Blindspot recap: 'Adoring Suspect'
Considering how often Weller almost dies each and every week on Blindspot, it’d make sense for him to change careers and find something a little more safe and secure, especially now that he’s trying to live a somewhat peaceful domestic life with Jane. Early on in “Adoring Suspect” he’s on a movie set acting as an FBI consultant, making sure that the movie being filmed has a certain amount of authenticity to it. He’s taking a young actor through the details of unblocking a jammed gun, and he looks right at home.
Weller, of course, is too tied to his job to switch careers and work in fake law enforcement, so this gig on the movie set has to be part of something bigger. We flash back to eight hours earlier to get our answer. Once again Roman has called Weller in order to give him a little nudge in the right direction when it comes to the new tattoo cases. Roman continues to use Weller’s secret — that he met Jane’s daughter in Berlin — as leverage, blackmailing him into doing his bidding.
So, Weller goes to Patterson with a “hunch” about one of the new tattoos. He concocts a story about flipping through a magazine at his dentist’s office, where he happened to notice a logo that looked a lot like one of Jane’s tattoos. The logo is for Sacred Lynx Productions, a studio that largely funds the projects of young actor Keith Rhodes. The magazine features an interview with Rhodes where he lambasts the production company for its shoddy visual effects despite a hefty budget. Where did all of that money go if not into the movie? Weller posits that the production company is a front for something shadier, and gets Patterson to look into it.
While Roman is living the life of an Instagram influencer — albeit a psychopathic, murderous one — in Barcelona and doing his best to stage an “accidental” run-in with Blake, the rich auctioneer from a few episodes ago, Patterson decodes a series of squares on Jane’s tattoo, and that leads them to a backup account for a paparazzi service. They browse the pictures of Keith Rhodes and find one of him with Nico Popov, the head of a Russian crime syndicate known as The Brigata.
The Brigata is known for using massive terrorist attacks to gain influence, but they’ve never ventured outside of their country. But one picture, taken just the day before, places Nico at a party in Manhattan with Rhodes. That means they’re planning their first stateside attack, and it’s up to the team to figure out when it’s going down.
Complicating all of this is the number of other things distracting the team. Jane informs Patterson that she’s changed her mind about finding her daughter. Patterson pushes back before realizing she’s stepped over the line, but she has her reasons: She found the name of a nurse who worked in the hospital when Jane’s daughter was handed over to an adoptive family. Patterson keeps that information to herself for now though, struggling to decide whether Jane deserves to know despite her change of heart.
On top of all that Zapata and Patterson are still looking into Hirst under the assumption that she’s corrupt and covering up whatever crime Stuart was close to exposing. They approach Jane with a request to rescan her new tattoos in order to set up a database removed from Hirst’s influence, but the process isn’t that easy. They need the metal disc that illuminates the tattoos, and there’s no getting that out of the FBI headquarters without triggering a metal detector. Zapata has a plan though, and Patterson is super excited about it because it probably means using some cool CIA gadget that she otherwise wouldn’t have access to.
That cheery attitude quickly changes once Keith Rhodes is nearly killed on set by a prop defibrillator that wasn’t supposed to be charged. After Keith recovers, Weller brings him into the FBI for questioning, though it’s under the guise of giving him a tour because they don’t want to tip off Nico.
Once Weller and Jane lay out all the details, Keith tells them what he knows about the production company. He says that Nico came in out of nowhere and started funding the projects but that he demanded they work in some strange locations. When Patterson checks out the locations, she determines they’re all cities with major weapons plants, and that they specifically carry cyclosarin, a chemical weapon with no antidote.
Nico is on American soil. He has chemical weapons. Not good. (Recap continues on next page)
While Roman wins over Blake with a faux run-in, sad stories, and a copy of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking — we still don’t know what Roman wants with Blake, but his plan to get close is clearly working — the FBI team goes after Booky Bentley, the film’s producer. Rhodes says that Booky records every single conversation he has in his office, and that the recordings are in a voice-activated safe. If the team can get a hold of those recordings, they could potentially find Nico and where he’s storing the cyclosarin.
Luckily, Rich Dot Com is back for this case and his pop culture-addled brain makes him the perfect person to put in front of Booky in order to get him to utter specific phrases that will act as the voice activation for his safe. The ridiculous plan works, and once the team has the recordings they use them to do some sort of search for Nico’s voice. With that done, Patterson determines that the weapons are being stored in a studio annex building on the lot. Weller and Jane, along with Keith and his biggest fan Rich Dot Com, converge on the site
It doesn’t take them long to find the building, but the weapons are already on the move, so Patterson does some more digging. She manages to trace licenses to the studio that will allow them to sell food during a street festival for cops and firefighters taking place later that day. Thus, she determines that Nico is transporting the cyclosarin in hot dog carts, hoping to hit the festival before executing more attacks.
Weller and Jane track down the carts, and a shootout begins. Despite Weller telling Keith to stay behind, he shows up too and ends up getting shot. Rich is left in charge to keep him alive before the paramedics arrive, and Weller and Jane chase down Nico and his cronies. Having this chase and ensuing firefight happen on a movie studio lot allows Blindspot to have some fun with props and pyrotechnics, with Weller hitting some pyro to take down a bad guy while Jane gets the upper hand on Nico, and Rich Dot Com, much to his delight, uses a flamethrower to take down everyone else.
Just like that, the crisis is averted. It’s weirdly anticlimactic considering the potential severity of the attacks, but that seems to be because “Adoring Suspect” is largely focused on fleshing out the other stories from this season. So, Roman is closer to Blake than ever, sharing a kiss in Barcelona, though we still don’t know what he wants with her. Weller now has the information about the nurse who perhaps monitored the adoption of Jane’s daughter, meaning he’ll have to decide whether he’s willing to risk losing Jane in order to get the truth out there.
Then there’s what’s shaping up to be the season’s most complex story, which is the questions of what exactly Director Hirst is covering up. By the end of the episode everybody, including the once-reluctant Reade, is on board with secretly investigating her. Weller’s apartment is now a home base for the operation, and Reade managed to sneak the metal disc out so that the team can rescan Jane’s tattoos.
“Adoring Suspect” isn’t a particularly compelling episode because of all this table-setting. Now though, it feels like everything can start to fall into place. The dangling threads of Weller’s secret, Stuart’s murder, and the potential cover-up from Hirst are finally being given a little more room to breathe, and that bodes well for a season that’s been fitfully entertaining, but also struggling to gain momentum.
