The Blacklist Dr. Bogdan Krilov Review
The Blacklist: Season 4, Episode 19: Dr. Bogdan Krilov avoids making any serious stumbles but fails to consistently hold viewers’ attention.
At this point, a good indicator of a given episode of the show’s quality is how much screen time its Blacklister gets or, failing that, the degree to which they directly figure into the plot. As you might have guessed, the less screen time they get, the worse the episode tends to be, and while there are some obvious exceptions (the most notable example is Cape May, which didn’t even have an a real antagonist), the rule usually holds, and is it did during last night’s episode.
While the titular villain (Rade Serbedzija) gets an admittedly fair amount of screentime in the program, his presence is overwhelmed by the episode’s parallel storylines, which dilute most of the tension that a “soft” (as opposed to some of the more “hard” mercenaries and assassins our heroes have had to face) villain requires to be truly memorable. Indeed, a good chunk of time is devoted to Red’s (James Spader) trip to Germany to track down Mr. Kaplan (Susan Blommaert), a venture that ends in his falling out with and subsequent murder of an old ally of his. This story could have warranted an episode of its own, but for whatever reason, the writers felt the need to cram it in as a subplot of another, robbing both stories of their potential.
The strongest moment of the episode occurs at the very end, when Liz (Megan Boone) finally meets Special Agent Gale (Enrique Murciano). Shooting question after question at her as he slinks around like some predatory animal, one knows that he will be one of Agent Keen’s most formidable foes yet.
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