BLINDSPOT Recap “Regard a Mere Mad Rager”

By Pauline Perenack

Musings from an Escape Room

When we last saw Blindspot, our team was facing an investigation by their nemesis Agent Weitz, as he tried to expose the team for aiding and abetting Sandstorm. With a pretty solid case built, it became obvious that the only way for the team to survive was for one member to take the fall. Weller stepped up to the plate, but was beaten to the punch by Nas, who took the blame for the botched FBI raid, effectively ending her career, but enabling the team to continue in their quest to stop Sandstorm.

The episode ended with Shepherd acquiring the final piece needed for Phase Two, which just so happened to be a truck full of radioactive material. Was the team able to continue without Nas? Did they intercept Shepherd’s cargo? Let’s recap this week’s episode to find out.

A Moral Dilemma

Tonight’s episode, “Regard a Mere Mad Rager,” picks up right where we left off, replaying the final scenes of the previous episode with Shepherd getting her hands on the radioactive material. However, at the same time Shepherd is negotiating the final price for the shipment, Patterson has used Nas’ information on Sandstorm to track down all of their bank accounts, and freezes them, leaving Shepherd without the money she needs. With her deal now dead, Shepherd is forced to run after the truck of materials, but is unable to take control, and gets knocked off the truck, finding herself at the feet of several police officers.

Meanwhile, at FBI headquarters, the team uses their time to solve another tattoo. It turns out that a Russian hacker who they had previously tied to a tattoo, but couldn’t find, was tracked moving through Grand Central Station. The team heads out to intercept and watches as the hacker picks up a dead drop. However, several people seem to be after the envelope picked up by the hacker, but the team eventually ends up with it, finding that it contains a Rubik’s Cube.

Patterson is able to solve the pattern on the Rubik’s Cube which leads the team to a section of the Dark Web. There, they find a message from well-known hackers, The Garran Brothers, who run a site that leaks highly classified documents. Turns out, the hackers want to step down, and have created a scavenger hunt, with the winner being handed control of all of the documents – one of which is the Truman Protocol, which is tied to Sandstorm’s Phase Two.

With the level of need to gain access to the documents at an all-time high, Patterson accepts one of the tests given by the Garran Brothers, and hacks into Barnes Agrochemical. With her assignment complete, she is given another set of instructions by the Brothers. This time, two people must go to an intersection in Queens dressed all in red. Much to Patterson’s disappointment, Weller decides that he and Jane will be the ones going. Once at the intersection, Jane and Weller are taken to an old sanitarium, where Weller is able to solve the riddle of how to open the door to get in.

Once inside, they find themselves with a group of hackers, all vying for control of the Garran Brothers’ files. With everyone gathered, the Garran Brothers step forward, and it’s revealed that the brothers are actually a woman named Kiva Garran, who has decided to give up the files because her sister had been killed for the information, and she no longer wanted to be in the game.

After killing two hackers she said were MI5, Kiva leads the rest of the gang to various Escape Rooms, and each team needs to find the way out. The first team out and back to Kiva, gets the files. Weller and Jane manage to solve all the puzzles and find the exit, but are forced to choose between getting out, which means killing the team next to them, or being killed while that team goes free. Wanting the best of both worlds, Weller tries to free the other team first, but that team decides to push the button to open their door. It’s of course a trap, and their room fills with poison gas, while Jane and Weller’s door swings open.

Weller goes back to save the other team, but the hesitation enables another team to get to Kiva first. Weller tries to reason with Kiva that if the whole test was supposed to be a moral one, shouldn’t he and Jane get a leg up since they saved two strangers? Kiva agrees with the argument, and hands over the files.

Back at headquarters, the team is eager to find out more about the Truman Protocol, but unfortunately all they’re able to find is that the Protocol had been signed by every President since Truman.

Shepherd meanwhile, is able to escape from jail, and tracks down the radioactive material. When she calls in to her team to say she has it, she’s informed that Weller was able to get his hands on the Truman Protocol. With that information, Shepherd now sees Weller as a liability, and wants him taken out.

The episode ends in a cliffhanger for the team however. After celebrating the win at getting the Garran Brothers’ files, Zapata is walking home, only to be surrounded by NYPD, who are there to arrest her. She had been warned earlier by her friend that someone was looking into the missing murder weapon of Coach Jones, and since she had a hand in it, she needed to be careful. Turns out, she should have heeded his warning.

Hauntings of Past Mistakes

While this episode was difficult to follow at times because of the rapid fire explanations on how puzzles were solved, overall, it was fairly enjoyable. The primary drive of the episode seemed to be to bring Weller and Jane closer together once again, but unfortunately, the way it was done felt forced. These two characters have grown apart and become different people over the course of this season, yet they apparently have forgotten everything that has gone on and are willing to jump back in together immediately, which just isn’t easy to believe.

This whole Coach Jones storyline is really weaving itself through the entire season. While it seems as though Reade has finally accepted what happened to him, allowing him to get his life back on track, the Blindspot writers have opened the door to the possibility that Reade might leave the team and the FBI for some other type of job. In addition to losing Reade, the team could find themselves without Zapata as well, if she gets caught up in the NYPD investigation. At the end of the day, she might be the one who takes the fall for Reade’s mistake.

Then, there’s still the issue of Sandstorm. It’s been another week, and another week we still haven’t learned any more about Phase Two. Since there’s only three episodes left, I really hope that we don’t have to wait until the final episode to see what Phase Two is, and what the fall out will be. Since there has been such a lead up to it, I don’t want the Phase Two finale to be condensed into 40 frenetic minutes.

Finally, Jewel Staite as the insane hacker Kiva was pretty amazing, and since we already have another recurring hacker we all love in Rich Dotcom, would it be too much to ask to have an episode with these two in it together? Invariably, they must know each other from the hacker world and have some sort of rift between them that would require our team to intervene. Perhaps a season three episode? But first, unfortunately, we need to conclude Sandstorm. Until next week!