Welcome back blindspotters! After the previous episode, the show returns with “Head Games,” a transition episode that, while entertaining us and containing great moments, doesn’t reach the level of its predecessors. It leaves us a bittersweet taste in the mouth, like when savoring something that we liked…but that could be much better. Also, the episode leaves us wanting to finish with the transition episodes and really start to get to the heart of the matter. Let’s discuss everything!
Here we go!
“THEY’RE FEARS…THAT DOESN’T MAKE THEM REAL”
The episode begins where the previous one ended: with Jane injured and Kurt kidnapped. Jane’s barely alive and in great danger of dying if the rest of the team don’t do something soon but, for her, her only concern is Kurt. She must reach him, rescue him, she must do…something. Her life is not a priority, he is. I LOVE this couple, because if it were the other way around, Kurt would be thinking and feeling the same.
Speaking of Kurt, Madeline’s henchmen have led him into a hole and are determined to have him hand over the rest of the team by revealing where they are hiding. When he resists, they inject him with a drug that makes him hallucinate and live his worst fears, that makes him more…receptive to saying things that he wouldn’t say otherwise.
Pausing here for a moment, I have to say that, just like flashbacks, I don’t like when much of one episode’s plot centers on a hallucination / vision / dream of one of the characters. Again, this episode is no exception. I understand the premise but, frankly, more than keeping me hooked, these hallucinations have ended up boring me and haven’t fulfilled their objective of removing me from the inside, which was what they were looking for.
That said, the drug fulfills one of its goals: it brings out Kurt’s most poisonous and elusive demons. One of his biggest nightmares has to do with Jane. His fear goes back to the beginning of their relationship. Actually, that relationship was all a meticulously crafted plan by Sheperd for Jane to be introduced into his life little by little…everything was timed to happen with the goal of destroying, manipulating, and killing him.
And one of his deepest fears is that he doesn’t really know Jane and that it all turns out to be the lie he was meant to be. This fear is symbolized by an old acquaintance of ours: Jane’s fiancé. Kurt hallucinates with him because in some way he represents the decision that Jane made, her real love, a man she truly loved, who she decided to love, without a machiavellian plan behind, while the love she feels for him is not real.
Of course, Kurt doesn’t really feel that way. He knows that Jane loves him and knows her, just as he shouts at his hallucination, as he demonstrates defeating it, but just knowing it doesn’t make those demons that have been rooted in him for so long, disappear. It’s human to be afraid of something that, although you know it isn’t real, you fear that it ever was.
Kurt’s second fear has to do with his father. Kurt has always struggled internally with the image of the father who held his hand and guided him on the path to being a man with the bastard who killed his best friend Taylor (by the way, very good calls to season 1 in these hallucinations). After all, his father was a murderer. And he can’t help but fear that he is too.
He has also killed…and many more people than his father, doesn’t that make Kurt someone like him? Even someone worse? That’s what Kurt fears. Of course, there’s a big difference between killing a little girl in cold blood (as Kurt’s father did), killing in war or in self-defense or that of others. Is not the same. So I must say that this fear of Weller’s surprised me. It’s credible and understandable but, still…too caught with tweezers for my taste.
Kurt’s third fear is about Bethany. He hallucinates with an older Bethany, who is witness to what he’s suffering, that he’s pleading for help and still remains there, undaunted, without doing anything, without helping him, without feeling sorry for him. She’s a Bethany who believes that he abandoned her and, because of this, has been raised by Madeline and her people. Kurt’s fear is that he won’t be there for her and that she will be so lonely and lost…that Madeline will take advantage of it.
It’s a fear that grows stronger when he remembers that it was her birthday recently and he wasn’t there. When he remembers that she had to go to the hospital…and he wasn’t there. Kurt already felt horrible for not being present, he already felt like he was leaving her for it and this’s just a living reflection of it.
The second objective of the drug (Kurt revealed information about the team) ends up giving half results. They barely managed to extract from him that the team lives in a bunker. It’s little but it’s something, it’s more than what they had.
Kurt manages to escape in the midst of the effects of the drug, he doesn’t know what is real and what is not, so much so that he meets Tasha and is about to kill her. She’s scared when she sees the gun pointed at her…and I think she’s more scared for the baby than for her. I also find significant the words that Tasha says to Kurt when he confesses that he doesn’t know what to think or what to believe (just what happens to her), she tells him that he must take a leap of faith and trust…and that it’s what she must do too.
Once in the bunker and safe, Jeller has a chance to speak. Although Kurt tries to hide, Jane knows that what he has seen during the kidnapping has deeply affected him. They’re images and words that he cannot easily erase. They’re there every time he closes his eyes and sometimes when he keeps them open too. So she makes it clear to Kurt that they’re fears…and that doesn’t mean they‘re real. They’re simply nightmares, doubts and fears that we keep hidden within us, but that doesn’t mean that something we fear is real.
But Kurt isn’t sure, at the end of the day, one of his fears…almost becomes real. He wanted to kill that woman who kidnapped him. She was unconscious, on the ground and unarmed and he still wanted to pull the trigger. He wanted to kill her in cold blood. But it’s human to want to do it, it’s dark, but human. The important thing is that he didn’t do it, he decided not to do it and that shows who Kurt is.
As Jane tells him, he has light and darkness inside him, like everyone else, he’s a good man. That doesn’t mean that there’re no shadows or darkness inside him, it only means that his light, his goodness, always shine and win. In fact, after this chat with Jane we noticed a change in Kurt. He’s happier, more smiling, calmer than in days gone by when his mood was pessimistic. For things like this Jeller is our OTP.
“GIVE ME TIME TO KNOW HOW I FEEL”
Tasha isn’t having her best time. She just found out that she is pregnant and hasn’t had time to assimilate it yet when problems knock on her door. Almost without knowing how it happened, Jane’s in the bunker, lying on a stretcher and about to be operated by Patterson. She’ll need blood to survive and Tasha is the only one compatible. There’s only one problem…it’s too risky for a pregnant woman to give blood, and much more in the amount that Jane needs. So she refuses.
But nobody can know what is the reason for her refusal…or can they? Patterson can’t believe Tasha refuses to give Jane the only thing that can save her life and, although Rich tries to help Tasha, in the end she must confess to Patterson – and Jane – everything. She screams it. Tasha knew that Patterson wouldn’t stop insisting until she gave her a logical explanation and Tasha was getting nervous and overwhelmed so…she explodes and leaves them all speechless.
Rich can’t believe she said it while Patterson and Jane struggle to recover from the surprise. But there is no time to freak out, Jane is dying and they must find another solution. Tasha wants to donate her blood to Jane, despite the risk, but she refuses. Jane doesn’t intend to put Tasha and her baby’s life at risk for her. If something happened, she would never forgive herself.
Fortunately, Jane’s surgery works out – as well as it can go in a secret bunker without specialized medical assistance – and she’ll survive. Jane is still mulling over Tasha’s revelation and can’t help but wonder…who is the father? She is almost certain that it’s Reade but she doesn’t want to assume things…so she decides to ask Tasha directly and she confirms that is Reade’s so RAPATA IS OFFICIALLY HAVING A BABY!
If the shouting revelation of the secret seemed like a big bang, it falls short of what comes next. Rich and Patterson take a moment to talk to Tasha and make it clear that she isn’t alone. They have good intentions. They just want Tasha to know that she has them for anything and that they’ll help make that bunker a home for the baby. They want Tasha to know they’re there, for whatever she needs.
So they start making plans and…Tasha starts to feel overwhelmed, she feels like she can’t breathe and she chokes so she cuts them off. Before making plans for the baby, they should ask how she feels. They should let her know how she feels. No one asked her. They have been interested in knowing the father’s name, they have started to make castles in the air with the baby but nobody asked her.
Tasha doesn’t really know how she feels. She doesn’t know if she’s happy because is from Reade and is all that remains of all the love that they came to feel for each other or is sad and lonely because he is not there with her. She doesn’t know if she feels both. Nor does she know what she is going to do, what it will be like to be a mother, if she is prepared for it or if she will be a good mother.
That’s to say, they live in a bunker, it isn’t an appropriate house, it’s hardly a house, how is a child born there? How will he/she grow? In addition, she has a death sentence on her head and lives on the edge, taking risks every day. One day she may not return from one of the missions…what would happen then? And her? Are she ready to be a mother? Is she even mother material? Does she want to have children?
All these doubts and this confusion swirl in Tasha’s head and don’t let her think. She’s disoriented, without knowing what to do and without being able to discern how she feels. As if someone had caught her and then thrown her into an unknown place, in the dark and alone. Her life has changed so quickly and in so many different ways that she simply hasn’t had time to even analyze how she feels about it.
So when she listens to Patterson and Rich start making plans for the baby, it’s the last straw. She doesn’t know how she feels, she isn’t even sure about anything and right now she cannot think about baby protectors and adapting a house to a baby, not even when she hasn’t yet come to the idea that such a baby exists. She just can’t think anything at the moment.
But the tranquility doesn’t last long. As soon as they rescue Kurt, he congratulates her. And Tasha’s reaction is very revealing. She stops smiling, avoid Kurt’s gaze and try to avoid the subject. Guilt is added to Tasha’s doubts. Everyone seems so…radiant with the baby news and she feels guilty for not feeling so radiant when she thinks about it. For not even knowing what to feel when it seems so clear to others.
Saved by the bell! As soon as Tasha has to talk about the baby, they discover a number to follow to Madeline and unexpected visitors arrive at the bunker. Turns out, the friends Rich trusts to get Jane’s blood weren’t that trustworthy (Ice Cream, really? Rich, you should known better). They followed him and now threaten to kill them if they don’t get what Rich promised them for the blood. How will they get out of this?
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, this episode was good but…I expected more. I imagined that the episode would revolve around Kurt’s kidnapping and I expected to see Jane desperate to find him, afraid of losing him and burning the world looking for him, I hoped that Tasha would end up confessing to Patterson about the baby, that she would end up bursting out about what’s going through her mind and what they’ve shown was…totally different.
It’s as if they’re halfway there. Jane is worried about Kurt, yes, but that don’t influence it too much and they focus more on saving her life, which entertains us and keeps us tense but…it seems out of place when, given the situation, the action should be focused on emotions.
Tasha reveals the secret but in a desperate way, screams it, because she has no choice. It isn’t a decision she makes, it’s something that circumstances lead she to. And she doesn’t exploding, we only see the beginning of a great storm. A promising beginning but only a beginning after all.
Kurt, on the other hand, is the one that I liked the most in all this and in which I have seen that emotion was the central plot in his story, although I expected more from him. Certainly what he has experienced, seen and felt almost ends up breaking him but I also expected something else, something more…emotional about Bethany and his family, like the possibility of losing them and having to live without them.
So it was an irregular episode. I think they could done more with the material they had. We cannot say that we was bored or that nothing has made sense…but they had history to do more and better than they have done.
In addition to this, this episode is transitional and we already have some of the same. Don’t get me wrong, all shows have transition episodes and I LOVE the ones like last week’s. But I like transition episodes that are like this less. A lot less. Six episodes left. It’s time for them to get to the point because time is running out.
Agree? Disagree? Don’t hesitate to share your opinion with us in the comments below! We’ll be back next week with 5×06 “Fire & Brimstone”.
Blindspot airs Thursday at 8 / 7c on NBC.
