Blindspot Season 2 Episode 8 Review: Do Not Slack, the Featherweight Wins
Brittany Frederick
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Blindspot likes to spend a few episodes taking stylistic chances. Blindspot Season 2 Episode 8 is one of those episodes, and it's really up to you whether its multiple points of view worked or not. Once that device passes it has several scenes that are going to come back and bite these characters in the ass.
"We Fight Death On Thick Lone Waters" (previously known as "Do Not Slack, The Featherweight Wins") starts with a gangbusters idea: Jane and Weller have gone missing while undercover trying to capture an arms dealer, and the team is desperate to get them back at any cost.
Sounds great, right? But the episode isn't content just with that premise. It decides to spend the first portion of the episode recounting the events that led up to the disappearance from three different perspectives: Jane's as well as the two criminals they were working with, Lynn and Clive. Each POV even has its own color in case you can't keep up.
This is supposed to keep audiences guessing as to who's telling the truth, which it kind of does. But it also tries to be funny, down to casting Matt Murray, who was the sort of comic relief as Duncan Moore on Rookie Blue and is now starring as another cop on Eyewitness, as Clive.
Murray gets to mug his way through Clive's flashbacks, in which he insists that of course Weller was a pansy, Jane had the hots for him and he single-handedly beat up everybody. And it's just not funny.
You're telling me that you rescued two FBI agents?
Nas
Does anyone remember the X-Files episode "Bad Blood"? The one in which Mulder and Scully tell their separate versions of the same case? That was hilarious because all the script had to do was be funny, and because David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson could land all the jokes.
In the case of Blindspot the attempt at levity is appreciated but we're really not looking for jokes. We're more concerned with trying to find out where Weller is.
Honestly, the funniest thing about this episode is that bad guy Nico Marconi looks like an evil version of Verizon IndyCar Series driver and current Dancing with the Stars competitor James Hinchcliffe. I kept expecting Sharna Burgess to turn up as his henchwoman.
The absence of Weller turns this into an episode that largely focuses on Nas. Not only is she the new boss lady but we know that her psuedo-relationship with Kurt adds a certain undertone to the situation.
Blindspot fans have been divided on Nas so far this season but "We Fight Death On Thick Lone Waters" might change some minds. It's great to see her interrogating suspects, fighting in the field and flipping the middle finger at authority.
Archie Panjabi is and has been a terrific actress who has great chemistry with the rest of the cast but especially since the romantic angle her character feels underserved. She began as the enigmatic third party and now she's Weller's love interest.
This episode gives Panjabi some of her best scenes and allows Nas to show what she really brings to the team. Although, when are we ever going to have an actual discussion about her bugging the therapy room? Apologizing to Weller doesn't count.
Weitz: Who's calling the shots here? Is it you or is it Weller?
Nas: Assistant Director Weller and I trust each other.
Let's hope that Nas's surveillance doesn't get swept under the rug like Zapata's conflicted loyalties last season. It's a missed opportunity that we don't get a meaty scene between her and AUSA Matthew Weitz, who returns as smug as ever.
Weitz hasn't calmed down at all since Mayfair's death and now he seems like he's going to get somebody from the FBI team for something, since he wasn't able to prosecute her.
Weller spells Weitz's agenda out at the end of the episode, saying that Weitz is now coming for Nas. Is he going to be our token pain in the ass bureaucrat now that Tom Carter is dead?
Seems as though Weller and his asset Jane Doe simply vanished from a crime scene.
Weitz
In all seriousness Blindspot's characters do cross lines and the show either needs to get them on the hook for it or stop coming up with these threats that never quite pan out.
Case in point: Zapata spends this episode freaking out because she needs a way to return Freddy's knife to the NYPD crime lab. She goes so far as to plant the knife in a police lab tech's car so that he turns it back in for her.
But by the end of this episode that situation is largely negated because we see Reade giving Freddy a one-way bus ticket out of town.
He could still get in trouble for helping Freddy escape justice (certainly his partner will be pissed if she finds out), but there's not a ton of jeopardy attached for either Reade or Zapata anymore. Although the hug between them near the end is adorable. Those are BFF's right there.
I made Freddy testify. I brought this back into his life. If I hadn't done that, maybe none of this would have ever happened. How am I going to turn him in?
Reade
The biggest question on fans' minds has to be what Phase Two is and why Roman is so emo about it. He has information from the mole that Jane is not loyal to Sandstorm, yet he doesn't actually call her on that. Instead he seems like he's about to cry.
We've already seen Sandstorm with one giant missile, so is Phase Two finally launching the thing? Will it hopefully go better than the time Archer tried to launch a nuclear missile with a trio of Kriegers?
Since next week is the midseason finale don't expect a ton of answers. There has to be something to leave for the inevitable cliffhanger. Will that be finally showing us the face of the FBI mole? Fifty bucks says it's Borden, who shows up in one scene this week and doesn't even have lines.
"We Fight Death On Thick Lone Waters" is an episode that has a great premise and good scenes for the entire main cast of Blindspot. It could have been even better if it had either dropped the multiple point of view idea or really committed to it and kept the audience on its toes. Taking a quick way out on the Freddy storyline didn't help either.
But overall it's an episode that is watchable and that shows what Blindspot is capable of. It has a really great cast and there are still all kinds of questions that the writers can play with. After a few stumbles, this one sets up nicely for next week and could be the point where we say Season 2 got back on track.
Blindspot airs its last episode of the year next Wednesday, when Blindspot Season 2 Episode 9 airs at 8/7c on NBC. That episode is called "Why Let Cooler Pasture Deform" (at least as of right now) and has some nasty intelligence headed Jane's way. What will she do with that inside information?
What are your predictions for the midseason finale? What do you think of Season 2 of Blindspot so far? Leave us your predictions and thoughts in the comments, and if you need to catch up still you can watch Blindspot online to find all this season's episodes in one place.
Brittany Frederick is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow her on Twitter.
