believe the FBI doesn't have the technology to duplicate a machine used over 50 years ago and must use the ACTUAL clunky machine?  OK, sure - they've convinced me there wouldn't be some easy to use computer program that just allows you to input data as if you were using an old machine.  Yup, I'm buying that.  (A really quick Google search told me otherwise, but OK.)

And Liz, a criminal MASTERMIND we've been told, gets access to the machine, inputs her message and seems baffled that she only got a string of numbers?  She needed Ressler to tell her what they meant (after the FBI, of course, needed Red to tell them that)?  She couldn't figure out that maybe there was a second step involved?  And the "code" required absolutely no effort to solve - it was something we all learned in grade school?  Boy, what a bunch of Cracker Jack minds we got going on there.  

  • LOL 2
tljgator

tljgator

So, now I'm supposed to forget that last week Liz was hallucinating Mr. Kaplan and wondering if other folks could see her, too? Maybe consider having your writers , you know, talk to each other, show. I guess Anne is dead and we've got light-hearted hijinx music trilling over a museum caper? Maybe consider having your writers , you know, talk to each other, show. At least all the writers seen to know that Ressler is worthless.

Normal people, small city, old lady humor! She eats at Perkins! She makes casseroles with canned soup! So much for giving any kind of credit to the writers. On a good show, she'd be as shady as her son and faking the "aw shucks" schtick -- guess we'll see.

Really, though, if Liz wants Raymond dead because he killed the random lady who used to take care of her kid before the new random lady who takes care of her kid her "mom," then why on earth does't she just shoot him in the head? Seriously, the death toll is well past eleventy now, along with other assorted horrible shit, and she's searching for obsolete decoding machines (fyi -- my first question when I saw the keys on the machine was 'why is it only in English,' but it took the super spies all that time to sort out)? At least when Liz was gone, the nonsense was entertaining. Now, it's just...nonsense. Why is she yelling about "proof"?  I don't think she knows what that word really means.

Should've stuck to my original plan not to bother watching, lol.

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redfish

redfish

Quote

Why is she yelling about "proof"?  I don't think she knows what that word really means.

She wants justification. She needs her "proof" to make all the stupidity and the piles of dead body like Anne (killed by Liz's single minded indifference to people around her) in her war with Red. Because if she can't produce the "proof" to her suspicions, she'll have to see herself as a deranged killer and no better than Red. She's still under the delusion she's still a good/moral person.

 

 

  • Love 2
tljgator

tljgator

17 minutes ago, redfish said:

She wants justification. She needs her "proof" to make all the stupidity and the piles of dead body like Anne (killed by Liz's single minded indifference to people around her) in her war with Red. Because if she can't produce the "proof" to her suspicions, she'll have to see herself as a deranged killer and no better than Red. She's still under the delusion she's still a good/moral person

Well, yes -- I was being silly and facetious, as I tend to be with this type of show -- but it proves the point that what she's calling "proof" (if those, are in fact, her thoughts on the matter of proof) really ISN'T proof of any of the things she was yelling about.

  • Love 2
dwmarch

dwmarch

I know a Blacklist episode is not a favorite of mine when I can't even come up with any good snark for it. This is one of them.

Maybe I missed this because I was only half watching but the idea was that one of these special machines is in a museum, right? So how is anyone communicating with anyone? They are somehow using the museum piece to do man in the middle attacks? Why go through all the effort and then use such a terrible code for hiding the messages? And good luck if you want to spell out something complicated.

They've also somehow managed to suggest that this thing is basically a reusable one-time pad which is ridiculous on its face. If they had used actual one-time pads there would be no chance of interception because there wouldn't be other decryption keys floating around out there! It looks to me like the writers looked at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad and only followed one part at the very bottom: "One-time pads were employed by Soviet espionage agencies for covert communications with agents and agent controllers. Analysis has shown that these pads were generated by typists using actual typewriters." Someone with an unusually specific fetish for typewriters was all "oh shit yeah, here we go!" and they forgot to read the rest of the article.

  • LOL 1
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