TV Show Review

TV Review: BLINDSPOT: Season 1, Episode 3: Eight Slim Grins [NBC]

Jaimie Alexander Blindspot

NBC’s Blindspot Eight Slim Grins TV Show Review. Blindspot: Season 1, Episode 3: Eight Slim Grins picks up where episode two left Jane (Jaime Alexander) with an intruder, or rather, the Ruggedly Handsome Man (Johnny Whitworth), who has been following her around as she tags along with her new F.B.I. agent crew. Before he is shot through her window, he tells her that she can’t trust “them”, but is vague about whether he means the agents or the people who erased and tattoo’d Jane but then dropped her in the middle of a gigantic puzzle full of interconnected violence.

With no signs of forced entry, someone is going to pay for this. She should be safe, but she has a hard time admitting whether she trusts the FBI to keep her that way. The R.H.M. is a ghost (no DNA record, no fingerprints) just like Jane, but who would have known to follow him to her safe house?

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Slim Grins has a crime subplot centered around some sophisticated international jewel thieves known as the Candy Men, instead of terrorists as the previous two episodes. The jinxed thief, Casey Robek (Michael Rogers), who didn’t make it out of the morning’s brazen heist has a Navy Seal tattoo just like Jane’s. He was recruited right out of jail and became a special operative ghost until he and his pals were honorably discharged. Then they began robbing high end jewelry stores, scooping up $70 million in precious metals and gems. Edgar (Rob Brown) believes Jane is a SEAL, but that’s TMI at this point. He might be in too deep if he keeps running with that theory and it turns out she was kidnapped by the government as a child and raised to be a killing machine.  

Casey’s brother, Travis (Adam David Thompson), is driving around in Queens when the ALPR data suggests it should be in Philly. Is it a coincidence that Travis burglarized a store earlier in the day? Nope. His cousin recognizes Jane and takes off, but she gets into her episodic hand to hand brawl with him. He gets away and it’s her fault. She wants to be part of the team’s rhythm. She was too desperate going into the situation to know who she is, and Kurt (Sullivan Stapleton) could have eased her a bit by cluing her into the scar on her neck and the DNA evidence they had pending.

Analyst Patterson (Ashley Johnson) explains to Jane, who has to sit one out, that they are trying to find the new shape of the team with her included. Jane insists on being part of it which is good. She instinctively wants to help people. Her buddies are out talking to Isabella (Stephanie Andujar), the woman on security footage responsible for casing the store robbery. She tips them off to a probably non-existent boat that belongs to Omar (Ohene Cornelius), one of the former SEALs who joined the Candy Men.  Edgar warns Kurt that he is too involved with Jane emotionally.

Patterson gets a hit from a alphanumeric sequence in the tattoo scheme that leads her to an FBI case file, but Mayfair (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), the boss lady, is too distracted to look at it. She has already seen it as the case officer, but she also has a hunch to a connection with the file and Jane’s case per a prior episode. You have to pay close attention to this show, and trust no one, of course.

Jane and Kurt visit Casey in the hospital just in time to catch Omar and Travis assailing it. Jane gets to display some more tactical prowess, but Casey almost gets away when his brother takes a doctor hostage and puts on his lab coat. Did Travis really think he was going to walk right out the front door and load up into an ambulance he could hijack? He should have stuck with that. Kurt and Jane apprehend him as he is retracing through the front door, and that’s the end of him. Travis dies as he’s uttering a clue to Jane, “orion”, for whatever that’s worth. Maybe it was her special operative code name. She has earned the privilege to carry a weapon with the team now.

Kurt reveals that he believes Jane is Taylor Shaw, his missing childhood friend and neighbor, and brings trust, the main theme of the show into the conversation with her again. Identity is the premise of the show or rather, past creation of it. Taylor Shaw has a DNA profile that has been ran against Jane’s DNA. Kurt was sure it would be a match throughout this episode, and it is.

The biggest clue yet comes right at the end of Slim Grins with Thomas Carter’s (Michael Gaston) and Mayfair’s secret rendezvous to discuss “Daylight”, clearly the operation that Jane was part of before being brought back to reality. He suggests that Mayfair off Jane to get rid of her. She likes Jane, and doesn’t think the extra attention will help the situation. She’s going to have to play it cool while all these secrets on Jane’s body are unlocked and lead right where she knows it will; right back to her. 

Leave your thoughts on this review and this episode of Blindspot below in the comments section. For more Blindspot reviews, photos, videos, and information, visit our Blindspot Page, and consider subscribing to us by Email, “following” us on Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, or “liking” us on Facebook for quick updates.

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Stephanie King

I am a meticulous writer. Story is my strong suit. I do not waste time on political "critique" or paranoid "undertones" that might have been an inspiration to a story writer, but clearly are not a main or secondary theme. I can identify high concept, main and sub theme(s), protagonists and antagonists, secondary character roles, the turning point, the key, the antagonist's story thrust, the spine, twelve sequences, the climax, the resolution, and most importantly, the goal of any film. I am aware of the act structure which can be from three to five acts, generally. Aristotle elaborates in his Poetics on Plato's Republic on act structure.
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