To watch Blacklist is to watch a live version of a chess game and this one in particular was fantastic, showcasing Red's ability to manipulate everything and everyone around him to get his meeting with Berlin so that he can free his wife. I like that he was able to get his wife back on his own terms, but even better is knowing that the rest of the season (hopefully) will be a one on one war between Red and Berlin. We all know how it's going to end, but it's going to be fun seeing them trying to outfox each other. Bring it on! On an unrelated topic....kinda. I can't not look at Mary-Louise Parker and not see Nancy Botwin from Weeds.

Solid episode. It's always a trip to see David Costabile on anything now. He may not have had a big part on Breaking Bad, but he left a huge and lasting impression on that series. The guy is just a great actor and he was fantastic here. I just wished that they didn't kill him off because I wanted to see him have a recurring role. Oh well...

What the f*ck!!! For the past couple of episodes we have been clued into the fact that Elizabeth Keen was hiding something, but what that something was, was anyone's guess. But when it was revealed at the end exactly who was behind the steel door, my jaw literally dropped to the floor. I always knew that Tom (her husband) was still alive, in spite of Red saying otherwise. But never in a million years would I have guessed that Tom was and is basically her pet on a leash in some basement. That's how you rock a story line! The main story that carried the episode was just creepy as f*ck. Kinda like Deliverence for taxidermy of people. Ack! Totally dug that we finally got to see Dembe's back story. I didn't know the little boy at the beginning would turn out to be him. But at the end when Red gives his speech, you immediately know exactly who the boy is and would become. Very cool.

Yeah, I LOVE that song too. It made the final scene incredible because of it. FYI, most shows have something similar devoted strictly to songs that play on the show. So, you're never too far away from finding these days.

Solid episode with a nice con job to get the Feds to flush out their target. The Hospital setup was pretty good and the idea that someone was smart enough to put nails into Elizabeth's arm and a cast on top of that to make her think her arm was broken is a man that knows his sh*t. But its the twist at the end that I really thought was good. The girl that Red was bonding with, the one we thought and were led to believe was his long lost daughter was actually Berlin's daughter. Did not see it coming.

So, The Blacklist gets the coveted post-Superbowl slot and that means they are going to up their game and give us something special with more eyes on it and I think they did exactly that with Ron Perlman being cast as the episodes big bad Luther Braxton. His whole set up was good and I really liked how he was able to overtake the prison. Speaking of prisons, with it being set on a 'Oil Rig' out in the middle of the ocean, it played very much like that of The Rock and that wasn't a bad thing. The Conclusion  (Part 2) was kind of a letdown in terms of not getting the payoff I wanted. The first episode was setting up the showdown that would likely occur between Luther and Red. But for whatever reason, the writers chose to not go there. Instead, they had Red basically kill Luther off camera. Dropped the ball there. But the rest of the episode was good, especially digging into Keen's repressed memory, looking for the fulcrum. I knew that they would pretty much discount the information we finally get as being the byproduct of something else all together, as in her mind may be playing tricks on her.