TV Show Review

TV Review: BLINDSPOT: Season 1, Episode 5: Split The Law [NBC]

Marianne Jean-Baptiste Michael Gaston Blindspot

NBC’s Blindspot Split The Law TV Show Review. Blindspot: Season 1, Episode 5: Split The Law brings terrorism back to the central focus of solving Jane’s (Jaimie Alexander) painted body map of clues. She still has no idea about the contradictory isotope evidence in her teeth, but Kurt (Sullivan Stapleton) invites her over for dinner as Taylor Shaw anyway. All Jane really has is instinct, and her deeply embedded memories are triggering reactions she can’t really explain. It isn’t too clear which of these flashback sequences she is seeing and which ones she isn’t. It’s hard to put memories like those into words for anyone, but little by little, she reveals a snippet.  

Somewhere in Queens a man is gassed Batman style in the backseat of a taxi. His name is Dodi (Ayman Samman), the star suspect this week.

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Patterson (Ashley Johnson) details a hostage hold up as an address encoded in Jane’s tattoos. The team heads over to what appears to be a disgruntled reaction by employees of the Municipal Workers’ Association who are losing pensions. With the clock ticking before the threat to execute hostages is carried out, Kurt tries to buy some time. Everyone on the scene is realizing that this situation is not what it really appears to be. Some hostages were taken to a back room and as soon as they are brought back out, a gun goes off. The door is breached by the FBI, and it’s all over. That is until Kurt and Jane find a secret basement vault set up to operate as a C.I.A. black site with three dead bodies in it.

The diabolical Thomas Carter (Michael Gaston), enters the room. Wait, what room? There’s no black site here. And boss lady, Mayfair (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), is starting to come into her own even more without letting him bully her. She also lays into Kurt by letting him know the evidence of who Jane really is shouldn’t be lied about to suit his narrative. Brilliant.

Thomas wastes no time threatening to lie about what he can neither confirm nor deny is evidence of a black site meant to torture Dodi, a newcomer terrorist and expert bomb engineer. It remains clear that Thomas wants his narrative of all things related to this FBI team to supercede their judgement.  

Jane notices in the surveillance footage of the hold up that one of the hostages was switched. She can neither confirm nor deny it is Dodi, but she just knows he was rescued. He escapes issues in the back of an ambulance carrying him to a hospital by slitting an EMT’s throat, and runs off to collect his precious cesium-137 which has already given the cooperating hostages acute radiation poisoning.

He’s making a dirty bomb. That’s what dirty bomb makers do.

The team tracks the isotope with gigers in a cemetery and a shootout amidst the tombstones ensues. The show does not want for decent action sequences in each episode, and Jane gets into one of her gnarly brawls before intercepting Dodi and his urn of radioactive material. I wonder if the episodic fighting will ever lead her to a serious injury. Just wondering. This week it led to a CIA against FBI standoff which was pretty amazing. I guess it was almost comically impossible, but Mayfair’s gun on the back of Carter’s head was impressive. I know this show wants the audience to realize at this point just how dirty Carter is, that he will do anything, even allow the threat of taking down opposing agents to get what he wants.

Weller still hasn’t told Jane about the isotope test. And Zapata might take a bribe from Carter to tell him all about Jane, for whatever that’s worth. At least they prevented a serious nuclear catastrophe. Jane and Kurt even had a few tender and honest moments, corny, but understandable for them.

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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