We need to talk about how Blindspot is not the cool show it thinks it is. Back in the fall, the first few weeks of Blindspot gave off the impression that it was trying to go for the same action-packed and gritty style of its NBC cousin, The Blacklist. While at first it may have appeared as though Blindspot was not the most original show (given that it also came off as a Memento meets Total Recall), at least it was entertaining and promoted itself as an edgy and mysterious thriller. Oh, how so much has changed half a year later. Blindspot is no longer the exciting series we once thought it was.
Most of this week’s episode focused on Patterson following David’s last clue. This episode, without realizing it, showed us what an idiot David was. Patterson finds out that David made a scavenger hunt for her to find the answer to a tattoo mystery he had never told her he solved. Wait a second… David made a scavenger hunt out of a mystery directly related to an ongoing FBI investigation? Wow. It’s exactly that kind of playfulness that got David killed in the first place, and in this episode it almost gets Patterson killed! David never seemed to quite understand just how serious, dangerous and illegal it was to play detective and attempt to solve deadly tattoo mysteries for kicks and giggles. Throughout the episode, Patterson imagines David is with her throughout her scavenger hunt. At one point Patterson asks imaginary David why he couldn’t just give her the answer. Imaginary David says, “That’s no fun.” “Neither is this,” Patterson responds. She couldn’t be more right. David’s scavenger hunt setup was meant to be romantic, and Patterson seems to think it is at first, but then she gets caught and is almost killed. This seems to jolt her to realizing just how dangerous the tattoo mysteries are. Was what David did romantic? No, not really, but it did make for a unique premise only to be unveil just how inconsiderate to caution David’s character really was.
This was an episode where Jane’s character took a backseat, which we’ve seen happen before in recent weeks. We’re brought back from where we saw Jane and Oscar last week, to them lying next to each other, both panting from what must have been incredible sex, since they keep muttering “wow.” And then we cut to Kurt and Allie having just finished a roll in the hay, reminding us that both Jane and Kurt have other love interests at the moment. Right now, there isn’t any love triangle going on since there are four people consisting of two couples who are at the moment exclusive to each other. It’s only likely that Allie’s character is going to drop out of the scene, and then Jane is going to be torn between Kurt and Oscar. Both men care for her and want to protect her, but Kurt and Oscar are enemies. Kurt isn’t aware of Oscar’s existence, but if he finds out, that’s when the love triangle would really take off.
Once again, Zapata seems to be in over her head with this senator character. Why does Zapata agree to these secret missions of going behind her colleagues’ backs? It wouldn’t surprise me if Zapata will be the next Blindspot character who winds up dead. At least it appears to be attempting to tie up a subplot opened up many episodes ago, focusing on Mayfair’s shady dealings with Carter and other secrets that we as an audience don’t really know much about. All we know is that Mayfair knows more than she’s letting on, and she’s got secrets we haven’t learned about yet.
This week’s installment tried to be playful with Patterson going on a scavenger hunt that her now-deceased boyfriend set up for her back when he was alive. It came off as cute at first, but since when has that been a word we’d use to describe anything that goes on in Blindspot? Blindspot is changing and it’s not for the better. I keep hoping this show will improve, and while there is that occasional episode that gets me psyched up for the series, there are too many of these filler episodes that ultimately leave us empty.