Current Events > Question about The Blacklist *HUGE spoilers*

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So I don't have the means to watch the show, I've seen most of the first season and I hear it gets really bad later on, but that's beside the point. Because I don't have a way of watching the show, I occasionally read up on the latest plot twists and stuff to keep updated.

I recently read the TV Tropes character page for Raymond Reddington, and something caught me totally off guard. It said that at the end of season 8, it's strongly implied that the person claiming to be Raymond Reddington is actually a post-op transman who was previously Elizabeth Keen's mother.

I also read that Raymond Reddington's bones are in a duffel bag as of season 6, and that James Spader's character has strongly hinted to be portraying Reddington rather than actually being him. And the original Raymond Reddington was Elizabeth Keen's father. So we've got a person who was Elizabeth Keen's mother pretending to be the person who was Elizabeth Keen's father, who killed a body double of their previous identity and got gender reassignment surgery as a means of pursuing the world's most dangerous criminals.

Does any of this ring true, or did I burn out a synapse reading about whatever the fuck the Blacklist turned into over its 9 season run and blur a bunch of wild plot hooks and personal theories together into a chewed up wad of jellybeans?

I'm not asking for judgement on any of this, just a confirmation, denial or elaboration on what the situation is.

No, that's pretty much correct. It's convoluted to read but the way they give clues over the 8 seasons makes the answer be the only way it could play out and still make sense.

I've decided to watch the show from the start through the lens of Reddington being Liz's mother. And I've gotta say, even though James Spader is being his usual charming James Spader self, the show holds up remarkably well with that plot detail in mind. I'm four episodes in - love the Stewmaker episode, I've gotten like three quarters into season one before - and there's been a comment about Lule hating men while tongue-kissing Reddington, the way he dotes on Liz being almost motherly, and when Liz asks about her parents in episode 3, Reddington laments that "the answer isn't anywhere near as simple as the question".

I gave up on the show in like S3 when James Spader's voice could no longer compensate for the horrible writing, but the learning about this plotline really made me tempted lol

pegusus123456 posted...

I gave up on the show in like S3 when James Spader's voice could no longer compensate for the horrible writing, but the learning about this plotline really made me tempted lol

I might make this a watchthrough topic, building evidence or expanding on the theory based on what I see.

Jesus, the first season is so good. I can't wait for Anslo Garrick, it's the first episode of the show I ever watched.

So I just finished Anslo Garrick: Conclusion. This is the episode that hooked.me on the show back in the day.

First of all, Ritchie Coster as Anslo? TDK's Chechen, the rival trainer in Creed? Fan-fucking-tastic. But ALAN ALDA as a significant storyline villain, at least for this season? And Coster, Alda and Spader all interact? How much did this episode cost for those names alone?

Second, this episode is a significant ramp-up. I'm assuming if the show didn't do well, this would have been the grand finale - like how HIMYM would have ended halfway through season one with Vanessa or whatever being the titular mother. But the Anslo Garrick two-parter is genuinely like a movie. It's excellent.

And lastly, the episode ends with Liz asking Red if he's her father. His pause before he says "no" could be anything - he's lying, and it's the first time he's outright lied to her in the show for whatever reason.

But if we're looking at this through the lens of Reddington being Liz's mother who's undergone reconstructive surgery to replace the original one who died, there's a twisted kernal of truth in there. This man isn't her father - he was her mother. And in that sense, he wasn't lying to her.

I have another question. I know that the quality of the show diminishes at a certain point, to the point that the season 7 finale had to be animated in CGI due to COVID fucking the production. I've also seen scenes set in a courtroom, and there's a lot there I'm wary of - the set is ugly, it feels like folks are phoning it in and the way the scenes are shot are kind of flat. Not that a majority of season one has been particularly flash, but the cinematography has shone a lot in the standout moments of the season. The courtroom stuff was middling as hell.

My question is, at which point would you say the budget/enthusiasm begins to diminish? Because season one is fantastic.

Okay, that's season one done.

Building on my production theory, that Anslo Garrick was the end of the original episode run and everything that came after was greenlt after the show became a hit, is that most of the episodes in that second half of the season are especially formulaic. The Good Samaritan episode was okay, but from there you have episodes like Madelline Pratt and Ivan. And the structure of each episode fits a very narrow formula - James Spader rarely, if ever, interacts with the cast outside of Elizabeth Keen and Harold Cooper. Even once Diana is killed and he comes back to the unit, he's not present at the location for most of the episodes - everything he says is communicated over the phone and dictated by Liz. And it feels like these briefing scenes were all shot on the same day, with the same cast.

So the second half of the season drops in budget and quality. Nothing can really compare to the aired pilot and Anslo Garrick, though there's a fantastic arc where Liz knows Tom's a bad guy but the topic hasn't been broached yet. The scene where Tom has to do a hit and run to escape is fantastic, and while I knew it was coming, the episodes that first revealed his turning were fantastic.

Now, how does the "Reddington is Liz's mother" theory factor into season one?

There's a crackpot piece of evidence, in that in the Madeline Pratt episode, Reddington adopts a very catty persona to disarm a security guard and assault him. There are two possibilities, that Reddington was putting on a camp gay act as a means of disarming the guard, or he briefly slipped into when he would run point for the original Raymond Reddington as his wife. I'm basing this off of his reaction to the act after being questioned, to which he seems surprisingly lost for words and coy when he says "I dunno. It felt... right."

But more consequentially, I want to talk about the end of Berlin.

This is under the assumption that Reddington hasn't lied to Liz yet on the show. Maybe that'll change or get retconned later, but I believe that the only things he "lied" about were through omission or deliberate misdirection (i.e. his perchant for changing the subject) rather than telling her the wrong thing. He doesn't lie about killing Sam, even with the fallout that decision causes. He doesn't lie about Tom. And given that this is true, it means that he wasn't lying when he said he wasn't Liz's father. The circumstances are unfathomably complicated by his own admission, and he's related to her. And the end of Berlin has his scarred back shown, as if he was the victim of a terrible fire.

Granted, this could be a seperate thing that they retcon later down the road to fully sink the familial relation. But I choose to interpret this as proof that Liz's mother was burned, but that she survived where the original Raymond Reddington didn't and chose to take up the mantle of Raymond Reddington. Further exacerbated by my knowledge that the original Raymond Reddington is dead - short of his remains being doctored by the Alchemist before his demise in season one, of course. Further exacerbated by my belief that Raymond hasn't outright lied to Liz yet.

He's not her father, but he's related to her by blood. Her father is dead, in the sense that Sam is dead, and he refuses to tell Liz who her biological dad was - assuming Reddington's comments are true right to their core, which may be a stretch, the real Raymond Reddington has been dead for 20 years despite Raymond Reddibgton still being active and dangerous. Both Sam and Raymond are dead - Elizabeth Keen has no living father.

Given that Raymond Reddington was her father, and that this imposter has burn marks from a fire all over his back that's presumably from the same fire, and that Liz's mother as portrayed later in the series was a body double for the original who's a loose end Reddington tied up - it's fully plausible that Reddington is her mother having taken on the mantle.

MrMallard posted...

I have another question. I know that the quality of the show diminishes at a certain point, to the point that the season 7 finale had to be animated in CGI due to COVID fucking the production. I've also seen scenes set in a courtroom, and there's a lot there I'm wary of - the set is ugly, it feels like folks are phoning it in and the way the scenes are shot are kind of flat. Not that a majority of season one has been particularly flash, but the cinematography has shone a lot in the standout moments of the season. The courtroom stuff was middling as hell.

My question is, at which point would you say the budget/enthusiasm begins to diminish? Because season one is fantastic.

Good question. I can't really recall off hand due to the sheer number of episodes/seasons lol but probably around Season 6?

lolife67 posted...

Good question. I can't really recall off hand due to the sheer number of episodes/seasons lol but probably around Season 6?

I can see that on both a quality level and an engagement level. I adore Boston Legal, which had five seasons. I don't think I would have liked it as much had it gone on for longer, especially while rewatching it last year. In this case, I think there are already cracks in the framework - elements of the show that are kinda generic and phoned in. Parts that are flashy, but shallow. I'm sure that by season six, Spader's probably gonna start showing up for the paycheck, because the glory days of the Raymond Reddington character are behind him and every episode is going to be him doing the exact same schtick.

Pretty much. It got repetitive with Liz asking about her past/their connection, Red not telling her (to protect her) and she goes looking getting in danger anyway. At some point it was obvious that yelling her would make more sense.

Plus they kept adding so much stuff just to avoid saying exactly who Reddington is. I'm actually amazed that the real answer managed to make sense.

lolife67 posted...

Pretty much. It got repetitive with Liz asking about her past/their connection, Red not telling her (to protect her) and she goes looking getting in danger anyway. At some point it was obvious that yelling her would make more sense.

Plus they kept adding so much stuff just to avoid saying exactly who Reddington is. I'm actually amazed that the real answer managed to make sense.

It doesn't necessarily make sense yet, I've read that it's heavily implied but I wouldn't say it's confirmed just yet.

They could just as easily shit the bed with a less coherent explanation.

The end of the Front is pretty poignant given the theory. It has Red playing a song about a parent and daughter set to Liz thinking about a baby, Amir waiting for Samar to wake up and Teddington tracking down who - at this point - is alleged to be his daughter.

MrMallard posted...

I kinda ship Keen and Ressler, and Aram and Samar have insane chemistry. So it's gonna be hilarious when Samar gets with Ressler instead. I'm trying to see hints of ship tease between Samar, Aram and Ressler.

No comment other than to say, I hate the idea of Ressler and Keen being together.

Welp, they exploded Alan Alda

Here's my assumption based on the end of Luther Braxton.

Keen's mother shot the original Reddington that Christmas Eve in order to get the Fulcrum, or whatever exponentially more dangerous secret gets introduced in later seasons. However, with Reddington dead, she chose to assume the title of Reddington and fashion a new life of crime under his name to keep his loose ends under her thumb and to hide from whatever malevolent force she was working for. To that end, she had a body double put in place for her old identity, and she killed the original Reddington on Christmas Eve 1990.

Basically, the shadowy conman act we've been seeing stems moreso from Katarina than it does from Reddington. It's only under her assumption of the Raymond Reddington identity that the true evil of the alias has taken place - or perhaps on top of her own agenda, her assumption of the Reddington identity involves warding off an apocalyptic event that the original Reddington was working towards.

Just finished the Deer Hunter episode. I thought it was gonna be a transgender villain, pretty happy they didn't go that way. But the episode plays into the "Reddington is Keen's mother" theory.

The episode starts with a squabble between Reddington and Keen over whether the Deer Hunter is a man or a woman. Reddington says that men prefer to get up close and personal, and that women tend to attack from afar with weapons like guns or - in this case - a crossbow. And what we've seen of Reddington so far tracks with that. He punches when he needs to, he pounded a guy in the face in the Luthor Braxton two-parter. But in season one, he's actually pretty frail. In the Madelline Pratt episode where he does the camp gay thing, he also goes in for a punch and hurts his hand. Most of his kills are by gunshot, like Berlin - though Anslo Garrick was a physical kill, and he suffocated the other guy at the end of the next episode. So maybe my theory here is full of holes.

But when the episode ends, both Reddington and Keen make up over the fact that together, they were both right. The Deer Hunter was both a man and a woman - an abusive husband and his wife who took up his work as a way of exerting power over abusive men.

And as the episode ends, the camera pans over Reddington's shoulder, and it lingers.

So as I was watching the show tonight, it hit me that season two has been better than season one so far. I binged the first half of the first season, then I slowed down on the second half because a clear formula was manifesting, and then the first half of season 2 had me leery about what direction it was going. But now I'm invested again.

There's a decent mix of throwaway villains of the week and really solid, iconic Blacklisters like Luther Braxton, the Mombasa cartel and the King family. And the character work they're doing for Tom Keen is phenomenal. Very leery about the fact that they're making him into an American History X-like neo-nazi character, because they're very much playing up the power he has and his competency in regards to committing violence - and the thing about media like American History X, despite its intent to be anti-fascist, is that the power fantasy and the image of being a neo-nazi - powerful and violent - is often cited as a gateway into which other white supremacists and neo-nazis find the lifestyle and choose to engage in it. So to see the character get neo-nazi tattoos and commit assassinations for a fascist, and to see the way it's framed - Ryan Eggold is an attractive fucking man, especially when he's a confident, assertive villain, and it shows when he's posed over a chair with a smoke in his hand - it weirds me out, and it feels misguided and edgy in a way that people could draw from in a radical way.

And yet, the character of Tom Keen is so compelling. And I know he's gonna be coming back in a big way, there's an episode this season in which he's a Blacklister. And despite my mixed feelings on the Nazi angle, the character himself has been a highlight of the season. Apologies for the tangent.

It's surprising. I hit a low point with this show, and it's picking up again.

Except the fact that it just had a CLIP SHOW STORYLINE in SEASON TWO.