On this week’s episode of The Blacklist, Red dug deeper in the mole conspiracy, Liz and Tom prepared to adopt a baby and the FBI followed an adoption scandal. Also, the mole dies.
The episode opens with a woman roaming the street, drugged, looking for her baby. She asks a cop for help and, before she can make her case, a man jumps out of a van and says that she is his sister. When the cop doesn’t let him take her, the man in the van shoots both the girl and the cop.
At home, Tom and Liz are admiring the baby that they are about to adopt. It is close to time for the baby to be born and for it to be brought home. They are surrounded by baby things and look like the typical parents to be.
When Liz goes to talk to Red he tells her the next name on the blacklist is The Cyprus Agency. Liz calls him out on the fact that he is bringing up an evil adoption agency while she and Tom are in the middle of an adoption. “Life is full of lovely little ironies,” Red replies that because, well, he’s the coolest criminal on the planet.
The Cyprus Agency is messed up. They offer parents “perfection” and let them choose the genetic traits. If a parent wants blonde hair, green eyes and a funny baby- The Cyprus Agency can get that baby. The founder, Mr. Mallory, tells the parents that they “sour the planet for a child that matches your criteria.” Well that sounds easy.
But instead of searching for one, they seemingly abduct one. So, all of the happy parents are getting stolen babies.
Red gives Liz the file for the next parents, the Rowlands. When Liz visits them, she tells them the truth. They ask what they can do to help. She sends them undercover to meet with the Cyprus Agency’s lawyer. They freak out and spook him, seeing Liz and Ressler outside spying on them.
As the lawyer heads outside to call the boss man, Liz and Ressler ambush him. They say that they’re from the FBI and the lawyer freaks out. He says that they have no idea and that they need to tell his family something. He starts to tell them what is going on when a bus hits him.
Fun fact, this is Diego Klattenhoff’s (Ressler) second role where someone gets hit by a bus mid-sentence. He also played Shane Oman on Mean Girls when Regina George (Rachel McAdams) gets hit by a bus.
Anyway, Red has Meera at a warehouse being interrogated by another man. He tells Red that she is clean and probably not the mole. When Red goes to talk to her, she says that she wants to find out who the real mole is. Turns out that she didn’t sell or release the documents. She simply got them because Cooper told her to. Someone betrayed both of them. So, Red and Meera decide to work together to figure it out.
After investigating The Cyprus Agency, their founder seems very helping. He says that he is launching an internal investigation and that they can have any documents that they want. After researching them, they track down 27 adopted babies and get their DNA.
They run all of the babies DNA. None of them come up as missing children. When Liz returns to Red, he says that not all children are reported missing. He says to run it through a different system and see what comes up. Turns out that the mothers of the children are all abducted women.
Liz tells Red about it and also tells him that she’s going to take some time off to be wit the baby. Red basically tells her that it is a bad idea to get a baby. He said that if Liz has any doubts about her husband that they shouldn’t go through with the adoption.
Meera proves her loyalty to Red by sneaking into Agent Cooper’s briefcase to steal his ID and look at who authorized the security upgrade memo that Red found. When she passes the information onto Red, he says that he is done with her. I thought he was going to kill her like all of the other people last episode, but he didn’t.
Aram tracked down a file from the lawyer’s computer of the next woman that is to be abducted. The man who killed the woman at the beginning of the episode pulls his creepy van next to the girl’s car and waits.
Ressler and Liz go to Georgetown to find her. Let me just say, I’m very confused by Ressler’s limp. Sometimes he has it, sometimes he doesn’t. I mean, can we decide? Is he completely better or kind of. They need to decide.
They miss her and chase her to the parking lot. The guy in the van has already got her so they try to stop the van and Ressler kind of gets run over by it. Liz shoots it but the van gets away. Ressler lays on the ground in kind of pain. I mean, the dude survived getting shot and nearly bleeding to death. The van didn’t even hit him that hard. Get up.
It turns out that the brain of the baby abducting operation is Mallory. He gets angry that the man in the van abducted another girl instead of laying low like he was told. The van-man says that he was following an old order from the lawyer. They needed a replacement for the girl that he killed at the beginning of the episode. So, Mallory shoots him and takes the girl.
That girl that was shot? Well, a dog happened to find her dead in the woods. After she is examined, the coroner is completely shocked at the shape she is in. She has severe muscular atrophy and, even though she’s been in a coma, she’s given birth multiple times and was under perfect prenatal care.
They finally realize that it is Mallory. Aram tracked down another name Charles Lassiter Jr, but when they go to the real Lassiters’ home, the parents say that it is Michael Shaw, a boy they adopted when he was seven. He was so bad that they had to send him back to keep themselves safe.
The Lassiters say that they blame themselves for their actions. They said that they weren’t ready for a baby. They said that their marriage was troubled and they weren’t equipped to take care of a child. Liz, suddenly realizing what everyone else knows, figures out that maybe her relationship with Tom isn’t in a great place. I mean, she’d rather spend the evening with a known murderer, Red, than her own husband.
The agents use the sleep medicine that is in the woman’s body to trace it back to a fertility doctor that the Cyprus Agency has been using. They go to the doctor and Mallory is already there. He tells the receptionist/armed guard to get rid of the FBI. Ressler and Liz catch on and start the hunt for the doctor.
Ressler kills the doctor. Liz tries to catch Mallory. Finally running, she runs into a room of 22 women in hospital beds. Instead of calling for back up or doing anything remotely smart, she just stares. Now, I’m not saying that I wouldn’t be in complete shock seeing them and forget to do my job, but I’m not in the FBI.
Mallory finds Liz with all of the pregnant women. They get into a scuffle and Liz is almost shot when Ressler saves the day and shoots the Mallory in the arm.
During questioning, Mallory insults the Lassiters and that they didn’t love him, they only wanted a baby to make them seem normal and happy. Oh yeah, and Mallory is the father of all of those babies. Ew.
The case makes Liz go home and tell Tom that she isn’t ready for a baby. She thinks that their relationship is weird and that they can’t bring a baby into their house. Now, he gets upset and falls into the arms of maybe-spy Lucy Brooks/Jolene.
I’m happy to report that there was absolutely nothing about Ressler’s useless love life. Hopefully there won’t be.
The best part of the episode was when Red was sitting in the dark, listening to Gordon Lightfoot’s “Sundown” on a record player. Shockingly FBI Director Diane Fowler walks in and Red tells her he knows that it was her who gave Meera the directive to get the blue prints and then Diane gave the blue prints to Anslo Garrick.
Red calls her a “dirty rat.” She calls him a “stupid son of a b—“ and he pulls out a gun to force her to sit down.
Diane says that Fitch would never get away with him doing anything to her. But, wait! Red shoots her in the stomach. He says that he has a deal with Fitch and not with her. Dying, she tries to save herself by saying that she knows what happened “that night” and what happened to his family. She will tell him if he saves her.
He says he wants to know “more than anything in the world.” However, he says that if she knows, someone else does too. Then, he kills her. Ironically, as she lays dying in her white satin nightgown, the lyrics play “I can see her lying back in her satin dress/In a room where you do what you don’t confess.”
Cooper admits to Meera that he hates Red that he is horrible. However, all of the good that they have done, it couldn't have been done without him. And Mr. Caplan returns to clean up Diane's dead body mess.
The Blacklist won’t be back until after the Olympics. Do you think that Liz is Red’s daughter?