BLINDSPOT Recap: The Team Loses One of Their Own in “Senile Lines”

By Pauline Perenack

The team loses one of their own

Last week on Blindspot, Jane found herself in a hostage situation with Oliver because of past dealings of his father. Reade’s drug use came to a head, and faced with a possible suspension, he instead chose to quit, and ended up in the hospital after a drug deal went bad. The real cliffhanger however, came in the form of the team being informed that they were being investigated for aiding and abetting Sandstorm.

Would the team be able to find a way out of this seemingly impossible situation? Let’s recap this week’s episode to find out.

Losing the battle to win the war

Tonight’s episode, “Senile Lines” opens with none of our main characters, and instead focuses in on a girl named Amber, who is in a violent argument with a boy named Eli. As their argument is broken up by an older woman, it appears as though they’re living in a foster home. Still upset about the argument, Amber storms up the stairs, and ultimately jumps to her death.

The episode then shifts to follow up on the ending of last week, with the team discussing the possible fallout of being summoned, especially since Agent Matthew Weitz is the one who will be questioning them all. Weller tells them to just focus on their work, and Patterson brings up a tattoo she’s been able to crack. A code within an hourglass tattoo points towards a non-profit group named Life Prospect, Inc. The group has essentially been non-existent, but it turns out it was funding the foster home where Amber and Eli lived. The team head out to the house while Patterson stays back at headquarters, and is the first of the team to be interviewed by Weitz. During the interview, Weitz brings up her past romantic relationships to try to shake her, but Patterson stays strong.

At the foster home, the team finds that all of the kids and the foster mom are missing, and suddenly have another mystery on their hands. Back at headquarters, they find surveillance footage of Eli trying to steal a phone in Yonkers, and upon discovering his music teacher lives in the area, they go to the teacher’s house. Roman is along for the ride after Jane and Nas were able to convince Weller that Roman could be useful since he also grew up in a foster home. At the music teacher’s house, they find Eli, and bring him back to headquarters for questioning, but he won’t talk, since he’s afraid that Jane and Weller are part of the same team who killed Amber.

Patterson meanwhile, heads to the city morgue in hopes of getting the results of Amber’s autopsy right away, only to find that the body has been moved by people posing as Amber’s family.

With Eli still not talking, Roman suggests Weller give Eli back the pitch pipe he was holding when he was found, pointing out that it must be something important since Eli brought it with him from the foster home, and giving it back would establish some trust. Sure enough, with the pipe returned, Eli starts talking, and says that the foster mom gave the kids pills, which were messing with their heads. They were also visited by a doctor on occasion, who Eli knew only as Dr. S. After a few more minutes, Eli dumps out a pill he had concealed in his pitch pipe, giving the team another thread to pull.

Weller is up next with Weitz, while Patterson tests the pill, and discovers it’s a drug she’s never seen before. As such, the situation seems to indicate that the foster mom was being paid by someone to test the drugs on her foster kids, leading the team to realize they need to find Dr. S.

After using the unique casing of the pill to narrow down the possibilities of who Dr. S could be, and then having Eli confirm Dr. S’s identity, the team convinces Eli to call Dr. S in hopes they can find the doctor. Dr. S takes the bait, and calls Eli back, allowing the team to be able to track the phone to a warehouse in Queens. The team arrives at the warehouse and arrests the foster mom, while Roman does his good deed for the mission and saves the kids.

Throughout the episode, Reade is recovering in a hospital room, which he shares with a man named Travis, who is convinced Reade has PTSD. Travis keeps trying to talk to Reade, and eventually gets him to open up about his past, and to talk about Coach Jones. When Reade is finally healed enough to leave, Travis tells him to watch the tape so he can know exactly what is going on. Taking Travis’ advice to heart, Reade extends an olive branch and calls Zapata over, so she can watch the tape with him.

There is also still the problem of Weitz, and his mission to take down the team. In order to keep the Sandstorm mission alive, Weller tells the team he is going to take the fall, so they can continue the investigation. Unbeknownst to him however, Nas has willingly gone in to see Weitz, and confesses that she was the one who allowed Borden to keep working, and more importantly, was the one in charge of the botched Sandstorm raid that left so many FBI agents dead. Weller isn’t happy about her sacrifice, but as she points out, now the team is free to continue hunting down Sandstorm.

And where are we with Sandstorm? The episode ends with Shepherd in Bangkok stating she finally has the final piece for Phase Two. Turns out, it’s a truckload of radioactive material.

Saying Goodbye

Ever since the Nas was introduced to Blindspotters, she was met with suspicion, and disdain by many fans. She was set up to appear to be the mole within the FBI, and then broke up the Jeller pairing, leaving fans frustrated with the character. However, as the weeks wore on, she seemed to help the team more and more, making her an integral character, which all makes it hard to see her go now. However, her character seems to have served its purpose, and has effectively driven the Sandstorm story along so that the team can finally solve it. She indeed lost her battle, but helped the team to possibly win the war.

Tonight’s larger story however, revolved around the tattoo case of the week. While the tattoos were the original premise of the show, Blindspot has been able to have much stronger episodes when the team wasn’t hunting down the solution to one of them. The source of the tattoos has been solved, leaving those cases not nearly as intriguing.

After such a steep downward spiral this season, Reade seems to have finally hit bottom, so he can move forward with his life. He lost a major battle in ignoring what happened to him as a child, but watching the tape will ultimately let him win the war over his past demons. Thankfully, he has entrusted Zapata to help him through this rough time, and hopefully this is something Patterson will do as well. While her own downward spiral wasn’t brought up at all this episode, I can only hope she’ll lean heavily on someone on her team to help her through.

Roman seems to be slowly gaining the trust of the team, but I’m not sure it would ultimately make sense for two non-FBI agents to work with the team once Sandstorm is defeated. Jane will still be useful, because even with Sandstorm out of the picture, the solving of her tattoos will still solve various crimes being committed. Roman however, doesn’t have any real skill to bring to the team, so it will be interesting to see what happens to his character at the end of the season.

Finally, the Sandstorm storyline was briefly touched upon, and it seems as though Phase Two is about to begin. It looks like Shepherd is ready to nuke the entire Western hemisphere, and only Weller and team can stop her. Will they be able to do it without Nas helping them? Until next week!