Last night’s new episode “The Invisible Hand” was a somewhat lackluster “criminal of the week” episode that still managed to drop a couple of bomb shells and had a lot of enjoyable moments. Perhaps the two biggest revelations of “The Invisible Hand” were one, that Ian Garvey, the man responsible for Tom’s murder is a Sheriff or some sort of high ranking police officer, and two, that Detective Singleton, who has been investigating Liz for death’s surrounding Tom’s case is working for Ian Garvey.
It seemed like Detective Singleton was strangely hostile to Liz for some unexplained reason, but know we know why, he’s on the side of the bad guys. The revelation that Ian Garvey is a high ranking police officer was one that pushed Liz to do something we were all waiting for…rejoining The Task Force, FINALLY. She realized that she can’t take Ian Garvey on by herself, not when he’s protected within the police force, and she needs whatever help she can get. It’s really refreshing to finally see a character realize that they need the support of their friends and family, when so often in shows, characters keep secrets from those who care about them, and go off to fight their battles on their own because they think they can handle it.
I absolutely can’t wait to see Liz back at work, and the Task Force family finally being whole again. It just hasn’t felt the same since she’s been off on her own trying to solve Tom’s murder.
Another enjoyable moment from “The Invisible Hand” was that we got to see Red cuddling with another dog. One of my favorite things about Red is that he loves animals and refuses to hurt them. It seems that he especially loves dogs as he takes the opportunity to pet them and give them kisses whenever they cross his path.
We also got more of Red’s trademark sass and sarcasm, which helps make any episode better.
Two of my other favorite moments from “The Invisible Hand” involved Ressler (huge surprise I know). One came after Aram had pinpointed the next target of The Invisible Hand doing his technological magic thing (Seriously, they wouldn’t be able to solve any of their cases without Aram) and Samar looked at him adoringly. Ressler took this opportunity to get in some lighthearted teasing saying to Samar:
“Ah, I know. I know. Isn’t he adorable?”
I love moments like these when we get to see The Task Force acting like a family instead of keeping secrets from each other or fighting. Especially when Ressler is the one taking part in the fun.
My other favorite moment was just getting to see Ressler run after one of the members of “The Invisible Hand” and tackle him. I don’t know about you guys, but I think seeing Ressler tackle bad guys is one of the best parts of this show.
“The Invisible Hand” however was a pretty run of the mill group of blacklisters. Their backstory was somewhat compelling, but ended up feeling like a story The Blacklist has told many times over.
With many network shows taking a break due to the Winter Olympics, The Blacklist is taking about a three week break, returning on February 28th, so it’s going to be a few weeks until we have any new Blacklist content to talk about. Take the time to enjoy the short hiatus, because the second half of the season is bound to have all kinds of crazy and painful things in store!
The Blacklist returns at 8/9c February 28th on NBC.