The Blacklist : Ok, I'm finally dumping this series.

The Blacklist is and has always been about Red Reddington. He's the one who came up with the list in the first place. And Liz is only there because of Red. And the team is only there because of Red. And Red's employees are only there because of Red. Maybe a pattern might be forming here? You know, who the central character is here?

James Spader is the talent in this show. He's the reason this show works. And his employees are great characters played by good to excellent actors.

Megan Boone is bad and her character is annoying to uninteresting. I was thrilled when she "died" and mad when it was revealed that she hadn't died.

Her team is just as bad, except for Aram (who I absolutely adore) and Navabi before her character was stupidly and ridiculously sabotaged by pointless and stupid bad writing. Ressler might be a decent character if played by a decent actor and Cooper really isn't given much to work with.

But you know, I was hanging on for Red as each season got progressively worse in storylines and sidelining Red. James Spader has been getting less and less time on screen. Less and less really interesting lines/stories to tell and we've been getting more and more of Liz and Tom who are just not interesting together even if Tom is mildly interesting by himself.

Now, just out of the blue, the show decides to have lesbian/horny men baiting. WHAT? Because it shows "trust" for Liz to kiss the leader of the Harem. Um, what? Guys, I'm sorry, but do you know how offensive it is to just throw clueless stuff like that in? This is how lesbians are. This is how gay men are. This is how bisexuals are. This is how *insert something else in* are. Hollywood, get a CLUE.


~ I keep my expectations low then I can be pleasantly surprised.~

Sorry you're dumping the show because I think we may finally be getting into some serious Red stuff. James Spader is the only reason I haven't ditched the show (I do love some of the side and lesser main cast members, too.) As long as he's acting in it I will continue to watch.

I agree, but it's just not worth it. I barely handled all the stupid stuff with Liz and Tom and Red trying to get Agnes back at the beginning of this year.

I agree, if the writers ever realize WHAT we love about the show and get to it, I'll love what is going on with Red and Dembe and Mr Kaplan. But Liz has become intolerable and with this new element of the show just inserting ridiculous stuff of Hollywood trying to be "diverse" (I KNOW it doesn't know the meaning of that with all its attempts to try and prove otherwise) I just can't stomach it anymore.

Hope you don't later wish you'd quit now. I finally quit Once Upon A Time and I am sooooo glad I did when I did (after 5A) because all I'm hearing about this season is just terrible. I see Blacklist continuing to go downhill, and I refuse to be there as a witness.


~ I keep my expectations low then I can be pleasantly surprised.~

I think I may be the only one on here who thinks Red is an affected prize douche bag.
Plus not a fan of Spader either.
So WHY do I watch it ?
Probably too much time on my hands..definitely at the take it or leave it stage til one of my more favourite series new seasons start

Red is a jerk. And a criminal. And a lot of other bad stuff, but he's very interesting.

I wouldn't say I'm a fan of Spader, having really only seen and liked him in Stargate and The Blacklist. And no insult intended to his acting, but he's by far the best actor on this show.

You don't know why you watch the show? I liked the character of Red and his employees and I loved the great mystery/conspiracy. But the increasing insult on the audience as we are just supposed to swallow every stupid thing in the characters and story without the writers doing their part in making it believable not perfect just believable. The writers need to go 80% or 90% and the audience fills up the rest. The writers are doing 10% and expecting us to make up the other 90%. Nope. Sorry. Done.


~ I keep my expectations low then I can be pleasantly surprised.~

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I think I may be the only one on here who thinks Red is an affected prize douche bag.

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You're right; he is.

However, that's what makes the character entertaining to watch.

Yep. Show me you trust me by giving me tongue. WTH was that???

Me too. I was on the fence because of Boone. The woman cannot act. The Harem - I watched up to Liz sitting in the bar. OFF! It was like Mission Impossible with Nimoy and Warren. What a piece of chintzy cheesy crap. I wanted to see what happened with the cleaner but now I really don't care. To hell with Boone and her non acting disability.

Yep.


~ I keep my expectations low then I can be pleasantly surprised.~

Exactly. Thank you.


~ I keep my expectations low then I can be pleasantly surprised.~

Megan Boone isn't the problem it's the writers.

To a certain extent I agree, but to me I think the main problem is the showrunners. They are the ones who decided to keep Tom in even after it was evident the character should die, or at the very least not be involved romantically with Liz. Then they gave us that stupid keeping Tom prisoner in the rusting ship! Next was the decision to make Megan's pregnancy part of the show. Heck, they could have had her recovering from an injury in the hospital for the duration of the event. Less Liz would have been good for the show. Then, even after NBC wanted more Spader in the episodes they give huge chunks of time to Eggold and Boone. This is all on the showrunners. They don't have a clue what their audience wantsand the dwindling audience is proof of that! Oh, one more thingthey have way too many dangling ends. They would get their audience psyched by some reveal at the end of an episode, and then in many instances never mention it again. That kind of baiting gets old really fast. Look no further then the showrunners for a big reason the show has spiraled downward.

I was fine with the decision to keep Tom on the show. It made sense to me that Liz would want to torture Tom for whatever info he might have. However, it would have been great to see him as the manipulating, sociopathic badie that TPTB set him up to be all through Season 1. Why this sudden U-turn? I kept expecting that Tom would show his "true" nature that he was manipulating Liz yet again. I also don't understand how Liz could go from being a badass, focused, intelligent, strong female character in Season 1 to a whiny, flighty, weak character. Season 2 and beyond Liz isn't a good profiler and has very little psychological insight into others, let alone herself.

I've finally accepted the truth The writing is bad and dumb plot decisions were made. This show will never live up to the potential of Season 1

To me, both are problems. Boone can't act and yes, the writing makes her worse along with the entire show.

I've watched her in other shows/movies, she sucked there too

The writers may be part of the problem, but she's a flaccid actress no matter what you put her in

Wonderful word for her acting style (or ability?): perfect description in one word!

Edit to ask: Now I have to know how *you* pronounce it, i.e., "ks" or just "ss"?

It's been irritating me for two years, but as long as Spader is there I will watch. I have no intention of watching the spin off.






Schrodinger's cat walks into a bar and doesn't.

I used to feel that way about Spader. That I could still watch all the stupid stuff as long as he was in it. Nope. This was the final insult of let's just throw whatever pops into our heads into the story and see if the audience will continue to put up with it. I'm sorry, put whatever you want into the story as long as it actually has a part in the story and it's well founded to be there and how it is done. It's just plain ridiculous at this point and Spader doesn't save it for me.

Enjoy!


~ I keep my expectations low then I can be pleasantly surprised.~

It seems like he usually has a big secret plan , like how all through season 1 it turned into him trying to get to a guy that he knew was after him. Then he was setting things up to become neutral/immune to the Cabal.
Now he's kind of in this limbo where Dembe resents him , his motives are less clear than ever (or at least don't seem like pieces of a bigger puzzle).
Hopefully the season will have some big surprizes that brings things together like Red actually knowing that Kaplan would survive, knew/told that guy would heal her up, etc.

Still not enough for me to watch the show, but you enjoy.

I've heard people bringing up the theory about Red planning for Kaplan to survive, but she crawled a long way, I'm not sure he could have predicted that. And then she was chained up

He's only not killed someone right in the case of trying out a new bullet as we learned in season one and usually he does head and chest shot which he obviously didn't do to Kate.

Either way, I'm dumping the show. Enjoy.


~ I keep my expectations low then I can be pleasantly surprised.~

Fierymaid you're correct about the head and body shot. Red didn't do both. Just one to the head. And I have to wonder why the writers went out of their way to make sure we all knew about the plate in the side of Kate's head. So I still think he never meant to kill her. He must have known the plate would deflect the bullet. He has never admitted nor denied killing her. All he ever said to Dembe was he was sorry for Kate. So I guess I still believe that Red didn't shoot Kate to kill her but rather to teach her a lesson or to hurt her as deeply as she hurt him.

^^^^ And am I the only one who finds it quite a coincidence that of all the episodes TPTB chose to rerun this week, they chose the one where Red shoots Kaplan?

No, I don't find it a coincidence, I find it a huge annoyance:
1. That it's a rerun, and
2. That it's a rerun of an episode I really hated watching the first time!

I agree with your thinking here. I hope they're just setting the table to continue Mr. Kaplan's story.

Was the plate in her head thing ever actually said in the show or is that something one of the fans came up with?

Good question redhandl.I'm not quite sure now. I thought it was mentioned in an episode, but I may be wrong. Maybe someone mentioned it in a post. Anyhow it doesn't change my opinion of Red wanting to teach Kaplan a lesson, rather than killing her outright. But I'll back check some episodes to check.

bthomopso and rlhand, I looked through the transcripts, trying to find out anything about "Annie," or when Mr. Kaplan suffered a head injury, and this is all I could find:

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Mr. Kaplan: Do you remember what I looked like that night? Lying in the street, my head torn open Annie's body in front of me.
Red: You know I don't know what you looked like. I was away.
Mr. Kaplan: Right, but he does. Little Nikos sat by my bed in the hospital. When I healed, he gave me work, a reason to push on. He's a decent man. I'm only here to serve you today because of his kindness.

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And this is from Mato (4.02), the episode when Red shoots her, so maybe it was intentional (by the writers) that Mr. Kaplan mentioned her head injury. She's never mentioned it before.

If her "head" was "torn open," then maybe we are supposed to assume that the surgeons used some kind of plate to repair her skull? I'm not an expert on medical procedures, but perhaps a metal plate (or something pretty hard) would be used to repair her injury, mesh her skull back together. Something perhaps hard enough for a bullet to deflect off on contact.

So no, a metal plate was never mentioned but it sure is a coincidence that Kate brings that up in the very same episode when Red shoots her in the head (or grazes her head).

Thank you Kelly that was what I was thinking. And as previously mentioned, I'm very suspicious that the very episode they decided to rerun was in fact that one. So I'm also thinking maybe Kaplan is still a part of this story arc. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if she was the one trying to get back at Red by ruining his little criminal empire. In the episode where she left the woodsman and was picked up walking along the road, it sure seemed as if she recognized the driver of that pickup truck. She never even said a word to him/her, just up and got into the truck. I would think if she didn't know the person driving it she would have been more than a little cautious or suspicious, especially after what she had just gone though. Maybe it was the woodsman who picked her up. Or it could have been any one of Reds associates such as Glen, Brimley, Leonard Caul, Jerry or Baz , even Dom for that matter. I doubt it was one of Reds enemies who picked her up, as no one really knew what he had done to her, or where he took her, until Dembe spilled the beans to Liz. I even thought of Dembe, but he seemed to think she was really killed.

So I guess we'll have to wait and see. Good to see your posts again.

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It wouldn't surprise me a bit if she was the one trying to get back at Red by ruining his little criminal empire.

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I think you may be right, bthompso, that Mr. Kaplan is behind this. In that last episode, Red seemed very confused as to who would be able to intercept his funds, and interfere with his business transactions. Someone like Mr. Kaplan would surely be familiar with Red's banks, his people, his methods everything.

Initially, I didn't think Mr. Kaplan would ever go after Red like that and try to take him down (maybe not to kill him, but perhaps to destroy his financial empire).

But the more I think about it maybe being shot in the head and left for dead changed her feelings about Red. Maybe instead of running and hiding from him for the rest of her life, she decided to eliminate the risk by making moves against him first. Her best defense is that Red thinks she is dead, and her knowledge of his secrets will make her a very formidable adversary.

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Maybe it was the woodsman who picked her up

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.
Or maybe it was that man that Red told Tom to torture in the hospital, "Little Nikos," the man that had saved her life before.

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Good to see your posts again.

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you all may b right. my bet, there are showing that Red is coming undone.

It's all just pieces of a much larger puzzle, and until all the pieces are laying in front of you

Kelly.I thought of little Nikos too, but I didn't think enough time had gone by. Of course in this show there could be months between each episode. But then we don't know how long Red waited before he took Kate into the woods. And how would Nikos gave known what happened to her, or where Red did the dastardly deed? I'm betting it's someone else and Red must have let them know where he left her. Unless it is the woodsman after all. Exasperating to say the least.

I don't know how long the woodsman actually held Mr. Kaplan either, but it seemed like they stretched it over 3 or 4 episodes (have to look that up). So maybe Little Nikos (maybe his father was big Nikos? ) had enough time to recuperate from Tom's beating/torture.

Also I got the feeling that the woodsman felt sorry for Mr. Kaplan (and was afraid that her presence would bring danger) so he wanted her to leave as soon as she was able. So perhaps he let her use a cell phone to contact Little Nikos and tell him where she was.

I'd really love to believe that Red set thise all up and arranged for the woodsman to rescue her and nurse her back to health but I think it's just wishful thinking. (And Bokenkamp made it sound like Red believes she is dead, he killed her, and Red is putting it behind him. Bokenkamp even said that Red would feel that it's none of Liz's business or anyone's business that he killed Kate.)

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I'd really love to believe that Red set thise all up and arranged for the woodsman to rescue her and nurse her back to health but I think it's just wishful thinking.

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I was hoping for this, too. Maybe Red was testing Mr. Kaplan i.e., if she stays loyal after all of that, then she will always be 100% loyal.

However, as you pointed out, this theory seems unlikely going by what seems to be Red's honest impression that she is dead.

Well Blu765.I rethought what you said about Red honestly believing Kate was dead, and it occurs to me that Red has never actually said Yes, I killed Kaplan. One always has to pay very close attention to Redspeak. He told Dembe that he was sorry for Kaplan and everything, when Kirks men came to get him, not that he killed Kate.

He never actually told Liz he Killed Kaplan. Liz was the one who said to him he killed Kaplan in the last episode when Liz said his wanting to make sure Kate's sister would be safe in witness protection wouldn't excuse what he did to Kaplan, he really never commented one way or the other.

As for Dembe, he never actually saw Red shot Kaplan dead. He just assumed Red killed her when he came back to the car alone after the shot was fired.

And again in another episode in the church, Dembe said he was praying for forgiveness for Kate, and Red just said there is none. And in the episode regarding the new cleaners, Dembe accused Red of being disrespectful to Kate and that she didn't deserve it. Red never admitted to anything about killing Kate. Again, we see him look pensive but say nothing one way or another.

So my thought is that maybe we are all assuming Red believes that Kate is dead, when he may know that she really isn't. Wounded (punished) yes but dead ..no. Of course, this is all just my take on it.

I got to say bthompso, there is a lot to go for this theory.

I can believe without a problem that Red chose to kill Kate. When he became a criminal he had to choose to act like one at all times. And that includes maintaining the loyalty without which he would be dead in a matter of days. I believe there is more to the story, and that Kate had done something similar before.

That said, there is a lot to be said about your theory. The Blacklist has a lot of symbols and themes. Almost like a second narrative, quietly in the background. A semiotic one. Water is one of those themes: ships, water, drowning, fishing, rivers, lakes, oceans, swimming. We have have children in danger or avenging the family. We have music, musical instruments and specially pianos as a symbol of sorrow and mourning. Russia and the former Soviet Union figure in nearly all episodes.

And plaid garments, curtains or blankets. In envy single instance where the plaids have been present something is not as it seems. It does not mean that the wearer is lying necessarily but in all instances some level of deception is happening.

And Mountain man was wearing plaid shirts so I am not sure of anything.



It's all just pieces of a much larger puzzle, and until all the pieces are laying in front of you

Tessabisolli.. I never thought too much about the significance of water and music and wearing of plaids. Great pickup there. I'll have to pay more attention to those hints. And I like the way you think. You pick up on many things that I have overlooked. I have always believed that nothing is ever the way it seems. That's why I find the show so intriguing. Hope it lasts another year or two.

Bthompso, I have a long list episode, by episode of each and every one of the symbols in the Blacklist. I have assembled a master list of them. too many to make in a post like this. but if you are curious about them head to :

https://tessabltheorist.tumblr.com/post/150635575062/the-themes-and-symbols-of-the-blacklist-the

there are others I have noted, but so far I have collected water, musical instruments, identity (all related things), magicians and magic, plaid things, children in danger and family in danger, mirrors, flags, royalty/chess, repeated similar images between Tom and Red. I will work more on the magic one, as there are quite a few I have not watched, and I am always re-watching and catching more of them.

It's all just pieces of a much larger puzzle, and until all the pieces are laying in front of you

TessabossoliI took a look at your episode by episode list of the different symbolisms. I'm truly amazed at how thorough it is. Very well done. I haven't gone through them all yet, but I will. Thanks for sharing. They've given me a lot more insight into the overall story.

Your idea makes logical sense, but I'm still hoping her loyalty to him has held firm in spite of how he's behaved toward her.

My admiration for the character's strength would then be justified.

You echo my own thoughts and I'm going to dump it too. I fast forward through Liz scenes and there are more and more so there is little point in watching.



|Statistics show that 100% of people bitten by a snake were close to it.|

After the less-than-stellar pilot, I almost didn't stay on board with Blacklist. Glad I did. Many many great stories and some hard boiled action.

But this last season left me sorta blah. The Tom developments were hit/miss and Red was less entertaining. It had not lost me but what happened was that this season went unwatched on my dvr box. When I saw that 11 episodes were waiting to be watched, I realized that I had lost interest.

The ride was good but it's over for me. It grew luke-warm.

And if anyone wants an example showing why IMDB is shutting down the boards

(*cut to Jeff Goldblum saying, "Well, there it is."*)

Exactly. Although I don't know why people don't just hit "ignore." The trolls scream that we're putting our heads in the sand or whatever, actually, we aren't wasting our time with them. Has nothing to do with anything else than that. And without people responding to the trolls, they wouldn't get the reaction they're looking for and might either grow up or move on to another form of entertainment.

It's kind of sad, really. I will miss the boards but I do pity the trolls what will they do when the boards are gone? Hopefully grow up.


~ I keep my expectations low then I can be pleasantly surprised.~

Good thing the boards are being shut down so we won't have to see Spader fanboys like you throwing a tantrum every week

Wow. Apparently I'm a Spader fanboy because I enjoyed Stargate and used to enjoy The Blacklist. Also I somehow switched genders.

If my post is considered a "tantrum," then I guess you are right, we don't need these boards anymore as apparently any sharing of opinions and thoughts particularly if they don't agree with yours, are just "tantrums." I rather think it's more posts like yours that are the reason the boards need to be shut down.

Thank you for proving you are a troll so I can add you to my ignore list until the shut down on the 20th.


~ I keep my expectations low then I can be pleasantly surprised.~

LOL, you're expanding your safe space even though there won't be a board no more in a couple of weeks. You're one dumb sensitive bitch. Go back to your Tumblr dedicated to Spader and your hate blogging about the godess that is Megan Boone