The Blacklist: Episode 8 General Ludd [No.103]

Wow, interesting opening scene. A dad and his son tossing around a football in the park on a beautiful day, but as they get ready to leave,  an airplane starts to fall from the sky in pieces, including a decapitated passenger still strapped to seat. Father and son, dead.

The criminal this week is General Ludd.  I don’t know his story yet, but I predict they will catch him a few blocks from the FBI headquarters by the end of the hour. Now give me my James Spader.

Liz’s “father” is in the hospital dying, but tells Liz he is just having some tests run.  General Ludd is sort of like the head of a real life Anonymous group. His mask is red though and not the Guy Fawkes type.  But the implication is clear. They are reportedly behind the bombing of the cargo plane. At least it is a local attack, so it will make sense when he is arrested in the lobby of the FBI building.

Red is into money laundering in the strictest sense of the word. Liz finds him in a suburban home with a housewife with laundry baskets full of counterfeit money and bills drying on an indoor clothesline. Cute.  Red says he heard her father is not well and his cancer has come back and that she should be there with him.  How did he know?

Doofus and Liz, KNOW there is a bomb on the plane so of course they drive out to the concourse and damn near get their heads blown off. Meanwhile, Red has gone to see Sam, Liz’s Dad in the hospital. All flights are grounded. Liz can’t get to her father. But Red is with him and the two are yukking it up. Things take a turn when Red says that Sam gave Liz a great gift loving Liz as his own. Sam has six weeks to live and  wishes it was six hours. But he wants to tell Liz. Red says he can’t let him do that. I assume Red is going to off him, which is why he came. Red lets him call Liz one last time, and then smothers him with a pillow. Red kisses his forehead and leaves. It was a mercy killing.

I forgot to mention that Liz’s hot husband who Red swears is a bad guy, took the first flight out to be with Liz’s father knowing she would fly in later. Sadly, he was too late. He just doesn’t SEEM like a bad guy! This is why I am terrible at picking men.

General Ludd changes his identities frequently after bombing the plane and causing all planes to be grounded, his next identity is a truck driver working for the mint. He is driving a truck with five million dollars of freshly printed bills on it.

OMG! Red is outside the hospital and so is the hot hubby. Red sits down with him at an outdoor coffee truck place. Hubby tells Red that he doesn’t know how to tell his wife. Her father took her in at age four and raised her as a single parent. Wait, WHAT? Liz knows that she is adopted and she still doesn’t get that Red is her father? Hubby seemed a bit rattled by Red’s speech about her father always being there watching out for her.

Meanwhile, Liz and Doofus (I really should learn his name) somehow manage to stop the truck, but it just so happens to be right at a protest. General Ludd manages to get the money out into the protesters and blows up the money sending bill flying into the crowd. General Ludd dons a mask like all the other protesters, blends into the crowd and escapes. He was after the blueprints for the new $100 bill but had to make a run for it before he could get them. Or so the feds think.

Red meets up with General Ludd and tells him he knows he swapped the drive and gave the feds a counterfeit. His plan all along was for the feds to get the counterfeit blueprints so they would be making and circulating billions of dollars in counterfeit funds, and bankrupt the country. Ingenious. If it were not for our guy, Red.  Red takes the real plates, and then gives Liz the info to pick up General Ludd so Liz and Doofus get the collar. Liz calls and get the news about her father. She goes to the funeral with her husband. Very said scene, but the flowers are beautiful.

Red is granted one admission into the Feds ViCap. He looks up a woman named Lucy Brooks with aliases of Katherine Hayne, Molly Paplow, Kara Lewis and Erin Lissel. I have that whole facial recognition problem so I can’t tell by the picture if it is Liz or another brown-haired girl.  Do you guys know? I think it is her. I hate not being able to recognize faces. “Lucy Brooks” has blue eyes, I can’t tell about Liz. Vicap stands for Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. How could that be Liz?  Is she a twin?

Liz knows Red stole the real blueprints. They sit on the swingset outside the suburban home where Red is making the counterfeit bills and she tells him about her father. Sad episode.

Next week a bad comes after Red. Things go wrong. Doofus looks to be a hostage. Lots of gunfire. I’ll be watching, will you?