TV Review: BLINDSPOT: Season 1, Episode 10: Evil Handmade Instrument [NBC]

NBC’s Blindspot Evil Handmade Instrument TV Show Review. Blindspot: Season 1, Episode 10: Evil Handmade Instrument catches up on Patterson (Ashley Johnson) who is shedding some layers of denial by pursuing the suspect who killed David (Joe Dinicol). It was a reckless move to murder him not knowing his identity. He was foolish for thinking he wasn’t in danger. She has so many regrets about his whole situation, and is doing the one thing that led her to push him away; work.

Mayfair (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) confronts Carter (Michael Gaston), but still has no idea he is blackmailing Zapata (Audrey Esparza). He wants Jane (Jaimie Alexander) dead, and she accuses him of murdering Guerrero (Lou Diamond Phillips). There’s no evidence Carter is linked to his death, but he was in the building when Guerrero was shanked. Somehow Carter also got into Zapata’s building and her mailbox to leave a replacement surveillance device to plant in Jane’s safe house. Fat chance.

Jane is overcome with guilt about her tattoos leading to David’s death. She and Kurt (Sullivan Stapleton) have to rehash her emotional state when he finds her looming over the body bag she was found in. The worse she feels, the closer they get to each other on their own time. The sexy dress she wore last week didn’t plant any stops with him either.  

The team uncovers a decoder that was being used on the book at the library and a partial print left by Roger Levkin (Christopher J. Domig), a Russian born man, whose details lead the team to believe they are dealing with a spy ring. And they are.

The team heads to Levkin’s place where he has snapped and is holding his wife () at gunpoint. Kurt shoots him, but a poison capsule is activated in his mouth and that’s all she wrote for the first spy.

Kate Williams (Heidi Germaine Schnappauf), the mysterious redhead, matches the killer description and was also born in Russia. After some probing, Patterson and an agent from the espionage division, , find a third member of the spy ring, Olivia Delidio (Amy Hargreaves).

Jane and Kurt have this really ironic conversation about how the Russian spies were so thorough with their strategy of marrying successful Americans and giving up their whole lives to accomplish their mission. Like Jane didn’t take that whole strategy up a notch.

A chase ensues when they spot Olivia at the Queens Museum, they get her in custody and Patterson cracks her like a walnut. She pretends to have run a handwriting analysis on Oliva and that Rodger’s print from the book is hers. Contemplating what will happen if all this is true is enough to open her up just a wheensy bit, Patterson lays on some heavy foundation. Clearly, if this information is false, she could still be brought down with something they have, but Patterson has to be sly, or she will blow it. She almost does when she gets angry at Olivia’s brainwashed innocence. Maybe it’s really genuine. Who cares? She’s a Russian spy.

Patterson’s was a decent bluff, but Jane lays on some thick Russian guilt trip about children and Olivia decides to do the right thing and starts singing like a canary.

Boris Ivanovich, a New York Times blogger, is hit by the spies and found dead in a park. The next target is a Senator attending a defense contractor expo.

A flower shop in Little Odessa in Brighton Beach is being used as a means of communication, but when the word gets out that the Feds are in on it, the Russians torch the place. Patterson recovers a forged badge to the expo with Kate’s picture on it.

Jane gets into one of her best fights ever with Kate who she pursues all over the deck of a battleship. Kurt wails on Kate to prevent Jane from being stabbed with a syringe full of poison, and Kate goes down like the Titanic. Jane is really starting to make some puppy dog faces when things go south.

Patterson has the most heartfelt conversation she has been able to have since David died now that some justice has been retributed to her. She doesn’t quite blame herself for David being reckless, but she understands that pushing him away didn’t keep him out of danger. She is experiencing an empty feeling Jane can empathize with while she feels that no matter what she does, there is nothing for left for her without him. She is really feeling the truth that there is nothing she can do to bring him back and must deal with the loss.

Jane sneaks out of her safe house to make out with Kurt. Finally. His nephew catches them in the act, and Jane gets caught out on her own on the way home and is bagged and tossed into a van. And who else could have done this? Thomas Carter, CIA interrogation expert, begins waterboarding her but is interrupted by gunshots. A man, Oscar (François Arnaud), appears and kills Carter. Finally.

Oscar is Jane’s old flame who she dreamt about with the deep rooted tree tattoo. This could complicate her love life slightly.

He then plays a video to Jane of her old self speaking intentionally to her new tattoo’d self. She says Jane did all of this to herself. It was her idea; the tattoos, the memory wipe. Everything.

How’s that for a jolt of reality?    

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.