THE BLACKLIST “Drexel” Review: Red Chases a Murderous Banksy

A Murderour Banksy Paints an Overly Dramatic Landscape

The faux pathetic fallacy in Red’s meetings with Liz was a strange choice. The writers were perhaps aware of the cliché of having actual thunder and lightning in the background and instead chose to emulate their earlier successes of acknowledging cliché – with the introduction of Solomon for example – and working with it. The episode never lightened from then on either, sticking with a tiringly dramatic tone throughout.

Liz’s shift in attitude towards Red still feels somewhat bipolar given she was hugging him with tears of joy just a few episodes ago. Ignoring the abruptness of this shift though, the groundwork is being laid for him to be turned upon. Liz blames Tom’s injury on Red, her old friend is trapped in his service, his incessant “protection,” and Harold Cooper’s outright confusion as to what Red is up to – things are aligning and not in Red’s favour.

Red’s death portrait was a tad dramatic even for The Blacklist, with whoever commissioned it is venturing into really over-confident supervillain territory. Being given a view of his grave as a gift felt jarringly theatrical, and was very reminiscent of a scene from an early Harry Dresden book.

The second half of this season has definitely seen a spike in the creepiness of each episode’s blacklister and this week’s murderous Banksy was no exception. While the last few blacklisters have definitely been interesting it’s been some time since the show has flipped pop-culture on its head, with the premiere’s showcasing the power of social media and later the dark side of crowd funding coming to mind. Seeing underground, virally shared art – essentially a nod at Banksy – turned sinister was an interesting, but slightly underdeveloped concept.

NEXT: S.S.D.D.