The Blacklist: The One Where Spader Continues to Rock My World (S1:E3)

By: Baby Z

YOU GUYS!!  I just spent the last 2 hours writing an awesome recap of episode 3: Wujing (which, I KNOW, is already an episode late!!) and I had maybe 10 minutes to go when the system just - DIED and I got that little sad TV face guy on tumblr and the entire article is GONE!!!!  

Therefore, for episode 3, you will be receiving a scaled down recap from its original.  I apologize, I love this show SO much and want to do it justice, which a scaled down/short recap could never do, but - - there’s just no way to recover or redo what I lost and I have a to do list that won’t allow me to spend another 2 hours rewriting the original article.  

I have also learned to hit “Save Draft” when posting articles here, and to click it often. FUCK!

ALSO - - THERE’S A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT AT THE END OF THIS RECAP ABOUT A NEW “THE BLACKLIST” FEATURE I’LL BE DOING FOR EACH EPISODE!!  BE SURE TO CHECK IT OUT!

Episode 3: Wujing begins by showing an American man getting into his vehicle in Shanghai, China, only to be delayed by a Chinese man riding a bike in front of him.  Said Chinese man turns toward the car and shoots the guy right thru the windwhield, thus teaching HIM a little lesson in patience.  A couple motorcycles then pull up, shooting him again thru the passenger window, taking the briefcase that was on the passenger seat, and driving away.  

This is followed by a Chinese man attempting to gain access to something on a computer when he reaches over and grabs a bloody hand (just a hand, no body!) to use for the “fingerprint-required” access, and when this does not work, he orders someone to “Get Reddington!”

Oh yes, get Reddington indeed.

Back at La Casa de Keen, Tom is fast asleep in their bed, while Lizzie is once again going thru Tom’s secret box even though he’s like 10 feet away.  

She grabs the gun from the box, a bucket and like 3 huge phone books (seriously, who does this?) and heads outside where she then fills the bucket with water and the phonebooks and then shoots the gun into the phonebooks, obtaining a bullet & casing, which she brings to work and has forensics run it against any crimes, etc.., 

Meanwhile, Raymond Reddington (RR) is at the park in a dashing suit, a man approaches and attempts to hand him an envelope to which he responds “Good God, not here.” without even looking up.  I just want to lick him he’s so cool.  

Long story short, RR informs the guy that his “normal” guy is not available, he’ll be going thru a different “tech” and that he should let Wujing know, do their due diligence and get back to him.  

Back at Lizzie’s, they’re having breakfast at the kitchen table when Tom asks her if she’s alright and attempts to talk about the man who, you know, tortured and stabbed him.  Of course, Lizzie can’t discuss it but assures him that the guy is dead.  A friend comes over to bring some food and to bring Tom to physical therapy, and when thanked she says “Friends don’t let friends starve who have been stabbed by psychopath killers.”  Ba dum bum!  I’m thinking….too soon for the stabbing jokes, friend?

Remember when I mentioned in my episode 2 recap that RR’s HAT has played a role in the first 2 episodes, and wondered if this would be a recurring theme?  Well cue to the next scene where Lizzie’s meeting up with RR in a HAT STORE, filled to the brim (ha) with fedoras.  RR informs her that he’s been hired by Wujing to decode a file, most likely containing the name of an Agent Wujing will then kill.  

We learn that Wujing formally works for the Ministry of State Security and that while he’s not officially sanctioned by the Chinese government, unofficially he’s contracted to take out rival agents, American, British, etc..,  RR tells her that he’s set it up with Wujing that she’s (under a cover, obviously) the encryption specialist “tech” that he mentioned to the dude in the park.

Back at the FBI offices, Cooper, Ressler and Malik all think they should move forward with RR’s plan, while Lizzie’s like, “Uh…. you want me to SPY on a SPY KILLER while pretending to be a specialist in encryptology, of which I know nothing about…. no thanks.”  Ressler reminds her that in that case, the next Agent killed by Wujing will be on her hands, and - of course - Lizzie gives in.

Meanwhile, back at her apartment, immediately upon Tom and their friend leaving for physical therapy, we see that the building is being watched by someone eating an apple across the street, followed by a team of people going into their apartment and installing what is assumed to be cameras all over the place.  

Lizzie meets up with RR and lets him know that she’ll go along with his plan, on the condition that he tells her why he picked her.  They return to the FBI offices where RR tells them that 6 years ago a radio station building was purchased by a corporation funded by the Chinese government.  Wujing operates out of this building, and is where they will be meeting him.  Lizzie, again, reminds them she knows nothing about encryption, so CIA agent Malik and Lizzie meet up with a Chinese dude that Malik calls in.  

There’s a lot of techie talk during this scene so I’ll just summarize:  basically, Wujing will give her a file that, when she plugs it into her laptop she will be prompted for a 4-digit code, which her computer will provide.  She just has to have a satellite signal for this to work.  If she doesn’t have a satellite signal, she’s given a little chip thing called a “remote mirroring program” that will give the FBI/CIA outside remote access to be able to take over and decode.  

While waiting for RR to come get her, Agent Malik sticks what looks like a nicotine patch onto Lizzie’s arm, telling her that it will be able to track her up to 300 yards, and is made of a material that’s undetectable should she be ‘wanded.’  Her and RR head to the radio station where…guess what?  She’s wanded.  

She makes it past the wanding, however due to the chip in RR’s neck, he does not, but he tells the “wander” (same guy he met at the park earlier) that it was implanted by Somali pirates that imprisoned him for 3 weeks and that if the dude had a clean razor blade and some morphine he would gladly remove it.  Because the dude knows RR is not a threat to them, he seems OK with this explanation, but then announces that he has to run a biometric print scan on Lizzie.  When she asks what system it’s being run against, the 'wander’ says  "All of them" and she looks as though she’s going to pee her pants.  

However never fear!  The FBI/CIA next door intercept the biometric print scan request and ensure that the results show she’s not found out.

RR and Lizzie are led to an elevator that takes them so far down into the ground, I begin to think possibly they are headed to hell… and when they get to the bottom, they’re met by Wujing.

After some preliminary 'nonchalant’ chit chat with Lizzie, Wujing and his new encryption specialist, Jin, seem satisfied that she is who she says she is, and she tells them she needs a few minutes to set up her equipment.  RR had pointed out during their arrival to the dungeon that they seemed like they were really far underground and for Lizzie’s benefit - mentioned the lack of communication with the outside world, to which Wujing informs them that the only outside world contact that could be made from there was thru THEIR hard-wired systems and that’s it.  So when Lizzie sat down to “set up” her equipment, RR stood next to her and made small talk with Jin, giving Lizzie the opportunity to type out on the computer that she needed satellite access (so that RR would see it…)  He put his arm on the back of her chair, and tapped his thumb against her back, all the while continuing small talk with Jin.  He was communicating to Lizzie using Morse Code ya’ll! And that? Kicks ass.  

After the first set of taps, she typed out that there wasn’t enough time to deliver in person, that the agent would be killed.  He tapped again and she typed out that she needed access to Jin’s computer and asked if he had any suggestions, to which he threw the word “distraction” into his small talk, and she typed “Yes - distract them!”

RR walked over to the security monitors and started freaking out that Wujing had put them in danger, that there was an FBI van right outside, etc.., etc.., and while all of this was going on (Wujing ordered one of his minions to check the van out, etc..,) Lizzie inserted the “remote mirroring program” chip into Jin’s USB port (that totally sounded dirty to techie nerds!)

The satellite program worked and they were able to decode the file (and a lot more according to the FBI/CIA IT guy next door) from Jin’s computer.  The next victim for Wujing to kill was named Henry Cho, however it turns out, Henry was not an Agent.  Henry Cho is actually an architect that owns a pretty major construction company and the CIA asked for his help because he was contracted to build some Chinese government building in Shanghai. 

According to his passport, he was currently in DC and not Shanghai, so after a quick call to a stupid receptionist at Cho’s company, Wujing tells her Cho’s brother’s been in an accident and he must reach him and she tells him where Cho is at (with his son).  Wujing orders his minions to that location at the same time Ressler and Malik are doing the same.

Meanwhile, RR and Lizzie are like, “OK so…we have to be going now…” and Lizzie has an opportunity to motion that she needs to grab that remote satellite mirroring chip from Jin’s computer, but RR says to leave it. Suddenly, alarms start going off in the room and Wujing emerges from his office saying that their system is set up to inform them if any communication to a government server takes place from one of their systems.  He says that RR must have been right about the FBI being there, only they weren’t outside but rather right there in his dungeon, to which RR warns him to be careful about who and what he’s accusing.  Wujing assures him that it’s not HIM he’s accusing but rather Lizzie and his minions run up and have their guns pointed at her.  

Wujing says he knows exactly who the traitor is, and we’re supposed to believe he thinks it’s Lizzie but he turns around and punches Jin to the ground, then proceeds to beat the ever loving crap out of him.  At one point, Lizzie almost (stupidly) thinks she needs to step in and stop him, but RR stops her from doing so.  Wujing stands up from the beating, grabs Jin’s laptop and slams it to the ground, which is when Jin notices the little chip thing that Lizzie inserted and JUST as he’s about to point this out to Wujing, RR snags a gun from a close standing security person and BAAAAAAM!!!   Shoots Jin dead.

Wujing, who I’m assuming wanted to question Jin some prior to killing him, grabbed a gun and pointed it at Lizzie saying “You killed one of mine, now I kill one of yours” and RR basically tells him that Jin was useless to him, that Wujing would’ve beat on him for 20 more minutes before killing him himself, but that killing Lizzie would be bad for business, making contractors think that they shouldn’t work for him.

Wujing thinks it over and decides RR’s right and that they need to get out of there because the FBI will be there shortly, so he leads them out via a different exit and they jump into a truck with Wujing, who drops them off after a few minutes.  

While all of this was going on, Agent Malik was able to reach Henry Cho on his cell phone just in time to warn him about Wujing’s men coming after him, she instructs him to hide and just as they hang up, the elevator is coming to their floor.  Henry grabs his young son, they high tail it to a flight of stairs and go to the floor below where the bad guys now are.  He hides his son under a construction/paint tarp on the balcony, instructing him not to come out, kisses him on the forehead and then tries to run and hide himself when the elevator appeared.  The bad guys are searching for him when Malik and Ressler arrive.  Ressler engages in a fight scene with one of them, who he ends up flailing over the side of the balcony off the building (another running theme of this show!!)  He starts fighting a 2nd bad guy when a 3rd finds Henry Cho’s son, so Henry Cho comes out of hiding and just as bad guy #3 is about to shoot Cho, Malik shoots him and Ressler beats #2 unconscious.  All is well and Malik actually says to Henry Cho, “Thank you for helping the CIA.”  Uh…… yeah…. no problem!  

Back to Lizzie & RR:  turns out Lizzie removed her nicotine patch tracking device and stuck it on the door of Wujing’s vehicle prior to them getting out, so the FBI were able to bust him afterall.  She and RR had a conversation about their agreement: her help in exchange for him telling her why he chose her and he said “Because of your father.”  She asked him what he meant by that and did he know her father, and he responded that he wished the answer were as simple as it seemed, which annoyed her and she got out of the car (probably the most unrealistic thing someone would do in this scenario, no?)  

Back at the FBI offices, Ressler tells Lizzie, “I may have had doubts about you but what you did today was good work…. if you couldn’t handle this job, Cho wouldn’t be alive. Whatever else went down you should feel good about that.” When he leaves her office, she sits down and sees the ballistics report on the bullet from Tom’s secret box gun on her desk.  

We then see her drive home, and after pulling up in her car, she grabs the ballistics report, opens it and finds “Classified Information” as the “results” on the bullet.  Wuh wuhh wuhhhhhhhhhhhh!!

However back at the FBI, Ressler goes to Cooper’s office and tells him that because of his suspicions about Lizzie, he put in an order that anything she requested should be reported back to him, so he, too, received a report about the bullet. He told Cooper that at her level, the information was classified, but not at their level.  Cooper opened the file and said “This isn’t just classified - the debriefings on this homicide include the Secretary of Homeland Security!”  He asked Ressler who else knows about this and the scene cuts to Lizzie walking in to her apartment to find they’re having a little party, she’s told, to celebrate Tom being alive still.

Back at RR’s hotel, he opens the envelope that he was given by Wujing as payment for decoding - which contained only this:

And finally, back at La Casa de Keen, Lizzie and Tom have a brief conversation whereby he apologizes for asking about the man who stabbed him, saying that he gets that she can’t tell him shit because of her job.  He’s then wheeled away by a friend, and Lizzie’s left standing in the middle of a room full of people, but looking as though she feels completely alone.

The camera then pans out to directly across the street where we see the apple-eating man from earlier watching a bunch of security monitors of their apartment.  And, as usual, the episode ends with the viewers having 432 more questions and no answers.  

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:  Because Spader’s character Raymond Reddington has such awesome 1-liners in this show (excellently written by the show’s writers but brilliantly executed by Spader) - I will be doing a weekly “Kick Ass Reddington Quotes” series of articles for each episode, beginning with this episode.  Keep your eyes peeled for Episode 3’s Kick Ass Reddington Quotes article - - which will be posted soon!!    


Have a tutti fuckin frutti day,
-BZ