BLINDSPOT “Sous Vide” Review

BLINDSPOT — “Sous-vide” Episode 404 — Pictured: (l-r) Jaimie Alexander as Jane Doe, Ross Patridge as Colonel Beck — (Photo by: Peter Kramer/NBC/Warner Bros)

BLINDSPOT “SOUS VIDE” REVIEW

BY PAULINE PERENACK

Biological Weaponry

Last week on Blindspot, we got to stick with Patterson and Rich while everyone else was in the field, to see what they get up to during missions. Added into the mix were a group of Quantico recruits, one of whom Patterson had a one night stand with, and all of whom helped save the day. Patterson and Rich also found a lead on how to cure Jane/Remi, who seems to be beginning to like being Jane, but is still meeting people in secret to make deals of sorts. And Zapata is realizing she’s in way deeper with HCI than she ever hoped for, while the team back home has learned she has switched sides.

Lockdown

Tonight’s episode, “Sous-Vide” begins with Zapata, who is now in Amsterdam and running for her life. She manages to elude the person chasing her, but that’s all we get for now.

In New York, Weller is walking home, pondering over the picture he took of the woman Jane/Remi met last week. When he gets to his apartment, the door is open, so he immediately assumes the worst. Once in, likely one of his worst nightmares comes true, as Rich is inside cooking. Rich explains he solved another clue from the Tokyo cache that contained a recipe. He’s not sure what it is, but Weller is able to decipher it’s for Brunswick stew, and that the cream Rich just curdled with lemon juice (and tasted) isn’t supposed to be in the recipe. Rich then uses that to decode an address, and questions where Jane is. Weller isn’t sure, but we find out Jane is visiting Boston, and conning him into helping her find the file she needs to locate Shepherd.

At headquarters, Allie catches up with Weller. Turns out, she’s the one Weller called last week to talk about Jane. The two aren’t able to talk however, because Patterson and Rich brief the team that the address is of an abandoned psychiatric hospital, and Weller, Reade, and Jane suit up to explore. Once they arrive, they see a brand new door, and whoever is inside, starts shooting at them through the walls. The team fires back and kills the man. Once inside, they’re faced with a bunch of dolls, leaving them all dumbfounded as to what they just walked into.

Back at the office, the team is still unsure about the dolls, but did get a hit on the shooter, who is known for moving drugs. Suspecting that the dolls are full of cocaine, Patterson brings in Laurel Chadwick, from the DEA Chemical Analysis team. As Laurel is working, Patterson puts together that the images of the dolls have shown up in areas of the world where Doctors without Borders have been to help with fever outbreaks. Just as she connects the dots, one of the dolls releases a cloud of dust, and Patterson puts the FBI on lockdown for a biological weapon.

The team is split up during the lockdown, and Allie and Weller are downstairs, so end up working with Colonel Beck, who is the chemical and disease expert brought in for the mission. While together, Allie tells Weller he needs to talk to Jane about his concerns, but dismisses his paranoia that something worse is going on.

Jane meanwhile, is locked in a room near the server room she needs to access to get the files on where to find Shepherd, and to get some time alone, she starts talking to others in the room, and starts playing on their paranoia of why they’re locked down. Ultimately, mob mentality rules, and they manage to break out of the room, giving Jane time to put the Ethernet cable Boston gave her in the server.

Patterson, Reade, and Rich are at ground zero with Laurel, and work quickly to cover her hands with plastic to prevent the spread of the pathogen, but they’re too late, and her nose starts bleeding. Beck puts Laurel in quarantine, and injects her with a serum to slow down her symptoms.

Laurel however, is panicking in quarantine, and Rich does his best to distract her by talking about Friends. Reade eventually asks Rich who he spent time with in the hospital, because he had clearly done this before. Rich doesn’t answer, and suddenly we have another layer to this character. Patterson continues to work and discovers that they’re dealing with the perfect engineered biological weapon, and when they look back to Laurel, she’s dead.

Patterson and Rich determine that Laurel died from something other than what she was originally exposed to, and as they talk with Weller, they put together more answers from the recipe, which points to Beck as the bad guy. Just as they do, Jane is injected by Beck with the same serum as Laurel, which the team has discovered as the real chemical weapon.

Weller and Allie run to Jane, and from the other side of the door, see Beck with Jane. Weller tells Allie to get to safety, while he runs through the door Patterson opens remotely so he can work with Jane to take out Beck and Beck’s teammate. With the threat contained, Jane is injected with the antidote, and genuinely hugs Weller in thanks.

However, her heart still isn’t with Weller, as she revisits with Boston, who is able to give her the file containing Shepherd’s location. Back at her apartment, Jane/Remi argues with Roman, who can tell she’s sliding towards Weller once again, and Jane/Remi yells at him to leave her alone, and just like that, Roman is gone.

At headquarters, Allie gives Weller a file, which contains information on the woman Jane had met up with last week. Turns out, it’s a Violet Park, who works at a non-profit in Jersey and has a totally clean record. Weller asks why Allie is giving him the file if the woman is clean, and Allie admits it’s because she thinks something is off with Jane. As she points out, Jane didn’t stop Weller from charging into the infected room, which is something she never would have done before.

Zapata meanwhile, finds herself on the bad side of Madeline when something went wrong when she was sent to steal some files. As such, Madeline hires a woman named Claudia to take over Zapata’s duties, with the immediate task of getting information on Reade, so he can be tortured for information on the FBI. Zapata however, convinces Madeline to break into Reade’s apartment, since his computer connects directly to the FBI. However, when Zapata and Claudia break into Reade’s apartment, they find that due to a security protocol as a result of the lockdown, the computer no longer is connected. So since Claudia wants to torture Reade, she and Zapata lie in wait for him.

As the episode closes, Reade returns home, only to be jumped by Claudia. He manages to subdue her, but turns around to Zapata holding a gun on him.

Zapata Returns

Quite frankly, any episode that contains solid Friends references is a good episode in my books.

Besides that however, I am absolutely loving how involved Rich Dotcom is in everything that’s done this season. Not only do we get to see his usual humor – ie him discovering what happens to cream when lemon juice is added to it, or his constant shipping of Jeller – we got to learn of a deeper level to him when Reade asked him about who he spent time with in the hospital. Hopefully that story gets explored later on this season. And any scene with he and Patterson is gold (the Periodic Table song? Anyone?), so yet another thing I’m so happy we’re getting more of this season.

Also, the Weller/Jane/Remi storyline is finally getting interesting. We only had one small scene of Weller getting teary eyed (thank goodness), which left more time for him to begin to revert back to the badass he used to be. Deep down he knows something is up with Jane, and now that Allie has pointed out her own concerns, it’s obvious he’s going to continue to dig deeper on this mystery. Also, Allie was great this episode. Her character began to decline towards the end of her previous storyline, which served to set up Weller and Jane, but having her back and helping the team is refreshing.

Then there’s Jane/Remi. She’s starting to flash back to being Jane – even Roman pointed it out before she purged him from her mind. Sure, this means she’s going to be hardcore Remi for a couple of episodes, but Jane is in there, and we just need Rich and his Book of Secrets to help her.

Finally, there’s Zapata. She’s back with Reade! Not in a good way, I mean, she is holding a gun to his head, but she’s back in the same room, and hopefully this will light the path to getting her back to where she needs to be, even though I can’t think of any way she’ll ever be able to rejoin the team unless she’s working for someone really high up in the FBI who we haven’t yet met. Guess we’ll find out more next week. Until then!