OMG THIS IS SO GOOD ALREADY! Red is in a Jeep in Cameroon looking a bit worse for wear. His apparent captors have bazookas and are blowing up anything that drives up behind them to high heaven. Red is taken to a compound.
Berlin hired this dude, Yibari, to kill Red but Red ws two steps ahead of Berlin and is there with $3 million in cash to get the names of the other people Berlin has hired to kill him. Red says they need to move quickly. He tells Yibari he has only 30 seconds to decide. The dude says, “or what?” and Red says, “or you give me the names for free.” Yibari laughs and asks, “Why don’t I just kill you and keep the money? Oh stupid Cameroon dude, did you really think it would be that easy? Red says, “There is a point of view that I can relate to.” I’m going to guess that Red is the last one alive in this transaction. Yibari orders one of his prepubescent ruffians to kill Red. On the first episode of the season? Dude, really? Kid raises his rifle an a hellfire missile lands nearby. Huge explosion. Massive. Red grabs a bottle of whisky pours a bunch of it on the cash and takes a swig while explaining he recently acquired three hellfire missiles and if he acts quickly he can avoid the other two hitting but he will need to use his phone.
Yubari finally gives up “The Cuban” but Red says he has already dealt with him. Who else? Ubari screams that he does not know. Ooopsy. That second hellfire missile was much closer. Red has one left… Red gets his name. Lord Baltimore. He drops his long cigar onto the pile of money which goes up in flames. He takes his hat off the head of one of he boy soldiers and walks away while the idiots try to save the money.
Oh Red, how I have missed you. Now we just need Agent Cooper back in charge of the post office.
We find Lizzie in a hotel room staring at the ceiling where she has pinned photos and articles about Berlin and Tom Keen’s connection to him. Liz and Red have a little chat outside. Dear god, is James Spader wearing a dark lip stain? Thank just ain’t right. Red tells Lizzie that Lord Baltimore is coming to kill him. Red says to get to Berlin, they have to get Lord Baltimore first.
Aram , the hot middle easterny computer expert is back. He finds some interesting activity in an account of someone who works as a data miner. He name is Rowan Mills and she had a mysterious $250,000 deposit into her IRA that just as mysteriously left her IRA and landed in an offshore account.
Lizzie is worried she is being followed. Ressler says she is paranoid because Tom is dead. I doubt that is true, we have no body. Also, Lizzie wants Ressler to keep seeing his shrink.
Berlin is taking an ice bath when a man walks in and tells him that Lord Baltimore has found Red. Red will be extracted the next day. The guy says because the Feds are involved there will be additional expenses. Berlin cracks the guys skull open on the side of the bathtub and holds it in the ice bath turning the water bright red. The guy will not be getting any additional expenses.
Meanwhile Rowan gets a call from a computerized voice who informs her that she is not to speak to the FBI the voice threatens her saying she knows where she lives. Rowan calls Lizzie and Ressler and they come over to check things out. Rowan is scared. They call Aram to have him trace the call but he has new information that seems to clear Rowan. Aram is worried that the information that was taken from her data mining site was not about Red because he is off the grid. They are concerned someone is coming after them like they came after Agent Malik. Aram tells them where the apartment that the phone call originated from is located. That apartment is leased in Rowan Mills name and has pictures of her everywhere. She says she has no idea about any of this. Rowan is played by a pretty well know actress whose name escapes me. I have a feeling she will be on for more than one episode. Liz sort of accuses her of being Lord Baltimore.
Red goes to visit Agent Cooper who is still recovering from his near death experience last season. Is that even the same actor? He doesn’t look the same to me. Red begs Cooper to come back to work. He gives Cooper a drive that has some sort of intel on Cooper. It’s sort of a good faith offer to try to lure Cooper back. He is not budging. Red says he knows about “what they found in the hospital. About the diagnosis.” And off he goes with this body guard Dembe.
Rowan has an evil twin that she thought was dead. Based on the pictures in the apartments she says she must be alive. Ah, the old evil twin alibi.
Red and Dembe go to a nice hotel where a helicopter busts through the glass wall and people hogtie Red and take him out by helicopter. Dembe gets his ass kicked in the process and is left behind. He ends up with some female Israeli woman who he assumes is Lord Baltimore. Red says he is not the one responsible for whatever it is she is seeking revenge for and the person she reports to will let him go within the hour. Sure enough the dude who is taking over for Cooper picks Red from the Israeli who was holding Red. I did not understand the point of any of that.
Meanwhile Lizzie and Ressler are trying to get to the bottom of the evil twin story. The evil twin’s name is Nora and she got mixed up in some sort of Israeli terrorism plot many years ago. Red tells Lizzie they have to go pick up Naomi Hyland who is in the witness protection program. Lord Baltimore is coming for her. She is Red’s ex-wife who has been in the protection program for 20 years.
Rowan is looking through old family photos of herself and he twin, when Marcus, the dude who made the mistake of asking Berlin for addition funds earlier shows up. Rowan is scared and doesn’t know him. He plays a record that triggers Rowan to be Nora. Apparently Nora came back and killed Rowan and now has some sort of spilt personality that is triggered by the music. Really? I believe last season we heard Red listening to that same record, but I could be wrong. At this point Ressler finds what he assumes is Nora’s body in a freezer on the mother’s property.
Nora and Marcus got to pick up Naomi. Lizzie and some other Feds are there trying to get Naomi to leave with them. Naomi doesn’t want to keep running. Nora assembles a high-powered rifle and starts picking off Feds outside Naomi’s house. The others go in with tasers (why?) and take out Naomi. Somehow Lizzie, despite being tazed manages to arrest Marcus and Nora but the other got away with Naomi and took her to Berlin. Berlin took a picture of her and placed it in a locket for Reddington to find, which he did.
Lizzie’s marriage was annulled. She is keeping the last name Keen. Ressler is popping pills and refusing to see the FBI therapist. Someone is watching Lizzie. Lizzie cuts her hair into a shorter blog, presumably to get rid of the hideous wig she wore last season. Cooper goes back to work. Lizzie is a new woman. A package comes for Red. It’s a box from Berlin and a cell phone. Red calls and Berlin says he is going to do to Red’s wife what he did to his daughter. He’s going to send her to him piece by piece by piece. Red opens the box to find his wife’s severed finger.
Next week: Red and Berlin meet face to face.
I love this show. I was confused about the significance of the “encounter” with the Mossad agent and the fact that she thought Red had killed her brother. Yet, as he is walking away from her, they discuss who really killed her brother. I thought by her comments that she was “asking” Red if the person who disappeared was the killer. Anyway… strange.
I love James Spader as Red. He just has all of those facial expressions that fit the character. The only thing I would enjoy more than watching this show is to watch it with Tamara and Banjo. 🙂
I also got lost with that whole scene, too, with that Mossad agent. I chalked it up to foreshadowing that her revenge for her dead brother is going to be a story/episode later this season.
I thought it was notable that whomever is watching Liz had to take off his Warby Parker round tortoise-shell glasses and put them on the car dashboard while using the binoculars. :::cough, Tom, cough:::
(Then again, Warby Parkers are $95/pair, anyone could have them, so they could totally be playing us. )
It’s got to be Tom. Am I wrong for holding out hope that somehow Tom is NOT a bad guy?
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 7:24 PM, Tamara Tattles wrote:
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You are not wrong. I think that would be a terrific twist, plus I find him so much more appealing as his real “spy” self than his milquetoast cover self.
Me too Tamara! I am hoping that Tom is not dead and some how He is a good guy and is protecting Lizzy.
That would not be me Tamara! Tom gives me the creeps and it drives me crazy Lizzie has been so easy on him. I found it so odd that Naomi looks JUST like Lizzie? Which would make sense if Red is her dad? Makes me wonder….
I only watched it once, but didn’t Naomi say that she and her daughter were relocated to Philadelphia?
I had so many OMG moments. To me James Spader is at his best when everything is in chaos and he has his “serious” one liner.
I didn’t understand the point of the ice bath scene or the Mossad agent. I was also surprised with all of the intel Berlin had on Red that he went after his ex wife of 20 years. Berlin is seeking revenge for his daughter. An ex wife is not the same as a child. Does Berlin know that Lizzie is not Red’s child or is he saving her for when all of the ex’s body parts have been returned? Also are we absolutely certain the finger is the ex wife’s?
I’ve seen the good/evil twin storyline in other mystery shows, but never where a song triggers the memory. I totally bought the clueless Rowan up to that point.
I’m anxious to see everyone else’s thoughts.
Too many unnecessary subplots. My mind was fried trying to keep up although I know they will all be “oh…ok” moments as the season progresses. Unfortunately it didn’t record and I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday much less what happened Mon. The Israeli woman was a complete mystery as to why they went there. The evil dead/alive twin a WTF moment. I think Tom is following Lizzie. Remember he was trying to convince her Red is the bad guy. I hope this repeats on the weekend like it did last year. I need another look see.
Oh Red, how I have missed you. James Spader is amazing in this role and without Tom, LIzzy is much better.
Crazy question: Is it possible that LIzzy is Berlin’s child that Red stole from him or is Naomi her mother……so many possibilities.
OK…(gosh, it’s so convoluted) tell me if I’m right…
Berlin’s daughter = young woman photographed by the Stewmaker, picture found in his “trophy” photobook. This must be true since that photo was identical to the photo in Berlin’s pocketwatch. If that’s true, then how could the body be sent to Berlin in pieces since the whole premise of the Stewmaker is that he’s the man “go to” man that makes bodies completely disappear? Why use the Stewmaker if you want to keep the body in pieces and mail it away to the girl’s father/Berlin?
Red has a connection to the same woman since looking for her photo in the trophy book was his primary purpose in alerting the FBI onto this Stewmaker in the 1st place.
Who is this dead woman? Was it Red’s wife, mother of Lizzy, daughter of Berlin? If so, then Naomi Hyland is another one of Red’s wives. There is a resemblance between Naomi and Lizzy – not so much between Lizzy and the dead woman, IMO.
The problem I’m having is that I feel Berlin and Red are contemporaries of the same generation. Berlin does not appear to be old enough to have a daughter near the same age as Red (in order to marry him) so I’m confused. Do you all think Berlin could be old enough to be Red’s father-in-law? If so, then Berlin would want to kill Red for placing his daughter in a position to be killed.
OH!! The list given to Berlin naming the task force could be misleading. Berlin wanted a list of people working with Red, but we are led to believe the list came from Tom’s intel. Tom keeps saying he was never told to hurt Liz but he doesn’t know what Berlin has planned or why he wanted the names. So, Berlin may want to kill the task force members but not to kill Lizzy. Her name being there doesn’t mean she’s to be killed.
We can assume now, after seeing his burns, that Red is Lizzy’s father. He pulled her out of the fire and gave her to Sam to raise. If so, then the story he told to Madeline Pratt about running out of gas on Christmas eve and reaching home to find blood everywhere was false. Denying he is her father to her face is consistent with what others have said about him believing he is a completely changed man since the fire and giving up Lizzy. What happened to Lizzy’s mother? She must be dead, yes?
Sorry…I keep pondering this!
Red came out of hiding for 2 reasons: 1) he needed FBI resources to help him find out who was trying to destroy him, and 2) to protect his daughter Liz and rebuild a relationship with her; teach her to be a top-notch FBI agent; and to find out if terminally-ill Sam had told her about her real father (Red).
Naomi Hyland IS Red’s ex-wife but we don’t know how many wives he’s had. Naomi Hyland was put into the witness protection program after Red went AWOL twenty years ago. Red IS Lizzy’s father. Berlin’s daughter was killed by the Stewmaker and Red knew her somehow. Berlin does NOT want to kill Lizzy. Do we even know whether Berlin’s daughter had a child? I honestly thought Berlin just said his daughter was murdered and nothing about a grandchild but I could be wrong; her body was sent to him in pieces; he escaped Siberia using a shiv made from one of her bones to go and avenge his daughter’s murder.
Liz could be Red and Berlin’s daughter’s child, which is why both men knew the woman in the Stewmaker’s photobook. If so, how could Red not know his FIL’s voice and past history? But this could explain why Berlin didn’t order Tom to kill Liz.
Liz could be Red and Naomi’s child. He took Liz to Sam so she’d never be connected to him or her mother and the FBI put Naomi into the WPP and made her start over. How could Naomi live without her daughter? Someone said Naomi was relocated to Pennsylvania with her daughter but I didn’t hear that. Guess I need to go rewatch the past 3 episodes before tonight!
Please let me know if anything I wrote makes sense or helps to unravel this mystery. Thanks!
Santa Fe, I am too brain dead to get through all of that and will have to come back with fresh brains whenever they arrive 🙂
I did sort of think Berlin was a good bit older than Red.
Thanks for this post. Hopefully someone with a clearer head can come by and help out. I’ll be back to read soon.
On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 4:13 PM, Tamara Tattles wrote:
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Very well thought out and written! The only thing I know for sure is that when I watched the episode again today, Naomi did say that she and her daughter were relocated to Philadelphia.
Why use an ex wife of twenty years to torture Red if Liz isn’t somehow related to Berlin? If she’s not related, then my only thought is use the ex wife as payback for his daughter, then threaten Liz’s life to control him.
Hopefully, we will learn more tonight when Red and Berlin meet in person.
Just rewatched Berlin episodes 1 & 2 and watching Lord Baltimore again now. Have to wait till tomorrow to watch tonight’s episode…been watching all along with my daughter and husband. We’re all hooked. OK, mostly it’s me who’s hooked.
Thanks for the additional insight, Tamara and SRoss. I now believe Berlin could be old enough to be Red’s FIL. Theoretically Red could have fallen in love with a Russian woman and not known that her father was a ruthless KGB agent known for sending his enemies to work in labor camps in Siberia. The father was a high level agent so he wouldn’t have been around when she met Red anyway.
From his hospital bed, Berlin told the story and said his daughter fell in love with a dissident at the end of the Cold War. That would be around the early 1980’s. Berlin, who’s real name is Miloshe Matzkihinsky (sp? – that’s what it sounded like to me. LOL), said she was captured and imprisoned but he orchestrated her escape. The Kremlin found out and decided to make an example out of him so they sent him off to Siberia to rot away with his enemies. He prayed for his daughter’s safety and that she would never be found. After some years the pocketwatch arrived with her picture followed by pieces of her. You all know the rest.
For now I believe Red fell in love with Berlin’s daughter. Red would have been in the Navy at that time and definitely considered a dissident to the Russians. After her father “Berlin” arranged for her to escape she went to Red and he arranged asylum for her to come to America where they settled down and had Liz. One year, around Christmastime?, KGB agents came to their home and killed and took Liz’s mother but Liz hid. Hence, the bloody scene Red described to Madeline Pratt. They set the house on fire. Red came home to find a bloody mess, his wife gone, and the house ablaze.
He saved Liz and took her to Sam, telling him he was in danger and that he needed someone to care for the girl, whose father died in a fire. Red needed to deny paternity to save Liz from the wrath of the KGB and her own grandfather who could use her to get to Red.
While Red didn’t kill Berlin’s daughter directly, his love for her put her in the position to be killed. Berlin is Red’s FIL and Liz’s grandfather. Now Berlin wants to destroy Red. I don’t think Berlin knows Liz is his granddaughter but not sure that he would even care. Could be all he wants her for is to use her to draw out Red and exploit his only weakness.
How’s that? Can’t wait to see what happened tonight! No spoilers! Just tell me if you find out whether I’m right or wrong.
Sorry so long again. I’ll stop now.
I like your scenario a whole lot better than what happened tonight. When you watch, tell me if you are surprised at some of Naomi’s skills. She seemed pretty resilient.
Wow! OK! Can’t wait to get to it after work. Resilient…intriguing!