In “Operation Davenport” last night, Scottie came extremely close to finding out who Tom was, until Howard stepped in to trick her at the last minute. She found Tom’s adoptive parents and went to speak with them, but Howard hired actors to play the parents, and replaced a baby photo of Tom with another child’s photo. For all intents and purposes at the moment, Scottie thinks Christopher is dead. I have a feeling that she’s not going to think this for long however. Scottie isn’t easily fooled, and she has Solomon following Tom to his meetings with Howard, so she’s going to find out what’s really going on very soon. Howard better watch his back when she does, because tricking someone into thinking their son is dead is not something you just walk away from without consequences.
Also, Howard really needs to start letting people (by people I mean Tom) in on his plans, because his secrecy is causing a lot of confusion. Tom didn’t know he had sent actors to play his adoptive parents, so for all he knew his cover was completely blown, and he started acting really suspicious at the team meetings because of it. If Howard had let Tom in on the plan, he would have had very little reason to be nervous. I also think Tom is feeling conflicted about his role in deceiving Scottie. So far she has done nothing that seems to point to Howard telling the truth about her going crazy and trying to have him killed. Why should Tom trust Howard any more than he trusts Scottie? He doesn’t know either of them, and right now Howard is the one acting incredibly shifty and keeping Tom in the dark, not Scottie. Maybe Tom is actually remembering what Red told him for once:
“If you tell Scottie who you are, you will never now the truth about your past.”
This is probably in the back of Tom’s mind somewhere, pushing him towards listening to Howard instead of Scottie. Tom has a pretty strong moral code though, so we’ll see how long he can last with lying to Scottie. A big part of him I know feels very guilty about still allowing his mom to think he’s dead, even though he could end all of her pain in a second by telling her that he’s her son. Also how does he know that Howard isn’t actually the one who was replaced by a Russian agent? Nothing makes him more trustworthy, and I think somewhere in his mind, Tom knows this.
Tom trying to figure out whether to trust Scottie or Howard like:
The case of the week plot of “Operation Davenport” was entertaining as well. A hacktivist named Brian Mayhew was one of the prisoners released in the orchestrated prison break. It turned out that he actually wasn’t a dangerous criminal. He had been trying to obtain NSA documents proving that they were spying on the American people, when he accidentally obtained missile plans. The CIA used this to arrest and frame him, saying that he was trying to sell weapons to enemies of the United States, but Brian wasn’t the enemy. A top level CIA official had framed Brian in order to obtain a huge network security contract for his company. He would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for Tom, who took the cell phone of one of the officials dead agents and used it to call him in the office and blow his cover. This is the oldest trick in the book, so it’s pretty hilarious that a top CIA official fell for it.
As usual, Tom and Solomon had some great scenes together, providing some top of the line comedic relief. The other prisoners who escaped during the prison break were not framed like Mayhew, they were extremely dangerous, and Tom and Solomon ended up capturing them in a stranger’s apartment building. This is honestly incredibly unrealistic. Why would three escaped convicts all stick together and get caught breaking into someone’s apartment? They would split up and stay out of sight, but it sure made cleanup easy for the Halcyon Team, capturing three out of five escaped prisoners in one go. The only problem that they ran into was that the police showed up at the apartment, causing Tom and Solomon to have to do a little role playing. Tom pretended to be the owner of the apartment, and Solomon put on one of the prisoner’s jumpsuits and pretended to be a repairman fixing the sink, who Tom had mistaken for the intruder that he called the police about, leading to this absolutely hilarious exchange:
The police got so fed up with their arguing that they just left, leading to this hilarious finish to the scene:
Solomon: “Okay, what’s Tupac’s middle name?”
Honestly, I could watch these two acting out different roles together and bickering all day long.
Finally, I loved how at the end of “Operation Davenport” Tom returned the NSA information that Mayhew had hacked to him, so he could release it to the public, after checking to make sure it wouldn’t put national security at risk of course. It’s pretty much impossible that the CIA wouldn’t have known Tom had the flashdrive and confiscated it from him, but it’s still a nice thought that Tom values government transparency, and would be able to let Mayhew release it to the public. Usually in situations like this, the person who has the information decides national security is more important, but Tom doesn’t have these qualms, which is really refreshing.
Too often in television, people side with the government keeping secrets from the people, under the guise of protecting national security.
Next week’s episode “Borealis 301” looks to be another action packed mission, with the team trying to stop a plane hijacking while disguised as flight attendants on board. At the end of the trailer, Solomon goes flying out the open door of the plane with the hijacker he was fighting, and I really hope he has a parachute, because I’m attached to him at this point, and I’m pretty sure he can’t fly.
Check out the trailer yourself below, and I’ll see you all next week!
The Blacklist: Redemption airs Thursdays at 10/9c on NBC.