- Title: The Blacklist: Redemption – Kevin Jensen
- wiki: link
The second episode of The Blacklist: Redemption pushes the theme of mothers and lost sons with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. When the son of an old friend is detained and tortured in Kyrkistan by government officials who believe the journalist is actually a CIA spy, Scottie Hargrave (Famke Janssen) mounts a rescue mission despite the United States Government explicitly ordering her not to. The plan has more than a few kinks to work out, although Tom (Ryan Eggold), Solomon (Edi Gathegi), and Nez (Tawny Cypress) are able to extract the man from a maximum-security prison with few resources at their disposal.
Only two episodes in, it’s obvious that Tom has conflicting emotions about believing Scottie to be his mother and his choice to not divulge those suspicions. The structure of the story, involving a boy who Scottie helped raise, spends an awful lot of time to reinforce those themes only one week after the the pilot episode reintroduced them. As for the mission itself, it does include one twist (which you’ll probably see coming), while attempting to make a simple magician’s trick overly complicated and results in a mixed outcome where no one ends up getting what they want.