Kyle’s Thoughts

Blindspot started off pretty good with its mid-season return episode “Cease Forcing Enemy.” It picked up with Jane Doe coming to terms that she mind wiped herself, but then the show spiraled back into certain things that didn’t make sense. Most notably is how they handled Agent Patterson.

I have a history in military intelligence, and Patterson brought home classified information, which resulted in the death of her civilian boyfriend. “Cease Forcing Enemy” started with Patterson getting reamed and then suspended, which I liked because that’s what should’ve happened. And then the show let her off the hook. It floored me that Patterson rejected her fate of suspension. If Blindspot was based in any kind of reality, Patterson should be worried that she’d be making small rocks out of little rocks, and no, just because your commanding officer says that you stay, doesn’t mean that the intelligence oversight agency loses its authority. If they handcuff you, you’re going to jail.

In fact, there wasn’t a truthful bone to be found in Patterson proving her value to the team. Director Mayfair knew that a distress call was using Morse Code, and Patterson was the only one who could translate it. Really? Is Blindspot really asking us to believe that no one in the FBI can write down a series of dots and dashes and then look up what they mean in Morse Code after conducting a Google search? My fifteen-year-old son could translate that if he wanted to. You didn’t even have to write down the message because even a Morse Code layman could hear dot-dot-dot, dash-dash-dash, dot-dot-dot, which is the famous SOS, and the message accompanied Agent Weller’s last known location. Methinks Weller’s in trouble.

The rest of the show was spent in a malaise of people blaming themselves for things, when perhaps they shouldn’t. But in the case of Patterson, yes, she is at fault. We even received confirmation that Jane is in fact Taylor Shaw, the girl from Agent Weller’s past. I’m not sure what the end game for the “Is she Taylor or isn’t she” thread was supposed to be, but it was resolved too soon for my taste. I guess Blindspot gains renewed focus on why Taylor did this to herself and which side of the fence is she on. And is there even a different side to the fence?

The new questions Blindspot asks should carry it to the season finale, but it needs to be grounded more in reality to hold my interest. I only hope that Chief Inspector Fischer (John Hodgman) throws the book at Director Mayfair and Patterson.